How many times I led that damsel, or rather was led by her towards the bar during the evening, I can't tell. After every dance she came to me and commiserated me on my lameness. She was not in great request, it seems, as a partner, dancing with anybody she could seize upon, and coming to me, as to a drinking fountain, to allay her thirst. I did not care. I scarcely heeded. All my mind was absorbed by the girl, the marvellous girl with the golden hair, who was the Countess Feliciani reborn.
"Do you know her name?" I asked the bonbon on one of our strolls in search of refreshment.
"Whose? Oh, that doll with the yellow hair? Know her name? Why, the whole quarter knows her name. Marie—what's this it is? She's a model at Cardillac's. A brandy for me, with some ice in it. Hurry up! There's the band beginning again."
The ball had now become infected by the element of riot. Scarcely had the music struck up than it ceased. Shrill screams, shouts, and sounds of scuffling came from the saloon, and, leaving the bonbon, who seemed quite unconcerned, to finish her brandy, I ran out and nearly into the arms of two gendarmes, who were making for the centre of the floor, where the carrot and the grenadier with the cock's feather were engaged in mortal combat. A ring of shouting spectators surrounded the combatants, and amidst them stood the shepherdess, weeping.
She had been dancing with the grenadier, it seems, when they had cannoned against the carrot and his partner. Hence the blows. Scarcely had the gendarmes seized upon the combatants than someone struck a chandelier. The crash and the shower of glass were like a signal. Shouts, shrieks, the crowing of cocks, the blowing of horns seized from the orchestra, the smash of glass, the crash of benches overthrown, filled the air.
The lights went out; someone hit me a blow on the head that made me see a thousand stars; and then I was in the street, with someone on my arm, someone I had seized and rescued; and the great white moon of May was lighting us, and the street, and the entry to the Closerie de Lilas, that beer-garden that the police had now seized upon and bottled. We had only just escaped in time. More and more gendarmes were hurrying up; and speechless, like deer who scent the hunters on the tracks, we ran, our shadows running before us, as if leading the way.
"We are safe here," I said, glad to pull up, for my lameness did not lend grace to my running. "We are safe here. Those gendarmes are so busy with the others, they have no time to run after us."
She had been crying when I pulled her out of the turmoil. She was laughing now.
"Oh, mon Dieu!" said she. "That Changarnier! Never will I dance with him again."