"Perhaps that's why he was angry."
"I said a couple of words for him to the superintendent; before long our clerk will be destitute."
"That's as it should be, it's necessary to teach these plebeians manners, who persuade themselves that they only take a wife for themselves."
"In your place I should have asked for a lettre-de-cachet."
"We shall see; that might still be done."
During this conversation Marcel had prepared everything; he went down to the groundfloor and, while making his preparations for supper, called his comrade in a low tone, and looked in every corner of the room, but he had disappeared.
"Where the devil has he hidden himself," said Marcel, who then looked in all the other rooms and went down to the cellar, where he called Chaudoreille again without receiving any answer. "He has apparently escaped into the garden and from there he will have jumped over the walls, as he said he would do. However, that astonishes me, for he would hardly care to leave the house."
The marquis and his companions sat down to play, and while waiting for the supper they cracked several bottles of champagne to put themselves in good spirits; that is to say, to arouse in them the desire to commit new follies. The most extravagant bets were proposed and accepted, and while playing, drinking, singing, each one related his good fortune, his gallant adventures, drew his mistress' portrait, and passed in review the women of fashion, sparing the honest women no more than the courtesans.
At last Marcel came to announce that supper was served in a neighboring room and the gentlemen left their play to go to the table. The room in which the supper was served equalled by its elegance the other rooms of this delightful retreat; while it served habitually for banquets, the beauty and the taste of its frescoes, the statues which decorated it, the sofas which furnished it, the lustres which lighted it, recalled the salons of ancient Rome where Horace, Propertius and Tibulus, surrounded by their friends and their competitors, sang of love and the charms of their mistresses while passing amphoræ filled with falernian, or carrying to their lips cups where sparkled cæcubum or massicum; and while crowned with myrtle and acanthus, in order to resemble their deities, proving only too well that they had all the weaknesses of mortals.
Sybarites of a later time, the young men assembled at Villebelle's drank deep draughts of the generous wine with which the table was so amply provided; the marquis furnishing them an example by his avidity in emptying the flasks. Decorum and etiquette were banished from the repast, where liberty often degenerated into license. The convives had drawn the sofas to the table, and each one, half lying down like a pasha, held a glass of champagne which he emptied, shouting with laughter at the follies of which he heard or at those which he had himself committed.