“Neither, I assure you,” persisted the pretty marquise.
“Well, Wagner, the ‘musician of the future.’”
“Madame, you surprise me,” said a beautiful Spanish countess, advancing into the circle—“you a dame du grand monde, and not to have heard of the great magician par exemple!”
“And who, pray, may that be, countess?”
“Oh!” drawled an Englishman, “the man who calls up the devil, and made Napoleon come out of his tomb and sign his name, or something of that sort.”
“And,” added another, “frightened poor Eugenie out of her wits.”
“No very difficult matter, either,” growled an old legitimist with a brown wig, “considering how few wits she has, if report speak true.”
“Fi donc, monsieur” or “not so bad,” chimed in the audience at this rather obvious witticism in every sense.
“I suppose,” said Evelyn “you mean Home, the Medium. We are, I believe, to meet him next week. So your swan, Madame la Marquise, has turned out to be a goose, after all. And now for that other, without whom no party is complete.”
“That, madame,” said a young Frenchman, full of conceit and affectation, “is a long-bony American, about whom, it appears, all the ladies are raving—though, ma foi, I cannot imagine what for, except that they say he is enormously rich.”