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A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER
Chat at table, the chat of love; it is as impossible to reproduce
one as the other; the chat of love is a cloud; the chat at table
is smoke.
Fameuil and Dahlia were humming.
Tholomyes was drinking.Zephine was laughing, Fantine smiling,
Listolier blowing a wooden trumpet which he had purchased at Saint-Cloud.
Favourite gazed tenderly at Blachevelle and said:--
"Blachevelle, I adore you."
This called forth a question from Blachevelle:--
"What would you do, Favourite, if I were to cease to love
you?"
"I!" cried Favourite.
"Ah!
Do not say that even in jest!If you were to cease to love me,
I would spring after you, I would scratch you, I should rend you,
I would throw you into the water, I would have you arrested."
Blachevelle smiled with the voluptuous self-conceit of a man
who is tickled in his self-love. Favourite resumed:--
"Yes, I would scream to the police!
Ah!
I should not restrain myself, not at all!
Rabble!"
Blachevelle threw himself back in his chair, in an ecstasy,
and closed both eyes proudly.
Dahlia, as she ate, said in a low voice to Favourite, amid
the uproar:--
"So you really idolize him deeply, that Blachevelle of
yours?"
"I?
I detest him," replied Favourite in the same tone, seizing
her fork again.
"He is avaricious.
I love the little fellow opposite me in my house.
He is very nice, that young man; do you know him?One can see
that he is an actor by profession.
I love actors.As soon as he comes in, his mother says to him:
`Ah! mon Dieu! my peace of mind is gone.
There he goes with his shouting.
But, my dear, you are splitting my head!'
So he goes up to rat-ridden garrets, to black holes, as high
as he can mount, and there he sets to singing, declaiming, how
do I know what? so that he can be heard down stairs!He earns twenty
sous a day at an attorney's by penning quibbles.He is the son
of a former precentor of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. Ah! he is
very nice.
He idolizes me so, that one day when he saw me making batter
for some pancakes, he said to me:
`Mamselle, make your gloves into fritters, and I will eat them.'
It is only artists who can say such things as that.
Ah! he is very nice.I am in a fair way to go out of my head
over that little fellow.Never mind; I tell Blachevelle that I
adore him--how I lie!
Hey!
How I do lie!"
Favourite paused, and then went on:--
"I am sad, you see, Dahlia.
It has done nothing but rain all summer; the wind irritates
me; the wind does not abate.
Blachevelle is very stingy; there are hardly any green peas
in the market; one does not know what to eat.
I have the spleen, as the English say, butter is so dear! and
then you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room with
a bed in it, and that disgusts me with life."
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