“You don’t take enough walking exercise,” Desforges was saying to Mosé, who had declared that he felt a little heavy after a meal. “People digest with their legs, that is what Doctor Noirot is always dinning into my ears.”
“But the time?” the financier replied.
“Try massage then,” Desforges went on. “I will send Noirot to you. Massage is the essence of exercise.”
“You did not buy these two candelabra?” Crucé was saying to Éthorel. “At three thousand francs, my dear fellow, they were being given away.”
“You were not skating this morning, Anne, dear,” Madam Mosé was saying to Madam de Bonnivet; “it is a fine chance to take advantage of the early winter. Before the first of January, too! Think of it! It does not happen twice in a century. I looked for you there!”
“So did I,” Madam Éthorel said. “You would have been amused at the sight of that old fool Madam Hurtrel on the ice, running after young Liauran. She was red in the face and perspiring, while he was carrying on with Mabel Adrahan.”
“It amuses you, madam. But if I said I pitied her?” Senneterre said.
“Respect love! We know her,” Madam de Bonnivet interrupted with that bitter laugh which I had noticed at the theatre. She was visibly in a nervous state, which I explained to myself when the dinner was served and Jacques had not arrived. I was soon to learn both the false excuse and the real reason of his absence. During the first course the flowers and silver upon the dinner-table directed the conversation to the subject of the taste of the period and mistakes made on the stage. The guests all combined to praise the skill of the late M. Perrin in the putting on of modern comedies. The talk drifted to actual plays, and an allusion being made to La Duchesse Blue, one of the guests, Machault, I think it was, said—
“Has its run ceased altogether? As I passed along the Boulevard I saw there was a change of bill at the Vaudeville this evening. Do you know the cause of it?”
“Because Bressoré has a severe cold and is too unwell to act. I heard that by accident at the Club,” Mosé said, “and the play rests upon his shoulders. He is clever, but he is the only one in the company,” he went on, and this proved that Madam de Bonnivet’s antipathy to Camille Favier had not escaped the dark, observant eyes of the business man.