"You behold Petit Patou redivivus," said Andrew.
Bakkus regarded him in astonishment.
"But, my dear fellow, Generals can't do things like that."
"That's the cry of Elodie."
"She's a woman with whom I'm in perfect sympathy," said Bakkus.
Elodie entered, cooler, less dishevelled, in her eternal wrapper. She rushed up to Bakkus and wrung both his hands, overjoyed to see him. He must pardon her flight, but really--she was in a costume--and not even till she took it off did she know that it was split--Oh, mon Dieu! Right across. With a sweep of the hand she frankly indicated the locality of the disaster. She laughed. Well, it was good that he had arrived at last. He would be able to put some sense into André. He a General, to go back to the stage. It was crazy! He would give André advice, good counsel, that was what he needed! How André could win battles when he was so helpless in other things, she could not understand. She seized him by the shoulders and smiled into his face.
"Mais toi qui es si intelligent, dis quelque chose."
"To say anything, my dear Elodie, while you are speaking," remarked Bakkus, "is beyond the power of mortal man. But now that you are silent I will say this. It is time for déjeuner. I am intoxicated with the sense of pecuniary plenitude, I invite you both to eat with me on the Boulevards where we can discuss these high matters."
"But it is you that are crazy," cried Elodie, gasping at the unprecedented proposal which in itself shook, like an earthquake, her intimately constructed conception of Horatio Bakkus. And on the Boulevards, too! Her soul rose up in alarm. "You are wanting in your wits. One can't eat anywhere--even at a restaurant of the second class--under a hundred francs for three persons."
Bakkus, with an air Louis Seize, implied that one, two or three hundred francs were as dirt in his fingers. But Elodie would have none of it. She would be ashamed to put so much money in her stomach.