He was extracted from a small side-room.
“Dear Mme. Armand, here is my Guillaume, who is so anxious to make your acquaintance.”
Guillaume de la Vaudraye was not at all bad-looking, with a very good figure; but he had a sullen expression and his manners seemed constrained. He gave a bow and vanished.
There was an attempt at general conversation, which fell very flat. People exchanged distressful looks and dared not raise their voices. Gilberte did not utter a word.
Then, to break the ice, a rush was made for the principal person present, the last resource of drawing-rooms. He always lords it in the place of honour, displaying the expansive smile of his large yellow teeth. He looks like a squatting Hindu idol; he is well-groomed, shiny and pretentious. He is the centre of social life, the ever-ready rescuer, the life and soul of the company, the master of ceremonies, the master of the revels, the vanisher of intolerable silence. And none can contest his supremacy, for he alone is capable of making so much noise without becoming exhausted and of making more noise by himself than all the rest put together. The specimen in Mme. de la Vaudraye’s drawing-room was signed, “Pleyel.”
It was as though the parts had been allotted beforehand. Two groups were formed: the audience and the performers. Gilberte found herself seated between Mme. Charmeron, who was famed for her persistent dumbness and distinction, and M. Simare junior, the best-dressed and most dissipated young man in the town. He went twice a year to Paris and was looked upon as a master of wit and satire. As a matter of fact, he started chaffing at once:
“Ah, the overture of The Bronze Horse by a Demoiselle Charmeron and a Demoiselle Bottentuit! That’s the invariable first piece here. Ten years ago, it seems, it was played by Mme. Bottentuit and her sister, Mme. Charmeron; to-day, their heiresses are following in their footsteps. Observe how beautifully the two young ladies hold themselves. Their ambition is to realize the back view of a pair of sticks. They practise it for four hours every morning....”
When the last chords had been banged out, he continued:
“Now, the little Charmeron girl will move off on the right, taking her stool with her, and the little Bottentuit girl will slide to the middle of the key-board. From the performer that she was she will become the accompanist of papa. There, what did I tell you? It’s all settled beforehand! Look out! Maître Bottentuit, the attorney, the drawing-room howler, is going off, going off, I say.... I defy you to make out a word he sings.... People have been trying for ten years; and no one has ever succeeded.... Excuse me ... got to stop ... can’t hear myself talk ... the wretch is bawling too loud....”
After Maître Bottentuit, Mlle. du Bocage—a little old maid whose mouth opened so wide that you could have dived down her throat—struck up the duet in Mireille, supported by M. Lartiste the elder, an old man, with a clean-shaven face, whose mouth, on the contrary, remained hermetically closed, with the results that both parts of the duet—not only the cooing roulades of the woman, but also the frenzied appeals of the man, his prayers, his promises, his metamorphoses into a bird and a butterfly—seemed to issue from the yawning throat of Mireille, that gulf where you saw a host of little pieces of mechanism madly at work. The loving couple had a great success.