"He must have made a fool of himself for them."
"Don't you see that monsieur is a foreigner who has come to France to study refined manners?"
"No, no; he's a joker, who made a bet that he would look more like an ass than anybody else at the ball."
"Well, he has won! he has won!"
All these remarks were accompanied by loud laughter which made Chamoureau frantic.
To escape the ovation with which he was honored in the foyer, he rushed through one of the doors, sought the place where the crowd was most dense, and succeeded in reaching the corridor. He went up one flight, and as he neared the top, tore off his false nose.
"I'll take it off," he thought; "if I don't they'll recognize me by it and never stop following me. There—now that I no longer have that nose, I like to think that I shall not be noticed. But it's a very singular thing: I come here masked, or practically so, so that no one may know who I am, and I have to take off my mask to avoid being recognized!—After all, I was suffocating with that nose and those moustaches. I am much more comfortable this way.—But I can't understand the conduct of my two ladies. I treat them to punch and enormous sticks of candy, and they leave me! they disappear without saying a word to me! Perhaps they saw their husbands, or lovers whose jealousy they fear. They dreaded a scene if they were discovered with me. That must have been the reason for their disappearance. I fancy they didn't belong to the first society. Their language was a little free, and the shepherdess's especially wasn't the purest French; but the pink domino had a very neat figure—and no hoop-skirts! I shall find her again, I hope.—With all this I have lost Freluchon and Monsieur Edmond.—But they adore the monster galop, and I am sure of finding them when the time comes for that.—But five glasses of punch at a franc a glass, five francs, and ten for candy,—fifteen francs in all! that's rather high for an intrigue that is hardly begun! If she had even given me an assignation for to-morrow! I should have exacted that before handing over the candy."
As he pursued these reflections, Chamoureau walked along the corridor on the second floor, looking into every box in search of his pink domino.
He had his face against one of the little panes of glass, when he felt a hand on his arm; he turned; a Norman peasant, masked, was hanging on his arm, and she said to him in a wheedling voice:
"Here you are, Chamoureau, my sweet Chamoureau! Ah! what a good idea to take off your false nose, and how much better-looking you are now! When one has a face like yours, one shouldn't conceal it; do you hear, my friend?"