"Yes, but I am too scraggy," declared Pierrot cunningly. "Madame de Staël was rather a stout-looking woman."
"Scraggy? you, the athlete!"
Jean de Blaye knocked the floor with a billiard-cue for silence.
"We will think about who is to act Madame de Staël when we have found out what she has to say—Well, then, she enters—Are you not going to write, Paul?"
"What do you want me to write?"
"Well, just write: 'Madame de Staël enters by—' Yes, but that's the point—by which door does she enter?"
"I have put 'from the back of stage.' Whenever you don't tell me how they come in, I always put 'from the back of stage.'"
"All right! Then we will leave 'from the back of the stage.'"
"Madame de Staël (to Thomas Vireloque): 'I am Madame de Staël.'
Thomas Vireloque: 'Beg pardon?'
Madame de Staël: 'I am Madame de Staël.'
Venus: 'What have you to tell us?'
The Opportunist: 'It is very curious—I took you for a Turk.'
The Poet: 'And I—'"
"Wait a minute!" said M. de Rueille, "I've made a mistake."