"And is this all?" the minister exclaimed almost involuntarily.
"What!" answered Granet, "you seem hard to please!"
Amongst all these girls, there had been manifested an expression of mingled curiosity, coquetry and banter on Vaudrey's appearance in their midst. His presence in the manager's box had been noticed and his coming to the greenroom expected. Every one had hurried thither. Sulpice was pointed out. He was the cynosure of all eyes. On the divans beneath the mirror, some young, well-dressed, bald men, surrounded—perhaps by chance—by laughing ballet-girls, now half-concealed themselves behind the voluminous skirts of the girls about them, and bent their heads, thus rendering their baldness more visible, just as a woman buries her nose in her bouquet to avoid recognizing an acquaintance.
Vaudrey, observing this ruse, smiled a slight, sarcastic smile. He recognized behind the shielding petticoats, some of his prefects, those from the environs of Paris, come from Versailles and Chartres, or from some sub-prefectures, and gallantly administering the affairs of France from the heart of the greenroom. Amiable functionaries of the Ministry of Fine Arts also came here to study æstheticism between the acts.
All members of the different régimes seemed to be fraternizing in ironical promiscuousness here, and Vaudrey in a whisper drew Granet's attention to this. Old beaux of the time of the Empire, with dyed and waxed moustaches, with dyed or grizzled hair flattened on their temples, their flabby cheeks cut across by stiff collars as jelly is cut by a knife, were hobnobbing, fat and lean, with young fops of the Republic, who with their sharp eyes, wide-open nostrils, their cheeks covered with brown or flaxen down, their hair carefully brushed, or already bald, seemed quite surprised to find themselves in such a place, and chattered and cackled among themselves like beardless conscripts, perverted and immoral but with some scruples still remaining and less cunning than these well-dressed old roués standing firmly at their posts like veterans.
"The licentiates and the pensioners," whispered Vaudrey.
"You have a quickness of sight quite Parisian, your Excellency," returned Granet.
"There are Parisians in the Provinces, my dear Granet," replied Sulpice with a heightened complexion, his blood flowing more rapidly than usual, due to emotions at once novel and gay.
"Ah! your Excellency," exclaimed a fat, animated man with hair and whiskers of quite snowy whiteness, and smiling as he spoke, "what in the world brought you here?"
He approached Vaudrey, bowing but not at all obsequiously, with the air of good humor due to a combination of wealth and embonpoint. Fat and rich, in perfect health, and carrying his sixty years with the lightness of forty, Molina—Molina the "Tumbler" as he was nicknamed—spent his afternoons on the Bourse and his evenings in the greenroom of the ballet.