On this particular evening the approaches to the avenue de Valois were full of animation. Motors and broughams succeeded one another in a long file, putting down the guests of Thomery under an immense marquee, covering the steps leading up to the vestibule.
All the smart world had been invited to the reception: all Paris swarmed into the brilliantly illuminated entrance-halls of the mansion.
Two mounted policemen sat as immovable as bronze caryatides on either side of the entrance, whilst a swarm of policemen made the carriages move on, and drove away from the aristocratic avenue de Valois the band of poverty-stricken and ragged creatures who crowded the pavement with the hope of securing a handsome tip by opening a carriage door or picking up some fallen object.
It was no easy matter to keep order. One of the police sergeants accustomed to ceremonial functions remarked to one of his younger colleagues:
"I have seen balls and receptions enough! Well, my boy, this Thomery affair is as fine a set out as if it were at the President's!"
Although it was one o'clock in the morning, both on the boulevard Malesherbes and at the entrance to the rue de Monceau there was movement and activity. If, as seemed likely, there was a crush in the great reception-rooms of the Thomery mansion, it was certain that outside the crowd had to form up in line to get near the counters, where the wine sellers were serving their customers without a moment's intermission—serving them with drinks of every description. Thus there was a hubbub, there was noise and roystering clamour all around. Most of the chauffeurs, coachmen, and servants knew one another.
Mingling with all this aristocracy of the servant class were pickpockets, mendicants obsequious and wheedling, who offered themselves as understudies to these of the upper ten of the servant world, and these aristocrats were ready to seize this chance of a little liberty, and at the same time play the generous patron to these poor failures in life's battle. In fact they gave more generous tips than their masters; for did they not rub shoulders with misery and thus realise, only too vividly, the measureless horrors of destitution?
Ernestine and Mimile lost themselves in the noisy crowd. They were all eyes and ears for everything going on around them, whilst keeping in view their two accomplices, the Beadle and the Beard. This was more than usually difficult, because they were disguised almost out of recognition. The Beard was muffled in a blue blouse and a big soft hat, which gave him the look of a peasant, who had wandered into a crowd with which he had nothing in common. The Beadle was capitally disguised as a coachman in good service who is out of a situation, but who, from vanity and custom, sports the emblems of office.
He was continually chewing a quid of tobacco; for such is the habit of coachmen who cannot smoke on their seats, and thus console themselves with two sous' worth of roll tobacco.
The Beadle stopped beside a chauffeur who had just got down from his car, a magnificent limousine, lined with cream cloth, while its exterior was a dark maroon in the best taste.