When they saw Joseph gesticulating and talking to himself, they asked him what was the matter.

The painter, who was as open as the day, related before Baruch and Francois the scene that had just taken place; and which, two hours later, thanks to the two young men, was the talk of the whole town, embroidered with various circumstances that were more or less ridiculous.

Some persons insisted that the painter was maltreated by Max; others that he had misbehaved to Flore, and that Max had turned him out of doors.
"What a child your son is!" said Hochon to Madame Bridau; "the booby is the dupe of a scene which they have been keeping back for the last day of his visit.

Max and the Rabouilleuse have known the value of those pictures for the last two weeks,--ever since he had the folly to tell it before my grandsons, who never rested till they had blurted it out to all the world.

Your artist had better have taken himself off without taking leave." "My son has done right to return the pictures if they are really so valuable," said Agathe.
"If they are worth, as he says, two hundred thousand francs," said old Hochon, "it was folly to put himself in the way of being obliged to return them.