“Oh, come!—­I see it’s serious.  My dear fellow, I am so sorry I did not tell you she was perfection.  If I had only known!”

“That’s not what I asked you.  Where have you seen her?”

“In society, of course.  Where do you expect me to see young girls except in society?  My dear Fabien!”

He went off laughing.  When he was about ten yards off he turned, and making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, he shouted through them: 

“She’s perfection!”

Larive is decidedly an ass.  His jokes strike you as funny at first; but there’s nothing in him, he’s a mere hawker of stale puns; there’s nothing but selfishness under his jesting exterior.  I have no belief in him.  Yet he is an old school friend; the only one of my twenty-eight classmates whose acquaintance I have kept up.  Four are dead, twenty-three others are scattered about in obscure country places; lost for want of news, as they say at the private inquiry offices.  Larive makes up the twenty-eight.  I used to admire him, when we were low in the school, because of his long trousers, his lofty contempt of discipline, and his precocious intimacy with tobacco.  I preferred him to the good, well-behaved boys.  Whenever we had leave out I used to buy gum-arabic at the druggist’s in La Chatre, and break it up with a small hammer at the far end of my room, away from prying eyes.  I used there to distribute it into three bags ticketed respectively:  “large pieces,” “middle-sized pieces,” “small pieces.”  When I returned to school with the three bags in my pocket, I would draw out one or the other to offer them to my friends, according to the importance of the occasion, or the degrees of friendship.  Larive always had the big bits, and plenty of them.  Yet he was none the more grateful to me, and even did not mind chaffing me about these petty attentions by which he was the gainer.  He used to make fun of everything, and I used to look up to him.  He still makes fun of everything; but for me the age of gumarabic is past and my faith in Larive is gone.

If he believes that he will disparage this charming girl in my eyes by telling me that she is a bad dancer, he is wrong.  Of great importance it is to have a wife who dances well!  She does not dance in her own house, nor with her husband from the wardrobe to the cradle, but at others’ houses, and with other men.  Besides, a young girl who dances much has a lot of nonsense talked to her.  She may acquire a taste for Larive’s buffooneries, for a neat leg, or a sharp tongue.  In that case what welcome can she give to simple, timid affection?  She will only laugh at it.  But you would not laugh, Jeanne, were I to tell you that I loved you.  No, I am quite convinced that you would not laugh.  And if you loved me, Jeanne, we should not go into society.  That would just suit me.  I should protect you, yet not hide you.  We should have felicity at home instead of running after it to balls and crushes, where it is never to be found.  You could not help being aware of the fascination you exert; but you would not squander it on a mob of dancers, and bring home only the last remnants of your good spirits, with the last remnants of your train.  Jeanne, I am delighted to hear that you dance badly.