Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/168

“The matter is,” said Rodolphe, “that, thanks to your dragging me here in spite of myself, I have missed an appointment.”

“An important one?”

“I should think so; money that I was to call for at five o’clock at ——— Batignolles. I shall never be able to get there. Hang it; what am I to do?”

“Why,” said the phanlansterian, “nothing is simpler; come home with me, and I will lend you some.”

“Impossible; you live at Montrouge, and I have business at six o’clock at the Chaussée d’Antin. Confound it.”

“I have a trifle about me,” said Providence, timidly, “but it is very little.”

“If I had enough to take a cab I might get to Batignolles in time.”

“Here is the contents of my purse, my dear fellow, thirty-one sous.”

“Give it me at once, that I may bolt,” said Rodolphe, who had just heard five o’clock strike, and who hastened off to keep his appointment.

“It has been hard to get,” said he, counting out his money. “A hundred sous exactly. At last I am supplied, and Laure will see that she has to do with a man who knows how to do things properly. I won’t take a centime home this evening. We must rehabilitate literature, and prove that its votaries only need money to be wealthy.”

Rodolphe found Mademoiselle Laure at the trysting-place.

“Good,” said he, “for punctuality she is a feminine chronometer.”

He spent the evening with her, and bravely melted down his five francs in the crucible of prodigality. Mademoiselle Laure was charmed with his manners, and was good enough only to notice that Rodolphe had not escorted