Volume Ii Part 18 (1/2)
”Their dresses are in wretched taste!”
”The materials are the very cheapest!”
”They look so to me.”
”Regular lorettes, aren't they, Monsieur Luminot?”
”Dear me! mesdames, allow me first to ask you what you mean by lorettes?”
”Oh! the little innocent! who doesn't know the ladies who live in the Breda quarter in Paris!”
”I a.s.sure you that I don't know that quarter! When I lived in Paris, I never went out of Bercy.”
”Hush, you wicked monster!”
Madame Jarnouillard interrupted this dialogue.
”Come, mesdames, and look over the furniture and other things to be sold,” she said; ”sometimes one finds just the utensils one needs. Look at what is on exhibition.”
”Mon Dieu! madame, what do you expect us to buy in all that wretched trash?” cried Madame Droguet, with a disdainful glance at the farmer's furniture. ”I see nothing but rubbish--dirty stuff! and I have no doubt it's all full of bugs!”
”That is what I was thinking!” muttered Madame Remplume, while her husband spat at random.
”But there's a pair of candlesticks that might do to use in the kitchen, eh, Droguet?--Bah! he doesn't hear me; he's whistling a polka.”
”Your husband is a zephyr!”
”He's a wind, but not a zephyr!”
”Ah! that's very good; I'll remember that.--Did you hear that, Remplume?”
_”Ahtchi! crraho! furssscht!”_
”That isn't a wind!” muttered Luminot; ”it's a continuous fusillade.”
”There are some very decent kettles.”
”Oh! oh! I wouldn't want to boil artichokes in them!”
”And that bellows?”
”It's a huge thing--like the bellows of a forge; but it's the only thing here that one could use.”
”Jarnouillard is signalling that the sale is about to begin. Let us go nearer, mesdames.”
”Ah! look; the occupants of the Courtivaux house are approaching also.”
”Probably they mean to buy something.”
”Yes, yes; they intend to furnish their house with the peasant's furniture; it will be good enough for them!”