did not yet look
beyond the walls of these rooms. Pamela, whose wits were as sharp as
those of a _lorette_, went straight to Madame Schontz to beg the loan of
some plate, telling her what had happened to Lousteau. After making
the child welcome to all she had, Madame Schontz went off to her friend
Malaga, that Cardot might be warned of the catastrophe that had befallen
his future son-in-law.

The journalist, not in the least uneasy about the crisis as affecting
his marriage, was more and more charming to the lady from the provinces.
The dinner was the occasion of the delightful child's-play of lovers set
at liberty, and happy to be free. When they had had their coffee, and
Lousteau was sitting in front of the fire, Dinah on his knee, Pamela ran
in with a scared face.

"Here is Monsieur Bixiou!" said she.

"Go into the bedroom," said the journalist to his mistress; "I will soon
get rid of him. He is one of my most intimate friends, and I shall have
to explain to him my new start in life."

"Oh, ho! dinner for two, and a blue velvet bonnet!" cried Bixiou. "I
am off.--Ah! that is what comes of marrying--one must go through some
partings. How rich one feels when one begins to move one's sticks, heh?"

"Who talks of marrying?" said Lousteau.

"What! are you not going to be married, then?" cried Bixiou.

"No!"

"No? My word, what next? Are you making a fool of yourself, if you
please?--What!--You, who, by the mercy of Heaven, have come across
twenty thousand francs a year, and a house, and a wife connected with
all the first families of the better middle class--a wife, in short, out
of the Rue des Lombards--"

"That will do, Bixiou, enough; it is at an end. Be off!"

"Be off? I have a friend's privileges, and I shall take every advantage
of them.--What has come over you?"

"What has 'come over' me is my lady from Sancerre. She is a mother, and
we are going to live together happily to the end of our days.--You would
have heard it to-morrow, so you may as well be told it now."

"Many chimney-pots are falling on my head, as Arnal says. But if this
woman really loves you, my dear fellow, she will go back to the place
she came from. Did any provincial woman ever yet find her sea-legs
in Paris? She will wound all your vanities. Have you forgotten what a
provincial is? She will bore you as much when she is happy as when she
is sad; she will have as great a talent for escaping grace as a Parisian
has in inventing it.