"Well? how well?" exclaimed Thuillier.
"I mean, what do you find so serious in that?""What do I find so serious?" repeated Thuillier. "I don't think anything could be more insulting to me.""You can't doubt," said la Peyrade, "that the virtuous Cerizet is at the bottom of it; he has thrown this firecracker between your legs by way of revenge.""Cerizet, or anybody else who wrote that diatribe is an insolent fellow," cried Thuillier, getting angry, "and the matter shall not rest there.""For my part," said la Peyrade, "I advise you to make no reply. You are not named; though, of course, the attack is aimed at you. But you ought to let our adversary commit himself farther; when the right moment comes, we'll rap him over the knuckles.""No!" said Thuillier, "I won't stay quiet one minute under such an insult.""The devil!" said the barrister; "what a sensitive epidermis! Do reflect, my dear fellow, that you have made yourself a candidate and a journalist, and therefore you really must harden yourself better than that.""My good friend, it is a principle of mine not to let anybody step on my toes. Besides, they say themselves they are going on with this thing. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to cut short such impertinence.""But do consider," said la Peyrade. "Certainly in journalism, as in candidacy, a hot temper has its uses; a man makes himself respected, and stops attacks--""Just so," said Thuillier, "'principiis obsta.' Not to-day, because we haven't the time, but to-morrow I shall carry that paper into court.""Into court!" echoed la Peyrade; "you surely wouldn't go to law in such a matter as this? In the first place, there is nothing to proceed upon; you are not named nor the paper either, and, besides, it is a pitiable business, going to law; you'll look like a boy who has been fighting, and got the worst of it, and runs to complain to his mamma.
Now if you had said that you meant to make Fleury intervene in the matter, I could understand that--though the affair is rather personal to you, and it might be difficult to make it seem--""Ah ca!" said Thuillier, "do you suppose I am going to commit myself with a Cerizet or any other newspaper bully? I pique myself, my dear fellow, on possessing civic courage, which does not give in to prejudices, and which, instead of taking justice into its own hands, has recourse to the means of defence that are provided by law.
Besides, with the legal authority the Court of Cassation now has over duelling, I have no desire to put myself in the way of being expatriated, or spending two or three years in prison.""Well," said la Peyrade, "we'll talk it over later; here's your sister, and she would think everything lost if this little matter reached her ears."When Brigitte appeared Colleville shouted "Full!" and proceeded to sing the chorus of "La Parisienne.""Heavens! Colleville, how vulgar you are!" cried the tardy one, hastening to cast a stone in the other's garden to avoid the throwing of one into hers. "Well, are you all ready?" she added, arranging her mantle before a mirror. "What o'clock is it? it won't do to get there before the time, like provincials.""Ten minutes to two," said Colleville; "I go by the Tuileries.""Well, then we are just right," said Brigitte; "it will take about that time to get to the rue Caumartin. Josephine," she cried, going to the door of the salon, "we'll dine at six, therefore be sure you put the turkey to roast at the right time, and mind you don't burn it, as you did the other day. Bless me! who's that?" and with a hasty motion she shut the door, which she had been holding open. "What a nuisance!
I hope Henri will have the sense to tell him we are out."Not at all; Henri came in to say that an old gentleman, with a very genteel air, had asked to be received on urgent business.
"Why didn't you say we were all out?"
"That's what I should have done if mademoiselle had not opened the door of the salon so that the gentleman could see the whole family assembled.""Oh, yes!" said Brigitte, "you are never in the wrong, are you?""What am I to say to him?" asked the man.
"Say," replied Thuillier, "that I am very sorry not to be able to receive him, but I am expected at a notary's office about a marriage contract; but that if he could return two hours hence--""I have told him all that," said Henri, "and he answered that that contract was precisely what he had come about, and that his business concerned you more than himself.""You had better go and see him, Thuillier, and get rid of him in double-quick," said Brigitte; "that's shorter than talking to Henri, who is always an orator."If la Peyrade had been consulted he might not have joined in that advice, for he had had more than one specimen of the spokes some occult influence was putting into the wheels of his marriage, and the present visit seemed to him ominous.
"Show him into my study," said Thuillier, following his sister's advice; and, opening the door which led from the salon to the study, he went to receive his importunate visitor.
Brigitte immediately applied her eye to the keyhole.
"Goodness!" she exclaimed, "there's my imbecile of a Thuillier offering him a chair! and away in a corner, too, where I can't hear a word they say!"La Peyrade was walking about the room with an inward agitation covered by an appearance of great indifference. He even went up to the three women, and made a few lover-like speeches to Celeste, who received them with a smiling, happy air in keeping with the role she was playing. As for Colleville, he was killing the time by composing an anagram on the six words of "le journal 'l'Echo de la Bievre,'" for which he had found the following version, little reassuring (as far as it went) for the prospects of that newspaper: "O d'Echo, jarni! la bevue reell"--but as the final "e" was lacking to complete the last word, the work was not altogether as satisfactory as it should have been.