"Explain! explain!" volleyed from nine throats.
"I shall still read it," insisted Tricotrin, "it is good."
"The lady—nay, the goddess—whom you behold, has showered commissions, and for one year more I shall still be in your midst. Brothers in art, brothers in heart, I ask you to charge your glasses, and let your voices ring. The toast is, 'Madame Aurore and her gift of the New Year!'"
"Madame Aurore and her gift of the New Year!" shrieked the nine young men, springing to their feet.
"In a year much may happen," said the lady tremulously.
And when they had all sat down again, Flamant was thrilled to find her hand in his beneath the table.
THE DRESS CLOTHES OF MONSIEUR POMPONNET
It was thanks to Touquet that she was able to look so chic—the little baggage!—yet of all her suitors Touquet was the one she favoured least. He was the costumier at the corner of the rue des Martyrs, and made a very fair thing of the second-hand clothes. It was to Touquet's that the tradesmen of the quarter turned as a matter of course to hire dress-suits for their nuptials; it was in the well-cleaned satins of Touquet that the brides' mothers and the lady guests cut such imposing figures when they were photographed after the wedding breakfasts; it was even Touquet who sometimes supplied a gown to one or another of the humble actresses at the Théâtre Montmartre, and received a couple of free tickets in addition to his fee. I tell you that Touquet was not a person to be sneezed at, though he had passed the first flush of youth, and was never an Adonis.
Besides, who was she, this little Lisette, who had the impudence to flout him? A girl in a florist's, if you can believe me, with no particular beauty herself, and not a son by way of dot! And yet—one must confess it—she turned a head as swiftly as she made a "buttonhole"; and Pomponnet, the pastrycook, was paying court to her, too—to say nothing of the homage of messieurs Tricotrin, the poet, and Goujaud, the painter, and Lajeunie, the novelist. You would never have guessed that her wages were only twenty francs a week, as you watched her waltz with Tricotrin at the ball on Saturday evening, or as you saw her enter Pomponnet's shop, when the shutters were drawn, to feast on his strawberry tarts. Her costumes were the cynosure of the boulevard Rochechouart!
And they were all due to Touquet, Touquet the infatuated, who lent the fine feathers to her for the sake of a glance, or a pressure of the hand—and wept on his counter afterwards while he wondered whose arms might be embracing her in the costumes that he had cleaned and pressed with so much care. Often he swore that his folly should end—that she should be affianced to him, or go shabby; but, lo! in a day or two she would make her appearance again, to coax for the loan of a smart blouse, or "that hat with the giant rose and the ostrich plume"—and Touquet would be as weak as ever.