ance--a pretty little left-handed marriage--why she needn't look
any farther! I'm her man--Victor-Mederic Gautruche! a home body, a
genuine house-ivy for sentiment! She has only to apply at my former
hotel, _La Clef de Surete_. And gay as a hunchback who's just drowned
his wife! Gautruche, called Gogo-la-Gaiete, egad! A pretty fellow who
knows what's what, who doesn't beat about the bush, a good old body who
takes things easy and who won't give himself the colic with that fishes'
grog!" With that he took a bottle of water that stood beside him and
hurled it twenty yards away. "Long live the walls! They're the same to
papa that the sky is to the good God! Gogo-la-Gaiete paints them through
the week and beats them on Monday![2] And with all that not jealous, not
ugly, not a wife-beater, but a real love of a man, who never harmed one
of the fair sex in his life! If you want physique, _parbleu_! I'm your
man!"

He rose to his feet and, drawing up his wavering body, clad in an old
blue coat with gilt buttons, to its full height, removing his gray hat
so as to show his perspiring, polished, bald skull, and tossing his old
plucked _gamin's_ head, he continued: "You see what it is! It isn't a
very attractive piece of property; it doesn't help it to exhibit it. But
it yields well, it's a little dilapidated, but well put together. Dame!
Here I am with my little forty nine-years--no more hair than a billiard
ball, a witchgrass beard that would make good herb-tea, foundations not
too solid, feet as long as La Villette--and with all the rest thin
enough to take a bath in a musket-barrel. There's the bill of lading!
Pass the prospectus along! If any woman wants all that in a lump--any
respectable person--not too young--who won't amuse herself by painting
me too yellow--you understand, I don't ask for a Princess of
Batignolles--why, sure as you're born, I'm her man!"

Germinie seized Gautruche's glass, half emptied it at a draught and held
out the side from which she had drunk to him.

* * * * *

At nightfall the party returned on foot. When they reached the
fortifications, Gautruche drew a large heart with the point of his knife
on the stone, and all the names with the date were carved inside.

In the evening Gautruche and Germinie were upon the outer boulevards,
near Barriere Rochechouart. Beside a low house with these words, in a
plaster panel: _Madame Merlin_. _Dresses cut and tried on,