"He is avaricious.
I love the little fellow opposite me in my house.
He is very nice, that young man; do you know him?One can see that he is an actor by profession.
I love actors.As soon as he comes in, his mother says to him:
`Ah! mon Dieu! my peace of mind is gone.
There he goes with his shouting.
But, my dear, you are splitting my head!'
So he goes up to rat-ridden garrets, to black holes, as high as he can mount, and there he sets to singing, declaiming, how do I know what? so that he can be heard down stairs!He earns twenty sous a day at an attorney's by penning quibbles.He is the son of a former precentor of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. Ah! he is very nice.
He idolizes me so, that one day when he saw me making batter for some pancakes, he said to me:
`Mamselle, make your gloves into fritters, and I will eat them.'
It is only artists who can say such things as that.
Ah! he is very nice.I am in a fair way to go out of my head over that little fellow.Never mind; I tell Blachevelle that I adore him--how I lie!
Hey!
How I do lie!"
Favourite paused, and then went on:--
"I am sad, you see, Dahlia.
It has done nothing but rain all summer; the wind irritates me; the wind does not abate.
Blachevelle is very stingy; there are hardly any green peas in the market; one does not know what to eat.
I have the spleen, as the English say, butter is so dear! and then you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room with a bed in it, and that disgusts me with life."