How can one ever reach the point of seriously quarrelling when one knows the other so well, when they have lived together like two twins at the breast of the lean and strong nurse, Poverty, sharing her sour milk and her rough caresses!  These thoughts passed through Hemerlingue’s mind like a flash of lightning.  Almost instinctively he let his heavy hand fall into the one which the Nabob was holding out to him.  Something of the primitive animal was roused in them, something stronger than their enmity, and these two men, each of whom for ten years had been trying to bring the other to ruin and disgrace, fell to talking without any reserve.

Generally, between friends newly met, after the first effusions are over, a silence comes as if they had no more to tell each other, while it is in reality the abundance of things, their precipitate rush, that prevents them from finding utterance.  The two chums had touched that condition; but Jansoulet kept a tight grasp on the banker’s arm, fearing to see him escape and resist the kindly impulse he had just roused.

“You are not in a hurry, are you?  We can take a little walk, if you like.  It has stopped raining, the air is pleasant; one feels twenty years younger.”

“Yes, it is pleasant,” said Hemerlingue; “only I cannot walk for long; my legs are heavy.”

“True, your poor legs.  See, there is a bench over there.  Let us go and sit down.  Lean on me, old friend.”

And the Nabob, with brotherly aid, led him to one of those benches dotted here and there among the tombs, on which those inconsolable mourners rest who make the cemetery their usual walk and abode.  He settled him in his seat, gazed upon him tenderly, pitied him for his infirmity, and, following what was quite a natural channel in such a spot, they came to talking of their health, of the old age that was approaching.  This one was dropsical, the other subject to apoplectic fits.  Both were in the habit of dosing themselves with the Jenkins pearls, a dangerous remedy—­witness Mora, so quickly carried off.

“My poor duke!” said Jansoulet.

“A great loss to the country,” remarked the banker with an air of conviction.

And the Nabob added naively: 

“For me above all, for me; for, if he had lived—­Ah! what luck you have, what luck you have!”

Fearing to have wounded him, he went on quickly: 

“And then, too, you are clever, so very clever.”

The baron looked at him with a wink so droll, that his little black eyelashes disappeared amid his yellow fat.

“No,” said he, “it is not I who am clever.  It is Marie.”

“Marie?”

“Yes, the baroness.  Since her baptism she has given up her name of Yamina for that of Marie.  She is a real sort of woman.  She knows more than I do myself about banking and Paris and business.  It is she who manages everything at home.”

“You are very fortunate,” sighed Jansoulet.  His air of gloom told a long story of qualities missing in Mlle. Afchin.  Then, after a silence, the baron resumed: