"As soon as you are cured, I hope to dine with you; will you do me the honor to accept an invitation?" "Why not? I have never refused an opportunity to enjoy myself, and I don't propose to do so now." "I will take you to dinner with a fascinating woman, an actress on the boulevard. That will not offend you?" "Offend me? far from it! in the old days, I would have invited you to dine with four." "Bravo! bravissimo! I see that we are made to get along together; you are very jovial." "I am much more so when I am not ill." "Wait--just wait three minutes, if you please; I am going to make an experiment with Coco." Saint-Arthur hastily left Roncherolle and went to his room where he was heard to close several doors. After a few moments he returned and asked: "Well, did you hear?" "What?" "Did you hear my bird talking?" "Not a sound!" "Ah! victory! I took him into the little dressing room, beyond the two rooms, and there he will stay. I made him talk a great deal, in fact." "Did he say: 'Dutaillis is lovely?'" "No, he said: 'Good-day, Monsieur Brillant!' but I will teach him, I will persist, and so long as it doesn't inconvenience you----" "I can't hear it at all now." "Then it will go all by itself. Au revoir, my dear neighbor; overjoyed to make your acquaintance. You will allow me to come and inquire for your health?" "Whenever you please." "I shall please often. Au revoir then; at your service; don't move." "Oh! there's no danger of that!" "To be sure; I keep forgetting your gout; what a thoughtless creature I am!--Your servant." Saint-Arthur bowed to the ground this time, then left the house, saying to Beauvinet, whom he passed on the way: "I have seen the gentleman who rooms beside me, and he is a delightful man, a man of the greatest merit, a man whom I expect to see a great deal of; and _sapristi!_ no one had better speak ill of him in my presence; whoever does so will have me to reckon with!" The young man of the house was thunderstruck at these words, and in his effort to recover his wits, he pulled his wig over his left ear. XXIX A HIGH FLYER Thus Saint-Arthur became, as to Monsieur de Roncherolle, a zealous, courteous, obliging, and above all, a very neighborly neighbor. The little dandy, seeing the gouty gentleman frequently, was astonished to find him possessed of much intelligence and joviality, with a piquant, original way of telling a story, and a memory abundantly supplied with comical, entertaining and sometimes rather risque anecdotes; but in Saint-Arthur's eyes this last quality doubled their merit; he tried to remember some of the tales that Roncherolle had told him, and went off to repeat them to his mistress, who was greatly amused and said to him: "My word! why, you know any number of funny stories now! it's amazing, my dear; do you know that you are really getting to be amusing; can it be that you have some wit of your own? Oh! how well you have concealed your capacity!"