"Not a penny, my dear fellow. I've been robbed in a shameful manner." "That is to say, you have been gambling." "Yes, that's true; I've played, but with robbers. They have tricked me in an infamous fashion. If, at least, they had been amiable about it, one knows well that among people accustomed to play there are a thousand little ways in which one can make fortune favorable, but to despoil a friend, a comrade--it's horrible! I'll never play again in my life. Say now, don't you want me to go to the little house to see my dear friend Marcel?" "On the contrary, I forbid you to do so. Without the marquis' order nobody should allow himself to go there." "That's vexatious, and how did the adventure end?" "What does that matter to you? For the matter of that I have not seen the marquis again, but from the moment I ceased to be employed the intrigue was nothing to me; besides, it will end like all the others. It is a caprice which will last for some days and will be succeeded by another." "That's correct; but the little one appeared to me to have some strength of mind. She said some very peculiar things to me; she asked me, among other things, if I knew your parents." "My parents," said the barber, with visible emotion, "that's singular." "Yes, very singular. I told her you were from Lorraine and that that was all I knew about you." "My parents," repeated Touquet, striding about the room. "I am almost certain that I have none. My poor father is undoubtedly dead. Oh, I was a very worthless fellow in my youth! Precocious in my passions, a taste for play and a thirst for gold caused me to commit a thousand excesses." "Yes, the follies of youth. I know all about that. As for me at six years old I was flogged for having stolen a leg of mutton out of the dripping-pan. At ten for having, in a fit of abstraction, taken my grandmother's purse to go and play at little quoits; at twelve years old I took a rabbit off the spit and put in its place my old aunt's cat; but in my ardor to hide my larceny I forgot to skin the cat, which was roasted with its hair on. Happily my father was short-sighted, and he thought it was a little wild boar; at fifteen years--" "What does it matter what you did?" cried the barber, impatiently. "Did the young woman say anything else about me?" "No, but if you like, I'll go and draw it from her, adroitly." "Idiot! you forget that she is the marquis' mistress? When her reign is ended I shall see her, and I shall know." The barber said nothing further and would not answer Chaudoreille, and the latter, after having uselessly repeated several times that he had been fasting since the evening before, on perceiving that Touquet paid him no attention left the shop in an ill-humor, murmuring between his teeth,-- "People who become rich are always niggardly and stingy. That's a fault that I shall never have."