as chewing a toothpick and talking with du
Tillet on Tortoni's portico, where speculation held a little Bourse, a
sort of prelude to the great one. He seemed to be engaged in business,
but he was really awaiting the Comte de la Palferine, who, within a
given time, was certain to pass that way. The boulevard des Italiens is
to-day what the Pont Neuf was in 1650; all persons known to fame pass
along it once, at least, in the course of the day. Accordingly, at the
end of about ten minutes, Maxime dropped du Tillet's arm, and nodding to
the young Prince of Bohemia said, smiling:--

"One word with you, count."

The two rivals in their own principality, the one orb on its decline,
the other like the rising sun, sat down upon four chairs before the Cafe
de Paris. Maxime took care to place a certain distance between himself
and some old fellows who habitually sunned themselves like wall-fruit
at that hour in the afternoon, to dry out their rheumatic affections. He
had excellent reasons for distrusting old men.

"Have you debts?" said Maxime, to the young count.

"If I had none, should I be worthy of being your successor?" replied La
Palferine.

"In putting that question to you I don't place the matter in doubt; I
only want to know if the total is reasonable; if it goes to the five or
the six?"

"Six what?"

"Figures; whether you owe fifty or one hundred thousand? I have owed,
myself, as much as six hundred thousand."

La Palferine raised his hat with an air as respectful as it was
humorous.

"If I had sufficient credit to borrow a hundred thousand francs,"
he replied, "I should forget my creditors and go and pass my life in
Venice, amid masterpieces of painting and pretty women and--"

"And at my age what would you be?" asked Maxime.

"I should never reach it," replied the young count.

Maxime returned the civility of his rival, and touched his hat lightly
with an air of laughable gravity.

"That's one way of looking at life," he replied in the tone of one
connoisseur to another. "You owe--?"

"Oh! a mere trifle, unworthy of being confessed to an uncle; he would
disinherit me for such a paltry sum,--six thousand."

"One is often more hampered by six thousand than by a hundred thousand,"
said Maxime, sententiously. "La Palferine, you've a bold spirit, and you
have even more spirit than boldness; you can go far, and make yourself
a position. Let me tell you that of all those who have rushed into the
career at