"Hush! that's enough; hush! Who asked you to say that?"
Monsieur Plays held his peace, and pretended to have a paroxysm of coughing as an excuse for not finishing his sentence. Monsieur Grazcernitz took the fair Herminie's hand and led her to a seat on a divan, with divers other ladies, with whom she soon entered into conversation.
But after a few seconds, the lady at the robust creature's right rose and walked into another salon; in a short time, the lady at her left likewise rose and vanished, and the fair Herminie was left alone on the divan. Thereupon several young men approached her and favored her with an assortment of the insipid, commonplace flatteries of which such a prodigious supply is ordinarily consumed in fashionable salons.
A young man who had talked with Madame Plays a few minutes left her abruptly, and observed to one of his friends:
"That's a most extraordinary thing; I can't understand it."
"What do you mean?"
"You see that lady over there, with whom I was talking just now?"
"Madame Plays?"
"Yes. Well, my dear fellow, I can't imagine what kind of perfume she has about her, but it's absolutely insufferable."
"The deuce you say!"