Charles was busily writing a letter which he wished to finish before he left.
Alphonse had drawn on both his gloves and buttoned them. Then he had brushed his hat until it shone, and now he was walking up and down and peeping into Charles's letter every time he passed the desk.
They used to spend an hour every day before dinner in a café on the great Boulevard, and Alphonse was getting impatient for his newspapers.
"Will you never have finished that letter?" he said, rather irritably.
Charles was silent a second or two, then he sprang up so that his chair fell over: "Perhaps Alphonse imagined that he could do it better? Did he not know which of them was really the man of business?" And now the words streamed out with that incredible rapidity of which the French language is capable when it is used in fiery passion.
But it was a turbid stream, carrying with it many ugly expressions, upbraidings, and recriminations; and through the whole there sounded something like a suppressed sob.
As he strode up and down the room, with clenched hands and dishevelled hair, Charles looked like a little wiry-haired terrier barking at an elegant Italian grayhound. At last he seized his hat and rushed out.
