“Everyone knows Fifi,” said Gueulin, quietly.
Meanwhile, Bachelard was looking out for a cab, when Octave exclaimed:
“And Monsieur Josserand, who is waiting at the café?”
The others had forgotten him entirely. Monsieur Josserand, very annoyed at wasting his evening, was impatiently waiting at the entrance, for he never took anything but of doors. At length they started for the Rue de la Cerisaie. But they had to take two cabs; the commission agent and the cashier in the one, and the three young men in the other.
Gueulin, his voice drowned by the jingling noise of the old vehicle, at first talked of the insurance company where he was employed. Insurance companies and stockbrokers were equally unpleasant, affirmed Trublot. Then the conversation turned to Duveyrier. Was it not unfortunate that a rich man, a magistrate, should let himself be fooled by women in that way? He always wanted them in out-of-the-way neighborhoods, right at the end of the omnibus routes; modest little ladies in their own apartments, playing the parts of widows; unknown milliners, having shops and no customers; girls picked out of the gutter, clothed and shut up, as though in a convent, whom he would go to see regularly once a week, like a clerk trudging to his office.
Trublot, however, found excuses for him: to begin with, it was the fault of his constitution; then, it was impossible to put up with a confounded wife like his. On the very first night, so it was said, she could not bear him, affecting to be disgusted at his red blotches, so that she willingly allowed him to have mistresses, whose complacencies relieved her of him, though at times she accepted the abominable burden, with the resignation of a virtuous woman who makes a point of accomplishing all her duties.
“Then, she is virtuous, is she?” asked Octave, interested.
“Virtuous? Oh! yes, my dear fellow! Every good quality; pretty, serious, well brought up, learned, full of taste, chaste, and unbearable!”
A block of vehicles at the bottom of the Rue Montmartre stopped the cab. The young men, who had let down the windows, could hear Bachelard’s voice, furiously abusing the coachman. Then, when the cab moved on again, Gueulin gave some information about Clarisse. Her name was Clarisse Bocquet, and she was the daughter of a former toy merchant in a small way, who now attended all the fairs with his wife and quite a troop of dirty children. Duveyrier had come across her one night when it was thawing, just as her lover had chucked her out. No doubt, this strapping wench answered to an ideal long sought after; for as early as the morrow he was hooked; he wept as he kissed her eyelids, all shaken by his need to cultivate the little blue flower of romance in his huge masculine appetites. Clarisse had consented to live in the Rue de la Cerisaie, so as not to expose him; but she led him a fine dance—had made him buy her twenty-five thousand francs’ worth of furniture, and was devouring him heartily, in company with some actors of the Montmartre Theater.