“Name your day.”
This painter in ordinary to the fair Parisians, whom his admirers christened “a Watteau realist” and his detractors a “photographer of gowns and mantles,” often received at breakfast or at dinner the beautiful persons whose feature he had reproduced, as well as the celebrated and the well known, who found very amusing these little entertainments in a bachelor's establishment.
“The day after to-morrow, then. Will the day after to-morrow suit you, my dear Duchess?” asked Madame de Guilleroy.
“Yes, indeed; you are charming! Monsieur Bertin never thinks of me when he has his little parties. It is quite evident that I am no longer young.”
The Countess, accustomed to consider the artist's home almost the same as her own, replied:
“Only we four, the four of the landau—the Duchess, Annette, you and I, eh, great artist?”
“Only ourselves,” said he, alighting from the carriage, “and I will have prepared for you some crabs a l'alsacienne.”
“Oh, you will awaken a desire for luxury in the little one!”
He bowed to them, standing beside the carriage door, then entered quickly the vestibule of the main entrance to the club, threw his topcoat and cane to a group of footmen, who had risen like soldiers at the passing of an officer; mounted the broad stairway, meeting another brigade of servants in knee-breeches, pushed open a door, feeling himself suddenly as alert as a young man, as he heard at the end of the corridor a continuous clash of foils, the sound of stamping feet, and loud exclamations: “Touche!” “A moi.” “Passe!” “J'en ai!” “Touche!” “A vous!”
In the fencing-hall the swordsmen, dressed in gray linen, with leather vests, their trousers tight around the ankles, a sort of apron falling over the front of the body, one arm in the air, with the hand thrown backward, and in the other hand, enormous in a large fencing-glove, the thin, flexible foil, extended and recovered with the agile swiftness of mechanical jumping-jacks.