“Chaud! chaud! les p’tits pains d’ gruau!” hum the young club-men as they imitate the low-lived gesture that accompanies the end of her refrain. Old gentlemen belonging to the University approach, trembling all over, and turning their good ear toward her, in order not to lose a bit of the fashionable vulgarity. So there is a disappointment when, in her somewhat shrill and limited voice, the little pastry-cook’s boy begins to produce one of the grand airs from “Alceste,” prompted by Mme. Vauters, who is encouraging her from the flies. Then the faces fall and the black coats disperse and begin once more their wandering with all the more freedom, now that the Minister is not watching them; for he has slipped off to the end of the last drawing-room on the arm of M. de Boë, who is quite stunned by the honor accorded him.
Eternal infancy of Love! What though you may have twenty years of law at the Palace of Justice behind you and fifteen years on the Bench; what though you may be sufficiently master of yourself to preserve in the midst of the most agitated assemblies and most ferocious interruptions the fixed idea and the cold-bloodedness of a gull that is fishing in the heart of a storm—nevertheless, if passion shall once enter into your life, you will find yourself the feeblest among the feeble, trembling and cowardly to the point of hanging desperately to the arm of some fool, rather than listen bravely to the slightest criticism of your idol.
“Excuse me—I must leave you—here is the entr’acte—” and the Minister hurries away, casting the young maître des requêtes back into that original obscurity of his from which he shall never emerge again. The crowd struggles toward the sideboards; the relieved expression on the faces of all these unfortunate listeners, who have at last regained the right to move and speak, is sufficient to make Numa believe that his little protégée has just won a tremendous success. People press about him and felicitate him—“Divine! Delicious!” But there is nobody to talk positively to him about the thing that interests him, so that at last he grabs hold of Cadaillac, who is passing near him, walking sidewise and splitting the human stream with his enormous shoulder as a lever.
“Well? well? How did you like her?”
“Why, whom do you mean?”
“The little girl,” said Numa in a tone which he tries to make perfectly indifferent. The other man, who is good enough at fencing, comprehends at once and says without blenching:
“A revelation!”
The lover flushes up as if he were twenty years old—as when, at the Café Malmus, “everybody’s old girl” pressed his foot under the table.
“Then—you think that at the opera—?”
“No sort of question!—but she would have to have a good one to put her on the stage,” said Cadaillac with his silent laugh. And while the Minister rushes off to congratulate Mlle. Alice, the “good one to put her on the stage” continues his march in the direction of the buffet which can be seen, framed by an enormous mirror without a border, at the end of a drawing-room which is all brown and gilded woodwork. Notwithstanding the severity of the hangings and the impudent and pompous air of the butlers, who are certainly chosen from University men who have missed their examination, at this spot the nasty tempers and boredom have disappeared in front of the enormous counter crammed with delicate glasses, fruits and pyramids of sandwiches; humanity has regained its rights and these evil looks give way to attitudes of desire and voracity. Through the narrowest space that remains open between two busts or between two heads bending over toward the bit of salmon or chicken wing on their little plate, an arm intrudes, attempting to seize a tumbler or fork or roll of bread, scraping off rice powder on shoulders or on a black sleeve or a brilliant, crude uniform. People chatter and grow animated, eyes glitter, laughter rises under the influence of the foaming wines. A thousand bits of speech cross each other—interrupted remarks, answers to questions already forgotten. In one corner one hears little screams of indignation: “What a brute! How disgusting!” about the scientist Béchut, that enemy of women, who is going on reviling the weaker sex. Then a quarrel among musicians. “But, my dear fellow, beware—you are denying altogether the increase of the quinte.”