For a moment he paused. The beauty of his young face and the verve of his pose commanded a spontaneous burst of applause; but as he opened his mouth to speak, the noise died quickly into breathless silence.
“Messieurs et ’dames,” he cried, “Regard me this hat! There is none other like it. Never has such a thing happened before, and never will it happen again. Here is the unique hat crushed by the umbrella of the great Belletaille, and merely to own it is to render yourself famous. Now attend to this extraordinary fact! I, Odillon Ventrillon, stand here upon this chair, willing to part with this treasure. It is incredible, but, messieurs et ’dames, how much am I bid?”
This turn of affairs was not banal; it was not at all banal. And it was perfectly true that the shapeless hat which Ventrillon was offering was already historic. It was on a par with the shoes of Catherine de’ Medici in the Musée de Cluny. The highest bidder would be the envied of tout Paris.
“Six hundred francs,” piped the tenor of the blond youth, breaking the silence.
“A thousand francs,” cried an extravagantly dressed South American, enjoying himself hugely. There was a burst of applause.
“Ah, no, monsieur,” regretted Ventrillon; “there will be higher bids than that.”
“Two thousand,” abruptly announced an ambitious lady, wearing pink pearls, from the midst of a group of her three daughters dressed exactly alike in yellow cotton.
“Only two thousand francs!” shouted Ventrillon. “Madame, you do yourself the injustice of underestimating its value.”
“Two thousand, five hundred,” recklessly screamed the blond youth. The ambitious lady turned pale.
“O Maman,” cried the eldest of her three daughters, “bid again! We are so rich, and he is so beautiful!”