The diplomatist slightly shrugged his shoulders, and, tapping the painter on the arm in a friendly way—
"Sleep upon it," said he; "tomorrow you will answer me." And he turned away to leave him.
"But I swear to you—" said Émile.
"I will listen to nothing," interrupted he; "dance, amuse yourself; tomorrow you will talk."
And he left him.
"They are all demented!" cried the young man, stamping with rage. "What a singular mania to wish to make me by force a serious man. He will be very clever who will catch me tomorrow at Tucumán. I will leave tonight. I will escape, come what may. This life is awful, and I can bear it no longer; but the advice that M. Dubois has given me is not bad; I will take advantage of the few hours of liberty that remain to divert myself, if that is possible."
After this "aside," during which the greater of his anger evaporated, the painter re-entered the ballroom.
The fête continued, more excited and disorderly than when his countryman had drawn him aside; people were dancing in all parts of the saloons—not the cold and insipid French quadrilles, where it is good taste to walk stiffly and with constraint, but the graceful samba juecas, the jotas—in fact, all the delicious Spanish dances, so full of freedom, of movement, and abandon, where liberty never passes certain bounds, but which, nevertheless, allow the women to display all the voluptuous graces which they possess without shocking the eye of the most austere moralist.
The painter, unknown to all who surrounded him, and speaking Spanish with too much difficulty—although he understood it very well—to hold any conversation whatever with his neighbours, leant his shoulder against the wall, and with his arms folded across his breast, he watched with increasing interest the dances which passed before him like a whirlwind; when suddenly the music ceased, the dancing stopped, and a move was made by the crowd.
Loud cries—joyful cries, let us hasten to state—were heard in the square; then the crowd in the cabildo fell back, and separated briskly into two parts, leaving a large open space in the middle of the rooms.