“Go on, my child,” said a man with silvery hair. This was Provost.
“Yes, it won’t be as long as a scene from a play,” exclaimed Augustine Brohan, the one woman present.
I began again:
Deux pigeons s’aimaient d’amour tendre,
L’un d’eux s’ennuyant au logis
Fut assez....
“Louder, my child, louder,” said a little man with curly white hair, in a kindly tone. This was Samson.
I stopped again, confused and frightened, seized suddenly with such a foolish fit of nervousness that I could have shouted or howled. Samson saw this, and said to me, “Come, come; we are not ogres!” He had just been talking in a low voice with Auber.
“Come now, begin again,” he said, “and speak up.”
“Ah no,” put in Augustine Brohan, “if she is to begin again it will be longer than a scene!” This speech made all the table laugh, and that gave me time to recover myself. I thought all these people unkind to laugh like this at the expense of a poor little trembling creature who had been delivered over to them, bound hand and foot.