“Marguerite Ange! I haven’t even heard of her!”
“Don’t say so, my dear fellow, unless you want to argue yourself unknown! Hi!”
This last ejaculation is to a pretty coquettish little Marchande des Fleurs, and Shropshire invests in a bouquet of Parma violets, as big as his own head.
“What a monster posy, who’s that for?” asks Delaval. “I pity its recipient, it will almost crush her I should think.”
“It’s for Mademoiselle Ange, of course,” Silverlake joins in, searching in his pocket for a five-franc piece to buy a bunch of camellias, but without success, “everyone throws the Ange a bouquet, it’s la mode.”
“Wonder she isn’t like the fellow, you remember? the Roman fellow, who was smothered by a shower of cloaks,” Delaval says, with a feeble reminiscence of some old story learnt long ago in his cramming days. “Eh, what?” Silverlake asks, “No! don’t know any Roman fellows, know plenty of Jews, I am sorry to say.”
“There’s an awful Jew fellow in that stage-box opposite,” whispers Shropshire, “fingers blazing with diamonds, and all that sort of thing. He’s after the Ange, comes here every night and ogles her. I wouldn’t touch him for all the world.”
“I shouldn’t mind touching his shekels of gold. I——”
But Silverlake stops short, for just at this moment the shouts and thunder of applause, the cries and calls for “Marguerite” grow terrific, and Delaval, raising his glass, curiously eyes a woman advancing slowly towards the footlights. It is Marguerite Ange, the woman who has turned the heads of all Paris.
She is beautiful, this Marguerite Ange, this singer at the Alcazar, this child of the people, beautiful with a regal beauty any queen might envy.