‘I was in the Rue de Lancry—you know, where they have chamber music. Oh! my boy, some of Schumann’s machines! You haven’t an idea of them! They clutch hold of you at the back of your head just as if somebody were breathing down your back. Yes, yes, it’s something much more immaterial than a kiss, just a whiff of breath. ‘Pon my honour, a fellow feels as if he were going to die.’
His eyes were moistening and he turned pale, as if experiencing some over-acute enjoyment.
‘Eat your soup,’ said Mahoudeau; ‘you’ll tell us all about it afterwards.’
The skate was served, and they had the vinegar bottle put on the table to improve the flavour of the black butter, which seemed rather insipid. They ate with a will, and the hunks of bread swiftly disappeared. There was nothing refined about the repast, and the wine was mere common stuff, which they watered considerably from a feeling of delicacy, in order to lessen their host’s expenses. They had just saluted the leg of mutton with a hurrah, and the host had begun to carve it, when the door opened anew. But this time there were furious protests.
‘No, no, not another soul! Turn him out, turn him out.’
Dubuche, out of breath with having run, bewildered at finding himself amidst such howling, thrust his fat, pallid face forward, whilst stammering explanations.
‘Really, now, I assure you it was the fault of the omnibuses. I had to wait for five of them in the Champs Elysées.’
‘No, no, he’s lying!—Let him go, he sha’n’t have any of that mutton. Turn him out, turn him out!’
All the same, he ended by coming in, and it was then noticed that he was stylishly attired, all in black, trousers and frock-coat alike, and cravated and booted in the stiff ceremonious fashion of some respectable member of the middle classes going out to dinner.
‘Hallo! he has missed his invitation,’ chaffed Fagerolles. ‘Don’t you see that his fine ladies didn’t ask him to stay to dinner, and so now he’s come to gobble up our leg of mutton, as he doesn’t know where else to go?’