"It isn't your fault, my boy; nature has decreed that a new love is always fatal to the old ones."
"But one's love for one's mother, monsieur! that ought not to grow any less in our hearts; but it is less unreasonable than the other. Ah! if you knew Violette, monsieur, you would understand that I cannot cease to love her. She is so pretty! She has her stand on the boulevard, near the Château d'Eau; would you like me to tell her to bring you a bouquet? She would ask nothing better, monsieur."
"No, it isn't necessary; I have no need of bouquets, and I take your word for all that you say of this girl."
"Then, monsieur, with your permission, I will go right away and tell my mother what you are kind enough to offer her."
"Go, Georget, and come back and tell me her answer."
"Happy age," said Monsieur Malberg to himself as he watched the young messenger walk away; "happy age, when one does not doubt constancy in love, when one believes in the sincerity of friendship! I, too, believed in those things, but I was most cruelly undeceived! He sacrifices everything to his love for a woman! Poor boy! he will be deceived like the others; but he begins that trade too early!"
And Monsieur Malberg, whose brow had darkened, relapsed into profound meditation.
Meanwhile, his servant Pongo had a sharp altercation with the cat which he had named Carabi, and which, in payment for the hospitality that had been bestowed upon him, had savagely clawed his benefactor.
"Ah! you naughty, Carabi," said the mulatto, holding the cat by his two forepaws; "you hurt me, when me pick you up in the street; and you not handsome either; but thin, ugly, little short hair; you a gutter cat, you hear? You no angora, you gutter cat! and me take care of you, comb you and rub you, make nice porridge for you, so's to make you pretty and fat; and you claw me on the nose when me try to talk with you, like two friends. You take care, Carabi! if me take Mamzelle Zima to beat you, Mamzelle Zima, she mind me right off, and she strike hard, Mamzelle Zima; will you be good boy now?"
The cat's only reply was to howl in a piteous fashion; and he was beginning to vary his cries with snarls which boded no good to Pongo, when Georget returned and interrupted the conversation.