Sarajevo—still Sarajevo. You caught echoes of the crime of that morning in the tongues of twenty nationalities upon the Paris boulevards that night. People in automobiles and open carriages, people in the little red and blue flagged taxis, people crowding the auto-buses and Cook's big open brakes, the army of people on foot, endlessly streaming east and west along the great splendid thoroughfares, tossed the name of the Bosnian capital backwards and forwards, as though it had been a blood-stained ball.
A gay masculine voice called from a knot of chatterers standing near the wide illuminated archway of electric stars and crowns and flowers under which streamed a variegated crowd of pleasure-seekers as the big Rolls-Royce deposited its load:
"Nom d'un chien! What a pack of assassins these Serbians! ... And yet—what if the whole show were got up by Rataplan at Berlin? ... His bosom friend, you say—the big Franz Ferdinand? Zut! what of that? ... Sometimes one finds inconvenient the continued existence of even a bosom friend."
CHAPTER XIV
A PARIS DANCE-GARDEN
By "Rataplan" was meant the Kaiser, Patrine comprehended, as her companion glanced over his shoulder at the candid speaker, muttering something that sounded like a German oath. But Lady Beauvayse was twittering through a filmy screen of verd-blue chiffon, now discreetly enveloping her lovely Romney head:
"We're going to hunt up Lady Wathe and Sir Thomas. Take care of Miss Saxham, Count von Herrnung, in case we get separated in the crush.... Don't forget our programme, Pat. A whiff of Café Concert ... Colette Colin is billed to sing some of her old songs and the very newest of the new ones.... Then we're coming to the Pavilion de la Danse to see the São Paulo sensation.... La Rivadavia and Herculano, and all the rest of the crowd.... Meet you there.... So long! Mind, you're not to get lost!"
"In London you often hear La Colette," said von Herrnung, as he paid the lean-jawed functionary in the gold-laced light-blue uniform—the usual notice of free entry having vanished from the entrance—and passed with his companion into the gravelled promenade of the open-air concert-hall. "But to-night you will hear no songs of old France, no Chansons Pompadour nor Chansons Crinoline. She comes to this place from her own theatre to oblige an old comrade. There is Nou-Nou in that box with some smart women and the Turk who wears our Prussian Order of the Red Eagle with the Star and Crescent of the Medjidie. He is Youssouf Pasha, the Sultan's Envoy-Extraordinary. Nou-Nou has brought him to hear La Colette. Shall we not sit here?"
"Who is Nou-Nou?" Patrine asked, as she settled her tall, luxuriant person on one of the little green-painted iron chairs.
"Who is Nou-Nou?" her companion echoed. "You saw her to-day at Longchamps in her black confection. Everybody was looking.... She is wonderfully chic—Nou-Nou! May I be permitted to light a zigarre? ..."