Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/90

 'Yes, when he hasn't!' said Eustache Poupin, who had been listening. Every one was listening now.

'It depends on the fellow he says it to. Not even here?' the German asked.

'Oh, here!' Paul Muniment exclaimed, in a peculiar tone, and resumed his muffled whistle again.

'Take care—take care; you will make me think you haven't!' cried Poupin, with his excited expression.

'That's just what I wan't,' said Muniment.

'Nun, I understand,' the cabinetmaker remarked, restoring his pipe to his lips after an interval almost as momentous as the stoppage of a steamer in mid-ocean.

Ere'', 'ere!' repeated the small shoemaker, indignantly. 'I daresay it is as good as the place he came from. He might look in and see what he thinks of it.'

'That's a place you might tell us a little about now,' the fat man suggested, as if he had been waiting for his chance.

Before the shoemaker had time to notice this challenge some one inquired, with a hoarse petulance, who the blazes they were talking about; and Mr. Schinkel took upon himself to reply that they were talking about a man who hadn't done what he had done by simply exchanging abstract ideas, however valuable, with his friends in a respectable pot-house.

'What the devil has he done then?' some one else demanded; and Muniment replied, quietly, that he had spent twelve years in a Prussian prison, and was consequently still an object of a good deal of interest to the police.

'Well, if you call that very useful, I must say I prefer a pot-house!' cried the shoemaker, appealing to all the company and looking, as it appeared to Hyacinth, particularly hideous.