is
as sober as the camel that he is, and Madame Latournelle too. They are
brutal enough, both of them, to scold me; and they'd have the rights of
it too--there are those deeds I ought to be drawing!--" Then, suddenly
returning to his previous ideas, after the fashion of a drunken man, he
exclaimed, "and I've such a memory; it is on a par with my gratitude."

"Butscha!" cried the poet, "you said just now you had no gratitude; you
contradict yourself."

"Not at all," he replied. "To forget a thing means almost always
recollecting it. Come, come, do you want me to get rid of the duke? I'm
cut out for a secretary."

"How could you manage it?" said Canalis, delighted to find the
conversation taking this turn of its own accord.

"That's none of your business," said the dwarf, with a portentous
hiccough.

Butscha's head rolled between his shoulders, and his eyes turned from
Germain to La Briere, and from La Briere to Canalis, after the manner of
men who, knowing they are tipsy, wish to see what other men are thinking
of them; for in the shipwreck of drunkenness it is noticeable that
self-love is the last thing that goes to the bottom.

"Ha! my great poet, you're a pretty good trickster yourself; but you
are not deep enough. What do you mean by taking me for one of your own
readers,--you who sent your friend to Paris, full gallop, to inquire
into the property of the Mignon family? Ha, ha! I hoax, thou hoaxest, we
hoax--Good! But do me the honor to believe that I'm deep enough to keep
the secrets of my own business. As the head-clerk of a notary, my heart
is a locked box, padlocked! My mouth never opens to let out anything
about a client. I know all, and I know nothing. Besides, my passion is
well known. I love Modeste; she is my pupil, and she must make a good
marriage. I'll fool the duke, if need be; and you shall marry--"

"Germain, coffee and liqueurs," said Canalis.

"Liqueurs!" repeated Butscha with a wave of his hand, and the air of a
sham virgin repelling seduction; "Ah, those poor deeds! one of 'em was a
marriage contract; and that second clerk of mine is as stupid as--as--an
epithalamium, and he's capable of digging his penknife right through the
bride's paraphernalia; he thinks he's a handsome man because he's five
feet six,--idiot!"

"Here is some creme de the, a liqueur of the West Indies," said Canalis.
"You, whom Mademoiselle Modeste consults--"

"Yes, she consults me."

"Well, do you think she loves