"No, indeed, not at all; he's an old hunks of the first order. He asked me to come to his evenings, but I learned that for refreshments, in summer, he gave cocoa." "Delightful! And in winter?" "In winter, it's much worse--hot cocoa. As you can imagine, that didn't attract me; so I have never been." "Cold cocoa and hot cocoa!" cried Dodichet; "it's hard to believe that. Does the fellow deal in licorice root?" "It's a pity, for his second wife isn't half bad; I would willingly have flirted a little with her; but I didn't feel that I had the courage to defy the cocoa!" "And his daughter Juliette--isn't she charming?" "I don't know her; I have never seen her." "Her stepmother is determined to marry her. As she is a good deal of a flirt, I think that she's jealous of her stepdaughter's beauty; she is looking everywhere for a husband for her; I heard that she had gone so far as to apply to a second-hand clothes woman, who arranges marriages." "I say! I say! What's that! Do second-hand clothes women make matches?" "A great many, my dear Dodichet, a great many! The business pays well, as you can imagine; they stipulate that they are to furnish the presents that the groom always gives the bride. If the groom has no money to pay for them, they offer to advance it, being certain of getting their pay out of the bride's dowry." "Do you know, that's a shrewd game! I have a mind to go into the matchmaking business myself. Do you know the name of this hymeneal procuress?" "Madame Putiphar." "The devil! the name is promising. I must see her and tell her to find me a millionairess, and I'll share the dowry with her.--All the same, he's a miserable old crow, is your Monsieur Miroton[P]--Mirotaine. He must smell of onions. I really must play some good practical joke on him." "I beg you, Dodichet, do nothing of the sort; you would simply get Juliette into trouble, and that wouldn't help my business any." "Your business! Do you really flatter yourself, Lucien, that your pins will enable you to marry the young woman?" "If I make money, yes; but it will take a long time, and meanwhile Madame Putiphar will find some man who, fascinated by Juliette's attractions, will agree to marry her without a dowry." "Poor Lucien! Give me your address; I'll come and see your pins, and try to give them a puff." "I live very modestly, on the sixth floor, on Quai Jemmapes, facing the bridge, at the corner of Faubourg du Temple." "Well, messieurs, I see that we are about to part without being able to say, any one of us, that we have reached the goal for which we set out." "I ask a reprieve for one year, messieurs. In a year, I shall have made a name for myself on the stage. I shall have succeeded----" "And I," said Lucien, "may have been successful in my new undertaking; in a year's time, perhaps, I shall have started a little business of my own." "I shall be chief of a bureau or sub-prefect."