One thing especially struck me in the male guests. With the exception of Pélisson and Prince Metternich, their manner and their voices recalled something or somebody to my mind, yet what thing or person I could not remember, till Memory suddenly chalked on the vacant space before her:
De Morny.
The languid air, the half-lisp, the attentive inattention of manner, all were here, the very voice.
What a triumph! De Morny had been dead and buried nearly four years, yet his reflection still lingered on the faces of these apes; his voice had been silent since the orations and muffled drums of that dramatic funeral, which outvied in splendour the funeral of Germanicus, and which I had witnessed in company with Père Hyacinthe and the pupils of the Bourdaloue; yet his voice still was heard in the supper-rooms of Paris, discussing the length of ballet-girls' skirts and the scandals of Plon-Plon.
With the fish the conversation became more general, and with the iced champagne—served from jeroboams that took two waiters to lift—decency and the ghost of De Morny rose to take their departure.
It was strange to me, a water-drinker, and therefore an observer of the others, to see these men forgetting themselves, to see languid faces become flushed, to hear soft voices become harsh, tongues become ribald; to watch brutal lines asserting themselves in countenances unveiled by alcohol. And it was surpassingly funny to see the evanescence of the De Morny air.
At the head of the table, a tint more ruddy than usual, sat my guardian, enjoying it all.
We had all, like the lunatic guests at the dinner-party of Dr. Tar and Professor Feather, sat down to table apparently staid and respectable people, and by degrees, just as lunacy set off the Doctor's guests crowing like cocks and braying like asses, the spirit of the Second Empire in its last and rottenest stages invaded the Amber Room of the Café de Paris. Furious discussions, fumes of spilt wines, wreaths of cigar and cigarette smoke, the cracked and cruel laughter of women, filled the air.
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