“Germain,” said Canalis, as the valet was leaving the room, “serve champagne and claret.  A member of the legal fraternity of Havre must carry away with him proper ideas of a poet’s hospitality.  Besides, he has got a wit that is equal to Figaro’s,” added Canalis, laying his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder, “and we must make it foam and sparkle with champagne; you and I, Ernest, will not spare the bottle either.  Faith, it is over two years since I’ve been drunk,” he added, looking at La Briere.

“Not drunk with wine, you mean,” said Butscha, looking keenly at him, “yes, I can believe that.  You get drunk every day on yourself, you drink in so much praise.  Ha, you are handsome, you are a poet, you are famous in your lifetime, you have the gift of an eloquence that is equal to your genius, and you please all women,—­even my master’s wife.  Admired by the finest sultana-valide that I ever saw in my life (and I never saw but her) you can, if you choose, marry Mademoiselle de La Bastie.  Goodness! the mere inventory of your present advantages, not to speak of the future (a noble title, peerage, embassy!), is enough to make me drunk already,—­like the men who bottle other men’s wine.”

“All such social distinctions,” said Canalis, “are of little use without the one thing that gives them value,—­wealth.  Here we can talk as men with men; fine sentiments only do in verse.”

“That depends on circumstances,” said the dwarf, with a knowing gesture.

“Ah! you writer of conveyances,” said the poet, smiling at the interruption, “you know as well as I do that ‘cottage’ rhymes with ’pottage,’—­and who would like to live on that for the rest of his days?”

At table Butscha played the part of Trigaudin, in the “Maison en loterie,” in a way that alarmed Ernest, who did not know the waggery of a lawyer’s office, which is quite equal to that of an atelier.  Butscha poured forth the scandalous gossip of Havre, the private history of fortune and boudoirs, and the crimes committed code in hand, which are called in Normandy, “getting out of a thing as best you can.”  He spared no one; and his liveliness increased with the torrents of wine which poured down his throat like rain through a gutter.

“Do you know, La Briere,” said Canalis, filling Butscha’s glass, “that this fellow would make a capital secretary to the embassy?”

“And oust his chief!” cried the dwarf flinging a look at Canalis whose insolence was lost in the gurgling of carbonic acid gas.  “I’ve little enough gratitude and quite enough scheming to get astride of your shoulders.  Ha, ha, a poet carrying a hunchback! that’s been seen, often seen—­on book-shelves.  Come, don’t look at me as if I were swallowing swords.  My dear great genius, you’re a superior man; you know that gratitude is the word of fools; they stick it in the dictionary, but it isn’t in the human heart; pledges are worth nothing, except on a certain mount that is neither Pindus nor Parnassus.  You