And now, night-time.
Behold M. le Roué dining royally, and haunting the coulisses of the Opera, and playing baccarat, with trembling hands, in the Cercle Doré, and entertaining (as we have already recorded) Mesdemoiselles Liane de Luneville and Marguerite de Millefleurs, and the eccentric Mademoiselle Pauline Boum, to supper in a gilded, bemirrored cabinet particulier.
All this he does long after the innumerable electric advertising devices (Fontain’s Perfumes—Carré’s Gloves—Cherry Brandy of the Maison Joyeux et Fils) have begun to blink and dance on the boulevards; and long after M. le Roué, with his five and seventy years, should have been tucked up in bed—his old brain at rest and his old head enveloped in a night-cap.
But M. le Roué declines to return home, M. le Roué refuses to close his dim eyes, until he has visited one of those modern rackety “American” bars—the “High Life,” for instance—where the young worldlings of to-day sit upon high stools, and absorb cocktails, crème de menthe and icy “sherry-cobblers.” And it is wonderful to witness frail, shaky M. le Roué climb up on to his stool; and the spectacle becomes still more wonderful when apoplectic, gouty old de Mô laboriously follows his example.
Thus M. le Roué goes to the “High Life,” goes here, there and everywhere, like the gayest and most adventurous of young worldlings. And wherever he goes, the waiters and attendants exclaim: “Monsieur is astonishing!” and “Monsieur is extraordinary!” and their flattery pleases the old gentleman.
“Pas mal, pas mal,” he replies in his thin, feeble voice, and with his leer.
However, there come times when M. le Roué is particularly shaky and shrunken, when he looks peculiarly superannuated and frail; and at these times he resents the obsequious compliments of the waiters.
“No, no,” he cries shrilly. “I am a very old man, and I am feeling very weak and very ill.” After which confession, he buries his head in his trembling, white hands, and mutters to himself, strangely, beneath his breath.
The waiters then look at him curiously. And old de Mô protests: “What nonsense, mon ami; what folly, mon vieux. There is nothing the matter with you. You are perfectly well.”