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Thank you, my friend," said Colleville. "We'll see about it." "Good!" said Phellion to his son, as they walked on. "Not a bad stroke!" said the mother. "What do you mean by that?" asked Felix. "You are very cleverly paying court to Celeste's parents." "May I never find the solution of my problem if I even thought of it!" cried the young professor.
Thanks to the perfectly proper and becoming advances of the beautiful woman, whom her rival, Madame Colleville, called the Celimene of the rue Duphot, he had dined there every Friday for the last month, and returned of his own accord for a cup of tea on Wednesdays.
The following Sunday he felt certain he should find Madame Colleville at church; he was not mistaken, for they came out, each of them, at the same moment, and met at the corner of the rue des Deux-Eglises. Theodose offered his arm, which Flavie accepted, leaving her daughter to walk in front with her brother Anatole.
Colleville, a musician in the evening, kept the books of a merchant from seven to nine in the morning, and by ten o'clock he was at his ministry. Thus, by blowing into a bit of wood by night, and writing double-entry accounts in the early morning, he managed to eke out his earnings to seven or eight thousand francs a year.
It is a fortune that I have paid you, twenty-five thousand francs, and you must have earned ten thousand more in your business; it is enough to make you an honest man. Cerizet, if you will leave me in peace, if you won't prevent my marriage with Mademoiselle Colleville, I shall certainly be king's attorney-general, or something of that kind in Paris.
"I have made his anagram," replied Colleville, "and his name, Charles-Marie-Theodose de la Peyrade, prophecies: 'Eh! monsieur payera, de la dot, des oies et le char. Therefore, my dear Mamma Minard, be sure you don't give him your daughter." "They say that young man is better-looking than my son," said Madame Phellion to Madame Colleville. "What do you think about it?"
Thuillier had entered the ministry of finance as supernumerary at the same time as Colleville, who has been mentioned already as his intimate friend.
"Josephine," she cried, "go at once to Madame Colleville, and ask her to come over and speak to me." Fifteen minutes later Flavie entered the salon, where Brigitte was walking up and down, in a state of extreme agitation. "My dear," she cried on seeing Flavie, "you can do me a great service, which concerns our dear Celeste.
About half-past one o'clock la Peyrade, Thuillier, Colleville, Madame Thuillier, and Celeste were assembled in the salon. Flavie joined them soon after, fastening her bracelets as she came along to avoid a rebuff, and having the satisfaction of knowing that she was ready before Brigitte. As for the latter, already furious at finding herself late, she had another cause for exasperation.
As for Colleville, who could not, he declared, stay away all the morning from his official duties, she compelled him to put on his dress-suit before he went out, made him set his watch by hers, and warned him that if he was late no one would wait for him. The amusing part of it was that Brigitte herself, after driving every one at the point of the bayonet, came very near being late herself.
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