His Excellency the Minister by Jules Claretie
page 29 of 533 (05%)
page 29 of 533 (05%)
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Granet examined little Marie Launay with sly glances, toying with his
black moustache the while, and the other young girl Anna, very much confused at the coarse laughter of Molina the "Tumbler," kept turning around in her slender fingers the aluminum pencil-case and looking at Marie as much as to say: "You know I can never muster up courage to write down my name before all these people!" "Lend me your pencil, my child," Molina said to her. She held it out towards him timidly. "Where the baron has led the way, Molina the Tumbler may certainly follow!" said the financier. He turned the screw of the pencil-case to extend the lead, and placing one of his huge feet upon a divan to steady himself, wrote rapidly with the paper on his knee, as a man used to scribbling notes at the Bourse: "Solomon Molina, 500 francs." "Ah! monsieur," exclaimed Marie Launay upon reading it, "that is handsome, that is! It is kind, very kind! If everybody were as generous as you, we could give a statue of Terpsichore in gold to Mademoiselle Legrand." "If you should ever want one of Carpeaux's groups for yourself, my child," said Molina, "you may go to the studio in a cab to look at it, and fetch it away with you in--your own coupé." |
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