While dancing with Adolphine, Monsieur Batonnin did not fail to overwhelm her with compliments, scattered among his remarks upon the party.
"It's magnificent! it's enchanting! it's delightful! How elegantly these salons are decorated! and with such taste! Flowers everywhere—to say nothing of those who are dancing; for women and flowers, you know, are very much alike. Others have said that before me, to be sure; but there are things that can't be repeated too often. It must have cost a lot—to give a party like this! but then, when one has the means! Monsieur Monléard doesn't look as cheerful as his wife does; he doesn't seem to be dancing. Still, a host can't dance all the time. I don't suppose he's sick, although he is very pale; but he's almost always pale."
To all this Adolphine replied only by monosyllables, and the gentleman with the doll's face said to himself after the quadrille:
"That young lady is just about as cheerful as her brother-in-law; it's of no use for Papa Gerbault to tell me that that young man I saw there this morning was in love with her sister; that wouldn't make this one cry. There's something else—yes, there certainly is something else."
In a salon set aside for card-players, Messieurs Clairval and Gerbault and young Anatole de Raincy met.
"How's this? you are not dancing?" they said to the last named.
"Oh! dear me, no! I wath never mad over danthing," replied the young dandy, looking at himself in a mirror; "and there'th thuch a crowd! How can one expect to do anything? When I danth, I like to let mythelf go."
"Do you mean that you dance the cancan, De Raincy?" queried a young man with a jovial face, putting his hand on Anatole's shoulder.
"How thtupid you are, Vauflers! Jutht becauth I like to put a little grath into my danthing, it dothn't follow that I danth the cancan."
"Well, you see, I don't dance half lying down, as you do."