CHAPTER XX.
“Wait Till You Come to Forty Year.”
About the beginning of this winter,[323] Frederick and Deslauriers were chatting by the fireside, once more reconciled by the fatality of their nature, which made them always reunite and be friends again.
Frederick briefly explained his quarrel with Madame Dambreuse, who had married again, her second husband being an Englishman.
Deslauriers, without telling how he had come to marry Mademoiselle Roque, related to his friend how his wife had one day eloped with a singer. In order to wipe away to some extent the ridicule that this brought upon him, he had compromised himself by an excess of governmental zeal in the exercise of his functions as prefect. He had been dismissed. After that, he had been an agent for colonisation in Algeria, secre
