"Your health, O my infanta!" "Thirty pistoles! I make a profit of a hundred per cent, and I am tempted not to give my uncle anything." "O Miretta! I will lay my little hoard at thy feet, and myself as well!" "The devil take Maître Bourdinard's office! I propose to enjoy myself; I work no more!" In the midst of this hubbub, the bottles being empty, Passedix paid no further heed to the two clerks, but left the hotel, to display himself to an admiring Paris and to seek Miretta. Bahuchet and his friend followed him to Place aux Chats. There they stopped, looked at each other, and began to laugh. They linked arms, each thinking that he was supporting the other, and Bahuchet stammered: "We have thirty pistoles to spend; for I don't suppose, dear boy, that you will be foolish enough to give half of it to your uncle the old clothes man?" "I never had any such intention. My uncle can afford to make me that little gift." "If he loses his temper, you can tell him that somebody stole the bundle, the clothes." "That is true. I'll say that the famous Giovanni stripped me." "Bravo! the very thing; let us charge the accident to Giovanni's account. Par la sambleu! the fellow is stout enough to take a lot of robberies on his shoulders." "Now, we will have some sport. We must make the thirty pistoles dance.--Look out, my dear boy, steady!" "Where shall we go to spend it?" "We must go out of Paris, or we might meet some of our comrades, and then we should have to treat them too." "No such fools!" "Let us go to the village of Le Roule." "Where is that village?" "Le Roule?--It's a pretty village, just after you leave Paris by Porte Saint-Honoré.--There's a leper's hospital there." "A leper's hospital! Thanks! What an attraction! Do you propose that we go for diversion to a leper's hospital?" "Why, no; you don't let me finish. I said that to show you that I know the locality. There is also a certain _pêcheur-rotisseur_, who serves stewed rabbit and fried fish. We shall be very comfortable there, and we can regale ourselves at our ease." "So be it! let us go there; lead the way." "Try not to waver so on your legs." "Isn't he delicious!--when it is he who stumbles at every step." The two clerks, each supporting the other, and sometimes describing zigzags which terrified the passers-by, set out for Le Roule, which was then only a village, although destined to become one of the great faubourgs of Paris. XXXIV A BOLD STEP Since Bathilde had learned the result of Ambroisine's visit to Léodgard, since she had learned in what way he had treated the person who went to implore him in her behalf, a profound melancholy, a gloomy resignation, had succeeded the impatience, the anxiety, the hope, which had divided the empire of her mind at first. It has often been said, and justly, that anxiety is worse than misfortune itself.