"But you've a dangerous competitor in the duke;
what will you give me to get him out of Havre within three days?"
"Finish this bottle," said the poet, refilling Butscha's glass.
"You'll make me drunk," said the dwarf, tossing off his ninth glass of
champagne. "Have you a bed where I could sleep it off? My master is as
sober as the camel that he is, and Madame Latournelle too. They are
brutal enough, both of them, to scold me; and they'd have the rights
of it too--there are those deeds I ought to be drawing!--" Then,
suddenly returning to his previous ideas, after the fashion of a
drunken man, he exclaimed, "and I've such a memory; it is on a par
with my gratitude."
"Butscha!" cried the poet, "you said just now you had no gratitude;
you contradict yourself."
"Not at all," he replied. "To forget a thing means almost always
recollecting it. Come, come, do you want me to get rid of the duke?
I'm cut out for a secretary."
"How could you manage it?" said Canalis, delighted to find the
conversation taking this turn of its own accord.
"That's none of your business," said the dwarf, with a portentous
hiccough.
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