"I have not another here.

Oh! Bah! So much the worse, I will put on a collar, and as 'Methuselah' buttons to the neck no one will see the color of my lines." "What!" said Rodolphe uneasy, "you are going to wear 'Methuselah' ?" "Alas!" replied Marcel, "I must, God wills it and my tailor too; besides it has a new set of buttons and I have just touched it up with ivory black." "Methuselah" was merely Marcel's dress coat.

He called it so because it was the oldest garment of his wardrobe.

"Methuselah" was cut in the fashion of four years' before and was, besides of a hideous green, but Marcel declared that it looked black by candlelight.
In five minutes Marcel was dressed, he was attired in the most perfect bad taste, the get-up of an art student going into society.
M.Casimir Bonjour will never be so surprised the day he learns his election as a member of the Institute as were Rodolphe and Marcel on reaching Mademoiselle Musette's.
This is the reason for their astonishment: Mademoiselle Musette who for some time past had fallen out with her lover the Counsellor of State, had been abandoned by him at a very critical juncture.

Legal proceedings having been taken by her creditors and her landlord, her furniture had been seized and carried down into the courtyard in order to be taken away and sold on the following day.