Volume II Part 94 (1/2)
”This little girl would be still more dangerous than we thought,” said she to herself. ”If I had taken pity on her, what she has just said would render the accident inevitable which will rid us of her.”
”My good little Goualeuse, since you have such a good acquaintance, I beg you will recommend my Louise and my Germain to him, for they do not deserve their fate,” said Rigolette, thinking that her friends might gain by having two defenders instead of one.
”Be tranquil; I promise you to do what I can for your _proteges_ with M. Rudolph,” said Fleur-de-Marie.
”M. Rudolph!” cried Rigolette, strangely surprised.
”Certainly,” said La Goauleuse.
”M. Rudolph, a traveling clerk?”
”I do not know what he is. But why this astonishment?”
”Because I know a M. Rudolph also.”
”Perhaps it is not the same.”
”Let us see; what does he look like?”
”Young?”
”Exactly!”
”A face full of n.o.bleness and goodness?”
”That's it; just like mine!” said Rigolette, more and more surprised; and she added, ”Is he dark? Has he small mustaches?”
”Yes.”
”Is he tall and slender, fine figure, and an air too stylish for a traveling clerk? Does yours look just so?”
”Without a doubt it is he,” answered Fleur-de-Marie; ”only, what is strange is, that you think him a traveling clerk.”
”As to that, I am sure of it; he told me so.”
”You know him?”
”I know him. He is my neighbor!”
”M. Rudolph?”
”He has a chamber on the fourth floor, alongside of mine.”
”He! he!”
”What is so astonis.h.i.+ng in all this? It is very simple: he only earns fifteen or eighteen hundred francs a year; he can only hire a modest room, although he has very little regularity about him, for he does not know what his clothes cost him, my dear.”
”No, no; it is not the same,” said Fleur-de-Marie, reflecting.
”Yours, then, is a phoenix for order?”
”He of whom I speak, Rigolette,” said Fleur-de-Marie, with enthusiasm, ”is all-powerful; his name is only p.r.o.nounced with love and veneration, his appearance is imposing, and one is almost tempted to kneel before his grandeur and his goodness.”