“Besides, don’t all these dandies--that is what they call these fellows--don’t all these dandies talk that way to women, especially when they are pretty? It’s their way; they must always play the lady-killer; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be dandies! But I know one of those young men, too; the tallest one is an author,--that means a man who writes plays; his name is Jéricourt; I’ve carried letters to his room sometimes from the other one, who isn’t so tall; that one has employed me often; just now he’s very attentive to an actress at the Folies, a little blonde with black eyes, who plays such parts as Rigolette,--Mademoiselle Dutaillis. I’ll bet that she’s the one he’s going to buy a bouquet for, and then he’ll take her to dinner at Bonvalet’s; and when she’s in the cast, they keep sending me to the theatre, to the box office, to ask how far they have got. I always ask a handsome man who is sitting inside the office, and he answers with a sly look: ‘Go and tell mademoiselle that she has time enough to eat another course, provided that it isn’t carp, because the bones might make her lose her cue.’” “Oh, yes! I know well enough that it isn’t the light-haired one who is dangerous to Violette; it’s the other one!” “And why should the other one be dangerous, when everyone says that the little flower girl is virtuous? You yourself told me so a hundred times.” “Certainly she is virtuous, perfectly virtuous. If she wasn’t, if she was anything else, do you suppose I’d be mad over her as I am?” “Then what difference does it make to you whether people pay her compliments and make love to her? She won’t listen to them.” “Who can tell? A young girl sometimes ends by allowing herself to be deceived by all these soft speeches. They offer her dresses, jewels, entertainments, love--it’s all very tempting. Look, see how that tall, scented fellow is leaning over her counter to speak to her! I don’t care; no matter what happens, I am going to tell that man to act different from that!” “Upon my word! be good enough to stay here. You don’t like to see him talking with the flower girl; very good, let me fix him; I haven’t been nicknamed Patatras for nothing!” IV TWO WELL-KNOWN YOUNG MEN Two young men had, in fact, stopped in front of the pretty flower girl’s booth; each of them was from twenty-six to twenty-eight years of age; their eccentric costumes marked them out as dandies, or at least as persons who strove to appear to be such.