I am always young; yet as you see me here I am thirty-seven years of age." He jumped from his chair and struck an attitude of the Apollo Belvedere.
"I should never have thought that you were of the same age as a bettered person like myself," said I.
"The secret of youth," he rejoined, sitting down again, "is enthusiasm, the worship of a woman, and intimate association with cats." Monsieur Saupiquet received this proposition without a gleam of interest manifesting itself in his dull blue eyes.

His broken nose gave his face a singularly unintelligent expression.

He poured out another glass of cognac from the graduated carafe in front of him and sipped it slowly.
Then he gazed at me dully, almost for the first time, and said: "Madame Brandt owes me fifteen sous." "And I say that she doesn't!" cried the dwarf fiercely.

"I send for him to discuss matters of the deepest gravity, and he comes talking about his fifteen sous.

I can't get anything out of him, but his fifteen sous.
And the _carissima signora_ doesn't owe it to him.