“This evening you had a good opportunity! Why didn’t you do like the others, each of whom went off with a woman?”
“Well, and what about yourself?” said Frederick, provoked by his persistency.
“Oh! myself—that’s quite a different matter, my lad! I go home to my own one!”
Then he called a cab, and disappeared.
The two friends walked towards their own destination. An east wind was blowing. They did not exchange a word. Deslauriers was regretting that he had not succeeded in making a shine before a certain newspaper-manager, and Frederick was lost once more in his melancholy broodings. At length, breaking silence, he said that this public-house ball appeared to him a stupid affair.
“Whose fault is it? If you had not left us, to join that Arnoux of yours——”
“Bah! anything I could have don
