The delightful youth puffed out his cheeks, then expelled the pent-up wind by a sudden slap, as a mark of his disgust at the meanness of the offer.
“Pull up your braces, my lord,” said he sarcastically, “or you’ll be losing the contents of your breeches pockets. Ten sous, indeed! Perhaps you’d like me to lend ‘em to yer?”
“Did you think, my little man, that I was going to offer you twenty thousand shiners?” asked he.
“Won again!” cried Toto; “I laid myself a new hat that you weren’t a fool, and I have collared the stakes.”
“Because a fool would have begun by offering me five francs and gone up slick to ten, while you began at a modest figure.”
“But you were too old a bird to be caught like that,” continued the lad; and as he spoke, he stopped, and contracted his brow as if in deep perplexity. Of course he was acquainted with the names, but ought he to give them? Instantly he scented an enemy. Harmless people did not usually ask questions of itinerant chestnut venders, and to open his mouth might be to injure Mascarin, Beaumarchef, or the guileless Tantaine.
“Keep your ten sous, my pippin,” said the boy; “I’ll tell you what you want to know all gratis and for nothing, because I’ve taken a real fancy to the cut of your mug. The tall chap was Mascarin, the fat un Doctor Hortebise, and t’other--stop, let me think it out in my knowledge box; ah! I have it, he was Verminet.”
Andre was so delighted that, drawing from his pocket a five-franc piece, he tossed it to the boy.
“Thanks, my noble lord,” said Chupin, and was about to add something more in a similar vein, when he glanced down the street. His look changed in an instant, and he fixed his eyes upon the painter’s face with a very strange expression.
“What is the matter, my lad?” asked Andre, surprised at this sudden change.
“Nothing,” answered Chupin; “nothing at all; only as you seem a decentish sort of chap, I should recommend you to keep your wits about you, and to look out for squalls.”
“I mean--why--be careful, of course. Hang me if I exactly know what I do mean. It is just an idea that came to me all of a jump. But there, be off; I ain’t going to say another word.”
With much difficulty Andre repressed his astonishment. He saw that this young scamp was the possessor of many secrets which might be of inestimable value to him; but he also saw that he was determined to hold his tongue, and that it would at present be a waste of time to try and get anything out of him; and an empty cab passing at this moment, Andre hailed it, and told the coachman to drive fast to the Champs Elysees. In obedience to the warning that he had just received from Toto, he did not give the name of the _café_ where he was to meet De Breulh, for he made up his mind to be careful, yes, extremely careful. He recollected the two odd whistles which had seemed to make Mascarin wince, and which certainly broke off the conference of the three men, and he remembered that it was after a glance down the street that Toto had become less communicative and had given him that curt warning. “By heaven,” said he, as the recollection of a story he had read not long ago dawned on him, “I am being followed.” He lowered the front glass of the cab, and attracted the coachman’s attention by pulling him by the sleeve.