"You seem quite in the dumps." "Alas!" replied the painter, in allegorical language, "for the last fortnight it has been Holy Week." "Red herrings and black radishes.

Good, I remember." Indeed, Rodolphe's memory was still salt with the remembrance of a time when he had been reduced to the exclusive consumption of the fish in question.
"The deuce," said he, "that is serious.

I came to borrow a hundred francs of you." "A hundred francs," said Marcel.

"You are always in the clouds.

The idea of coming and asking me for that mythological amount at a period when one is always under the equator of necessity.