“But there’s nothing the matter with your eyes, monsieur!” cried Madame Glumeau impatiently; “you apparently propose to make yourself blind now! Why don’t you take the elixir of long life, and have done with it?” “That wouldn’t be such a bad idea, madame!” “Oh, yes! do as your friend Boutelet did. Do you remember what happened to him, because he drank heaven knows how many bottles of the elixir of long life in six months? He died of it!” “Perhaps he would have died six months earlier if he hadn’t drunk it!” “After three o’clock and Astianax has not come home,” said tall Eolinde; “it isn’t very kind of my brother, for he was to bring us a collection of plays to choose from!” “Wasn’t it his neighbor, Monsieur Jéricourt, that young author who lives on the fourth floor, who was to lend your brother the plays?” “Yes, mamma.” “He has a very attractive look, has that young man, we must invite him to come to our play in the country; eh, Edouard?” “I have no objection; isn’t he a newspaper man too?” “I don’t think so.” “I’m sorry for that; we must try to have a few newspaper men; they go everywhere in society, they write articles about everything they see, and perhaps they would speak of me in the paper, and I should see myself in print; that would be very nice!--Whom have we to dinner to-day?” “Why, you must know as well as I do, my dear.” “Ah! _bigre!_ I really believe that I have a pain in my stomach.” “Oh dear! that would be the last straw.” “No, it’s nothing, it’s going away; I was in a constrained position.” “We expect to dinner Monsieur and Madame Dufournelle; Madame Dufournelle wants to act; she will be terribly awkward on the stage, I fancy, but that’s her business!” “She is graceful and pretty, and I believe that she will make a success of it.” “Oh! that’s just like a man! to call that woman pretty, just because she is always laughing, and because she is a great flirt; indeed she carries it so far sometimes as to be almost indecent in her behavior with men!” “Upon my word, Lolotte! where did you see that?” “I have seen it more than once; and in our own house, in the country, with you, when she asked you to run after her and defied you to catch her! Monsieur ran like a deer, and then you both disappeared behind a hedge.--You had no pain in your stomach that day!” “Madame! really, you should not say such things; your daughter can hear you.” “My daughter will be married some day, monsieur, and there’s no harm in her being warned beforehand of the perfidy of the male sex. Besides, Madame Dufournelle’s coquetry is evident to everybody. Her husband sees nothing in all that! Poor fellow! so long as he has somebody to play billiards with him, he doesn’t care about anything else.” “He isn’t jealous, madame, and he is very wise; that proves that he has some intelligence.”