"The individual of the fetich--the olive." "Oh, yes! the man who put up an olive at five hundred francs." "The same. Has he been to you to pay his debt and redeem his pledge?" "No; and to prove it, I'll show you that I still have it in my purse." Monsieur Varinet drew his purse and showed them the olive among some gold pieces; it had dried and had shrunk considerably. "If you keep the thing much longer," said Balivan, "you'll have nothing left but the stone." "Do you know Tobie's address, messieurs?" asked Albert. "No," replied the painter; "if I knew it, I should have gone there before this to remind him of his fetich, which he has not redeemed. As it was at my rooms that he contracted that debt to Monsieur Varinet, whom he had never seen but once before, I consider it infernally ill-bred in him not to have paid up at once." "Oh! I am not at all alarmed," said Varinet, calmly. "But I must see this little Tobie," said Albert; "and I will not fail to remind him of his debt; for it would be exceedingly unpleasant for us to have Monsieur Varinet fall a victim to his confidence in a person whom he had reason to look upon as a friend of ours." "What's all this? what friends are you talking about?" said the jovial Mouillot, as he joined the four young men and shook hands with them. "I have just seen Dupétrain talking with a lady on Rue de Richelieu, messieurs; he had her backed up against a porte cochère, and, in my opinion, he was trying to magnetize her on the carriage stone." "Ah! it's Mouillot!" "How much did you win at bouillotte the night before last, Mouillot?" "Six hundred and twenty francs; that's all." "What a lucky dog he is! he always wins." "Do you know Tobie's address, Mouillot?" "Tobie's address? how should I know it? he never asks one to come and see him. When he invites his friends to breakfast, the mice will dance the cancan! By the way, has he redeemed his fetich?" "No; Varinet hasn't seen him." "Poor Varinet! that olive must be a little stale." "So you don't know Monsieur Pigeonnier's address?" "Not I." "The first time that I had the honor of seeing the gentleman," said Varinet, swallowing a glass of water, "he told me that he was a commission merchant. If that is so, his name and address ought to be in the directory." The other young men laughed heartily at Varinet's suggestion. "Ha! ha! commission merchant!" "That kind is never in the directory!" "I'm not sure even that he's an unlicensed broker."[J] "It's so easy in Paris to pretend to be what you are not!" "There are many people who go so far as to assume names that don't belong to them." "And who often succeed in making dupes, under the shelter of an honorable name." "What is there that is never stolen in Paris?"