Chérubin seated himself beside Nicole; he kissed her again and again, then glanced about the room and said: “What a pity that someone is missing! If Louise were here, my happiness would be complete. Is she still in Bretagne--a long way off? Doesn’t she mean to return?” “Oh, yes, my boy,” murmured the peasant woman with evident embarrassment. “But you do still care for us a little bit, my dear child, although you have got used to finer folks than we are?” “Do I care for you! Indeed I do! I understand why you ask me that, dear Nicole; I have been an ungrateful wretch, I have acted very badly. To think of not coming once to embrace you in three years! Oh! that was very wicked of me. I planned to do it very often, but one has so many things to do in Paris! Society, and all the amusements that were so new to me--it all bewildered me. You must try to forgive me.” “Forgive him! How handsome he is! how handsome he is!” “And then, it seems to me that if you had wanted to see me, there was nothing to prevent your coming to Paris, to my house.--You know well enough where it is.” “Why, we did go there, my dear child, we went there twice, Louise and I. We asked to see you, and the first time they told us that you were travelling; the second, that you were at some château and would be away a long while.” “That is very strange! In the first place, it isn’t true; I have not left Paris since I first went there, I have not travelled at all; and then, I was never told that you came.” “The idea! I told the concierge to tell you.” “Ah! I will look into this, and I will find out why they presumed to conceal your visits from me.” “Bless me! that made Louise and me feel very bad, and we said: ‘As long as he knows we’ve been to see him but couldn’t find him, and he don’t come to see us, why, we mustn’t go again, because perhaps he don’t like to have us come to his house in Paris.’” “Not like it, my dear Nicole! The idea of thinking that of me! And poor Louise too! But why did you send her to Bretagne, instead of keeping her with you?” “Louise in Bretagne!” exclaimed Jacquinot, who returned to the room just then with a jug of wine and glasses. “What’s the sense of making up stories like that to deceive my friend monsieur le marquis?” “What! Louise is not in Bretagne!” cried Chérubin. “Why, Monsieur Gérondif has been telling me that for two years. What is the meaning of that lie?” “Oh! dear me, my boy!” said Nicole, “I’ll tell you the whole story, for I don’t like to lie! And then, the more I look at you, you look so good and gentle, I can’t believe that you’ve got to be a rake, a seducer, as Monsieur Gérondif told us!” “I, a rake, a seducer! Why, that is not true, nurse, it is horribly false! On the contrary, people laugh at me in Paris because they say I am too bashful with the ladies. And to say that I am a rake! That is abominable! And my tutor dared to say such things?”