The applause was sharp and loud; the young girl, as if disdaining it, had walked into the little booth used for a dressing room. Then Monsieur Voltaire said in Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s ear:
“I am certain now who it is. She is the young niece of Peggy Kirkpatrick. I have often seen her in Peggy’s coach.”
“And in such company!” cried Mademoiselle Lecouvreur. “Surely Madame Riano can not know it.”
“Certainly she does not know it,” replied Monsieur Voltaire, “but this scoundrel of a Jacques Haret knows it. Come here, Jacques Haret.”
Jacques advanced, all smiles and holding his fine hat and feathers in front of him to hide his broken linen.
“It is a great pity,” said Monsieur Voltaire to him sternly, “that you are such an unmitigated rogue. You have great talents for this sort of thing, and if you had a rag of respectability, you would be capable of managing the Théâtre Français itself.”
Jacques Haret grinned, and went cut and thrust at Monsieur Voltaire.
“I beg to differ with you, Monsieur,” replied Jacques. “I did not inherit any talent for affairs, my family not having been in trade, nor have I any gift for running after the great, of which the only reward is sometimes a good caning, the dukes and princes pretending to be very sympathetic and meanwhile laughing in their sleeves. Do you suppose, Monsieur, that the oxen did not laugh when the poor toad swelled and burst?”
Now, as all this was a perfectly open reference to Monsieur Voltaire’s history and adventures, it bit deep. Monsieur Voltaire turned pale and glared with those wonderful eyes of his at Jacques Haret—but Jacques was no whit abashed. As I said before, those gentlemen-rascals are hard to abash.