"Nectaire will be there."
When Maurice saw Zita, he deemed her lacking in attraction. She failed to please him because she was perfectly beautiful and because true beauty always caused him painful surprise. Zita inspired him with antipathy when he learned that she was an angel in revolt and that she had come to seek Arcade to take him away among the conspirators.
The poor child tried to retain his companion by all the means that his wit and the circumstances afforded him. If his guardian angel would only remain with him, he would take him to a magnificent boxing-match, to a "revue" where he would witness the apotheosis of Poincaré, or, lastly, to a certain house he knew of where he would behold women remarkable for their beauty, talents, vices, or deformities. But the angel would not allow himself to be tempted, and said he was going with Zita.
"What for?"
"To plot the conquest of the skies."
"Still the same nonsense! The conquest of—— but there, I proved to you that it was neither possible nor desirable."
"Good night, Maurice."
"You are going? Well, I will accompany you."
And Maurice, his arm in a sling, went with Arcade and Zita all the way to Clodomir's restaurant at Montmartre, where the tables were laid in an arbour in the garden.
Prince Istar and Théophile were already there, with a little creature who looked like a child, and was, in fact, a Japanese angel.