And the utmost seriousness presided over all this incoherence, each disputant confounding, with deadly earnestness, the interlocutor in whom he saw such another indomitable as himself. And the dumb circle of hearers listened with nods and grunts of approval, as though these strange discussions had excited them to the highest pitch.
“Well ... and you?” said Mme. de la Vaudraye to M. Simare the elder, at the exact moment when the ardour of the tourney seemed about to wane. “Are you not in form to-day?”
M. Simare, the anecdotist, smiled. His strong point lay in saying nothing until he was questioned; and his dry silence, rich in promise, lent enormous value to the one anecdote to which he treated you each evening, after carefully preparing, polishing, repolishing and chipping it like a precious stone. Everybody burst out laughing before he even opened his mouth: it was understood from his manner that the story would be a little ... naughty.
He said:
“I do not know if I can speak. There are young ears present.”
A movement on the part of the mothers, a glance; and the five young ladies disappeared “without seeming to.”
He insisted:
“All the same, I feel bound to warn you that it is a very risqué story. I shall call a spade a spade: local colour demands it.”
“Go on, M. Simare!” said somebody. “We are all married people here!”
Gilberte was sitting in the front row of chairs, understanding nothing of the departure of the young girls nor of all this preamble and in absolute ignorance of what was looming ahead.