"Very well! hunt him up then!"
And the pearl-gray domino disappeared with her companion.
Monsieur Beauregard stood for some moments lost in thought; then he shrugged his shoulders and returned to the foyer, saying to himself:
"The fact remains that I have no one to sup with; it is time to be thinking about that."
Chamoureau, having discreetly allowed a few minutes to elapse, that he might not appear to be following the pearl-gray domino, who had forbidden him to do so, decided at last to descend from the amphitheatre passage. Now that he had an intrigue fairly started with a lady as elegant as she was lovely, the widower had none but contemptuous glances for all the women who passed him. He puffed himself out in his ruff, held his head erect with much dignity, squared his shoulders under his cloak, and no longer took the trouble to pull up his boot-tops. He was a man who had arrived; in other words, a man who had what he wanted and who no longer needed to put himself out in order to gain his ends.
Meanwhile he desired to find his intimate friend Freluchon and young Edmond, because he began to feel an inclination to sup.
In the corridor on the first floor a domino stopped him, and Chamoureau shuddered as he recognized the shoe-stitcher's false light hair.
"Ah! I have found you again at last, my dear monsieur!" cried the scrawny creature. "I am so glad! I have been looking for you ever since that unlucky galop, when I fell; you let go with your left arm, I was a little dizzy, and—patatras! And I lost my cap, too, and had hard work finding it; I bruised myself somewhere when I fell, but it won't amount to anything."
"But why were you looking for me, madame?" rejoined the Spaniard, wrapping himself in his cloak, with a savage glare. "I was not looking for you."
"Why, as it's pretty late, I was thinking about supper, as you asked me to take supper with your friends."