She wanted to jabber with everybody there.
I carried her off as soon as I could, but her desire to get back to the life of the world was so ardent, that we had to go immediately to some place of public entertainment.
The theater was shut, and only the Casino was open, and that evening, the entertainment consisted of a wrestling tournament organized in imitation of Paris.
The little Hall was full of counter-jumpers, students and common folk. A cloud was floating in it which was a mixture of all proletarian and lower middle-class tobaccos.
Emma spread herself in her box. A vulgar bit of ragtime proceeding from the shameless orchestra plunged her into ecstasy, and as her ecstasies were not discreet, three hundred pairs of eyes turned round to look at her, attracted by the waving of a fan, and the hat-feathers which also courageously beat time.
Emma smiled and looked at the three hundred pair of eyes.
The wrestling aroused her enthusiasm, and more especially the wrestlers. Those human brutes, whose heads—great jaw, and no brow—seem destined for the sawdust-box of the guillotine aroused the most unseemly excitement in my fair friend.
A hairy, tattooed colossus won. He came to make his bow, and as he did so, awkwardly nodded a myrmidon’s head, with two little pig’s eyes surmounting his titanic body.
He belonged to the town. His fellow-citizens gave him an ovation. He was given the title of “Bastion of Nanthel,” and “Champion of the Ardennes.”
Emma rose in her seat, applauding him so loudly and insistently, that she both scandalized and amused the audience.