Paul could not reply, but his look expressed his satisfaction. From that day the fever abated, and the young man soon became convalescent. XXVIII THE INEVITABLE HAPPENS It was only a few days since Albert had returned to Paris, and he had hardly had time to see his closest friends, when he disappeared again, and no one knew the reason of his abrupt departure. When the jovial Mouillot chanced to meet Balivan or Dupétrain or Célestin, it rarely happened that they did not discuss the conduct of young Vermoncey. "What sort of a life is he leading now?" said Mouillot; "he goes off, and is gone nearly three months; then he comes back, we see him two or three times, and off he goes again without a word, just at the beginning of winter, when all sorts of amusements have centred in the capital." Monsieur Célestin, who had not given out that he had had a definitive rupture with Albert, contented himself with some such reply as this: "As I have been entirely unable to understand Albert's moods of late, I have seen very much less of him. He's a queer fish: one of those people who fly into a passion without any idea what it's all about; and I bother my head very little as to what he does or what becomes of him!" "For my part," said Balivan, "I am very fond of the fellow. He's heedless and light-headed, but I am sure that he's as straight as a string, and he's most obliging. He's a mighty bright fellow, too; and if he'd like, I'd be glad to take a trip to Italy with him." "If Monsieur Albert had chosen," said Monsieur Dupétrain, "he would have made a first-class subject for magnetism; he had just the right look in his eyes to put himself in communication with a somnambulist." "How about the fair lady that you were paying court to not long ago?" said Monsieur Célestin, in a sarcastic tone; "have you magnetized her?" "Madame Baldimer? No; I tried, but I couldn't make it work; she's a woman who is absolutely free from nervousness." They asked one another about Tobie Pigeonnier also, who was still undiscoverable. "Gad!" said Mouillot; "I wouldn't give five sous for that olive stone that poor Monsieur Varinet persists in carrying about in his purse." Madame Plays was not disturbed about Albert, but she was fully determined to be revenged on little Tobie, who had hoodwinked her so completely with his alleged duel and was responsible for her having exhaled an odor of tobacco for two months. Every morning, she sent for a carriage, entered it with her husband, and took him to a shooting gallery, thence to a fencing school; and there the submissive husband was compelled to practise an hour with the pistol, and another hour with the sword; and his wife constantly scolded him because he could never succeed in hitting the target or in learning to parry a thrust. Poor Monsieur Plays would return home tired to death. "My dear love," he would say to his wife, "I assure you that I prefer to learn whist; I understand it much better than I do fencing."