"Are you required to have a moustache in your position, that you let yours grow?"

"It isn't absolutely required, but in all the best places moustaches are worn, and I felt that I owed that to myself. Your health, my bucks! To my pleasure at being in the bosom of my friends once more!"

Monsieur Laboussole's tone was becoming affectingly sentimental. They drank, and touched gla.s.ses; the bottles rapidly succeeded one another; their brains began to get heated, especially Sans-Cravate's, which took fire very easily. Ere long, Jean Ficelle called for a pack of cards.

"I'll play you a game of piquet, Laboussole," he cried; "piquet, the honest man's game--just for fun, to pa.s.s the time, and to see if you know how to play it."

"I play like an oyster," rejoined Laboussole; "but still I'll play whatever you say. Because I always a.s.sert that luck may come my way.

Let's have a drink!"

The waiter brought the cards. Jean Ficelle took them and sat down opposite Laboussole.

"Sans-Cravate don't play," he said; "he don't like cards."

"Why shouldn't I play, eh?" cried Sans-Cravate, with a violent blow on the table. "Piquet! why, that's my favorite game; I'm very strong at it."

"Well, you shall play after a while," replied Jean Ficelle, winking at his vis-a-vis. "Let me give the inspector of fleas a beating first."

The game began; the players announced that they were playing for two francs the game, but no money was put up. Laboussole lost three games in succession; whereupon Jean Ficelle rose, with a laugh, and said:

"You certainly ain't on your game, old man. I've got six francs to eat up; that's not bad, and I don't want you to ruin yourself treating us."

Sans-Cravate took Jean Ficelle's place, after asking Laboussole:

"Have you had enough?"

"I! nonsense! do I ever cry _baby_? I'm always on deck when a friend proposes a game. Besides, as I said just now, luck may come my way; she's a female, so she ought to change often. What are we playing for?"

"Whatever you say."

"A thirty-sou piece----"

"The devil! that's rather high!"

"We must make the game interesting."

"All right; thirty sous it is."

The game began; Jean Ficelle took his stand behind Sans-Cravate.

Monsieur Laboussole frequently looked up into the air, as if to invoke Fortune and implore her to smile upon him; but his eyes always met Jean Ficelle's, who signalled to him with his fingers.

Sans-Cravate lost the first game; and Monsieur Laboussole cried, with his most affable air:

"You see, my boys, luck may turn any time; that's what I rely on."

"My revenge!" cried Sans-Cravate.

"Always, my boy! always at your service; a well-bred card player never refuses a revenge, under penalty of being called a _carotteur_; and I've never been called that. But let's have some wine first and drink a b.u.mper! Cards make me horribly thirsty."

Jean Ficelle undertook to fill the gla.s.ses. Sans-Cravate lost the second game, and demanded another, which he also lost; but Laboussole did not cease to exclaim:

"You play much better than I do; I can't imagine how I succeed in beating you!"

Sans-Cravate continued to demand his revenge, which Laboussole was always eager to accord; while Jean Ficelle took care that the gla.s.ses should be filled as soon as they were empty. The wine and the game soon bewildered Sans-Cravate to the point that he hardly knew what he was doing; his adversary, on the other hand, retained his sang-froid, and combined with it all his social talents. It was not long before Sans-Cravate found that he had lost all the money he had with him; he had not enough left to pay for the wine they had drunk, a part of which was chargeable to him.

"I'll pay for you, and you may owe it to me," said Jean Ficelle. "I am not capable of leaving a friend in a hole."

Sans-Cravate was astounded to find himself without a sou, for he had thirty francs in the morning. He felt in all his pockets, and cried:

"How's this? I have lost all my money! I want to keep on playing and make myself good! I'll play on credit."

But Laboussole moved his chair away from the table and rose, saying:

"I'd like nothing better than to give you your revenge, my boy, but this is the time of day when I have to attend to my duties. I have three houses to inspect to-day; and if a sign of an insect should be found in one of them to-morrow, I should lose my job. A job worth three thousand francs a year, with lodging, candles, and perquisites, don't grow on every bush. So I am obliged to leave you, my bucks; but we will meet again soon; I'll look you up at your place of business on the street corner, and I'll give our worthy friend Sans-Cravate all the revenge he wants. Au revoir, my friends!"

Monsieur Laboussole shook hands with each of the messengers. When he took Jean Ficelle's hand, he left in it half of the money he had won from his comrade,--probably in accordance with a previous understanding,--then left the room, saying:

"The next time I see you, friends, I'll give you a prospectus of our enterprise, so that you can see if you wouldn't like to take some shares. You can buy three shares for seven francs ten sous. Dividends of twenty per cent are guaranteed, and you get in addition portraits of the inspectors, which you can have framed, if you choose."

When Laboussole had gone, Jean Ficelle paid the bill and took Sans-Cravate away. He made no resistance; he was dazed by the wine he had drunk, and in a savage humor because he had lost his money, and, more than all, because he had gambled; for he knew in his heart that he was not acting the part of an honest man, and that Jean Ficelle's company was a constant incitement to evil. When a man's conscience speaks to him in that way, when he listens to its reproaches, and, while trying to drown its voice, is none the less dissatisfied with himself, there is still room for hope that he will return to the path of respectability.

The messengers had been walking together for some time, at a somewhat uncertain pace. Jean Ficelle, who loved to talk grandiloquently, and who credited himself with the art of hoodwinking his hearers, was presenting his comrade with a comparison to prove that the gambler who has lost all his money is much nearer to winning than he whose pockets are full.

Sans-Cravate listened, without paying the slightest attention; his face was flushed, his expression alert and quarrelsome; he did not step aside for anyone, and he had more than once roughly jostled persons who pa.s.sed him, and had nearly thrown them down.

"Look out what you're doing," said Jean Ficelle; "you're running into everybody! You'll get yourself into trouble!"

"Why don't they get out of the way? So much the worse for them! and if anyone isn't satisfied, just let him say so."

Suddenly, as they were walking along the ca.n.a.l, Sans-Cravate spied a man talking earnestly with a woman on a street corner. To utter an exclamation, come to a halt, and grasp his companion's arm so hard that he made him cry out, was a matter of an instant with Sans-Cravate.

"What in G.o.d's name's the matter?" demanded Jean Ficelle, almost terrified.

"It's him--and her! Yes, there they are together. Look--over there, at the corner of that street!"

Jean Ficelle looked; he recognized Paul talking to Bastringuette, with great earnestness and with an air of mystery.

"_Pardi!_" he exclaimed; "the turtle-doves have evidently met here by appointment--a long way from our neighborhood, so as not to be seen. How this fits in--when you was just saying that you'd never seen Paul with your fly-away! You see 'em now."

"Yes--and I still doubted! Ah! the villain! but he's got to pay me for his treachery!"

"What are you going to do? Come, Sans-Cravate, no knock-down fight. Just give him a clip--he well deserves it--and then, off we go! for, although there ain't many people pa.s.sing, we must look out for loafers."

Sans-Cravate paid no heed to what his comrade said, but strode rapidly toward Paul; Bastringuette had left him, and he was walking away by the ca.n.a.l, when Sans-Cravate planted himself in front of him.

"You don't go any farther," he cried.

"Is it you, Sans-Cravate?" said Paul, looking up at him. "Great heaven!

what's the matter? You look like a madman!"