"Oh, yes! I know well enough that it isn't the light-haired one who is dangerous to Violette; it's the other one!"
"And why should the other one be dangerous, when everyone says that the little flower girl is virtuous? You yourself told me so a hundred times."
"Certainly she is virtuous, perfectly virtuous. If she wasn't, if she was anything else, do you suppose I'd be mad over her as I am?"
"Then what difference does it make to you whether people pay her compliments and make love to her? She won't listen to them."
"Who can tell? A young girl sometimes ends by allowing herself to be deceived by all these soft speeches. They offer her dresses, jewels, entertainments, love--it's all very tempting. Look, see how that tall, scented fellow is leaning over her counter to speak to her! I don't care; no matter what happens, I am going to tell that man to act different from that!"
"Upon my word! be good enough to stay here. You don't like to see him talking with the flower girl; very good, let me fix him; I haven't been nicknamed Patatras for nothing!"
Two young men had, in fact, stopped in front of the pretty flower girl's booth; each of them was from twenty-six to twenty-eight years of age; their eccentric costumes marked them out as dandies, or at least as persons who strove to appear to be such.
Especially the shorter one, who wore plaid trousers of very bright colors, each plaid being so large that a single one extended from the thigh to the calf; his light sack coat hardly came below his waist, and when he bent forward a little, disclosed the whole seat of his trousers. He wore on his head a broad-brimmed gray hat with a long nap; and he had stuck in one eye a small bit of glass, set in tortoise shell, which, when not in use, hung down over his waistcoat of buff piqué, at the end of a black ribbon. He was, for all this dandified equipment, a very good-looking youth, with black eyes, a shapely aquiline nose, a small mouth with red lips, fine teeth, a pretty pink and white complexion, a little dimple in his chin, very light whiskers, a pointed beard, and with all that, a stupid expression which was not in the least misleading.
This young man had been a clerk in a business house with a salary of eight hundred francs, and a slight bonus at the end of the year; at that time, as may be imagined, his dress was much less elegant, and it was difficult for him to follow the fashions. But a distant relative died, and unexpectedly left him sixty thousand francs in cash. This unhoped-for fortune, which enabled him to gratify his dearest wishes, his fondest hopes, had almost turned his brain.