"A pretty story!" cried Malaga. "My dear boy, go on, I beg of you.
This goes to one's heart."

"Nothing commonplace could happen between two fighting-cocks of that
calibre," added La Palferine.

"Pooh!" cried Malaga. "I will wager my cabinet-maker's invoice (the
fellow is dunning me) that the little toad was too many for Maxime."

"I bet on Maxime," said Cardot. "Nobody ever caught him napping."

Desroches drank off a glass that Malaga handed to him.

"Mlle. Chocardelle's reading-room," he continued, after a pause, "was
in the Rue Coquenard, just a step or two from the Rue Pigalle where
Maxime was living. The said Mlle. Chocardelle lived at the back on the
garden side of the house, beyond a big dark place where the books were
kept. Antonia left her aunt to look after the business--"

"Had she an aunt even then?" exclaimed Malaga. "Hang it all, Maxime
did things handsomely."

"Alas! it was a real aunt," said Desroches; "her name was--let me
see----"

"Ida Bonamy," said Bixiou.

"So as Antonia's aunt took a good deal of the work off her hands, she
went to bed late and lay late of a morning, never showing her face at
the desk until the afternoon, some time between two and four. From the