Come, let's go, and leave him to marry the girl." Canalis rose to leave the room to dress for the excursion.
"Hush, not a word,--he is going to commit suicide," whispered Butscha, sober as a judge, to La Briere as he made the gesture of a street boy at Canalis's back.

"Adieu, my chief!" he shouted, in stentorian tones, "will you allow me to take a snooze in that kiosk down in the garden ?" "Make yourself at home," answered the poet.
Butscha, pursued by the laughter of the three servants of the establishment, gained the kiosk by walking over the flower-beds and round the vases with the perverse grace of an insect describing its interminable zig-zags as it tries to get out of a closed window.

When he had clambered into the kiosk, and the servants had retired, he sat down on a wooden bench and wallowed in the delights of his triumph.

He had completely fooled a great man; he had not only torn off his mask, but he had made him untie the strings himself; and he laughed like an author over his own play,--that is to say, with a true sense of the immense value of his "vis comica." "Men are tops!" he cried, "you've only to find the twine to wind 'em up with.

But I'm like my fellows," he added, presently.