"True,édé you are right, Rochebrune; that is why your thoughts are so sad to-night, isn't it? The handsome Mondival distanced you; he had the pole to-night. Ha! ha! what a way to talk about love! What will you think of me? that I am a very _mauvais sujet_, eh?"
"We should be too fortunate if that were so!"
"Ach, ja! as mein frent Rochebrune say--if id vas so---- _Sapremann_, id is running again!"
"Pray take another pipe, baron; there are enough to choose from."
A thought that had come to my mind several times during supper still absorbed me. I do not know whether Frédérique could read it in my eyes, but, after looking at me a moment, she said:
"What are you thinking about? Come, tell me! It has come to your lips several times, and you keep it back. Is it something very unkind, pray, that you are afraid to say it?"
"No; it's a very natural reflection, but one that I have no right to make, perhaps."
"But you seem to have taken the liberty to make it. I don't like the things one keeps back; they are more dangerous."
"Your gut healt', montame, and te bleazure id gif me to schmoke tis bibe in your company."
While she honored Brunzbrack's toast, Frédérique kept her eyes on me, and they peremptorily bade me to speak.
"Why do you continue to call me _madame_? I call you Rochebrune."
"But, if not that, what may I presume to call you?"
"I have told you to look upon me as your friend, your comrade. If I were a man, you would call me Frédérique, as I call you Rochebrune; so, call me Frédérique."
"Because you don't seem to me in the least like a man."
She smiled queerly, passed her hand over her head, took off her little cap and tossed it on the floor, ran her fingers through her curls, rumpled up the _bandeau_, and made curls of that, saying, as she thus rearranged her coiffure:
"Does Monsieur Charles Rochebrune refuse to tell me what he has had on the tip of his tongue several times?"
"I beg your pardon, madame--I was thinking--I was surprised--not to find--another person here."
Frédérique curled her lip and frowned slightly.
"Do you refer to Monsieur Saint-Bergame?" she said.
"It is true that--three days ago--I should not have taken supper without him. But we have quarrelled."
"Perhaps so. When one has been able to pass two days without trying to see a certain person, one can pass a week; when one has passed a week, there is no reason why one should not pass a month, and so on. He did something that--displeased me, and I told him so. Instead of apologizing, he thought it became him to make a scene, and he made a miserable failure of it. He should have come the next day--that same night, indeed--to beg my pardon; he didn't do it, and now I think it would be too late. Look you, my friend--I want to call you my friend, and you give me leave, do you not, monsieur?--I believe that I can do without Saint-Bergame much better than I thought."
