SOUS-IN [he is small and thin and wears spectacles: a professor disguised as a soldier] Yes, ladies: it is an eccentricity. I acknowledge it and beg you to excuse it: I am a collector. But you must confess that I have not bored you with it.
COLONEL [very much the fine gentleman] Indeed, no, it was I who let out the secret. But I said also that you are a learnèd man.
SOUS-IN. A dabbler only, colonel.
BRIGNAC [pretending to find upon the table the circular mentioned in the first act] Hullo! what’s this? [No one hears him. He puts the circular back again upon the table].
LUCIE [to the sous-intendant] And are you also a literary man?
SOUS-IN. The Intelligence Department is the literary section of the army.
LAURENT [to Jacques Poiret, passing him his glass] M. le maire—?
PIERRE [same thing] M. le maire—?
BRIGNAC [again taking up the circular: in a louder voice] Hullo! What’s this? [They all look at him]. It’s that very circular I was talking about at dinner: the one from the Minister of the Interior.
COL. About the decline of the population?