weapons here, pass from here into the regiment of veterans, build themselves a hospital in cut-stone out of their savings, and some of them mount very high through the tips of their toes if they are not suddenly attacked by the malady of the knee."
"Malady of the knee?" inquired Vaudrey.
"A phrase not to be found in the Dictionary of Political Economy by Maurice Block. It is a way of saying that ill-luck has overtaken one. A very interesting condition, this malady of the knee! It often not only shortens the leg but the career!"
"Is this malady a frequent one at the Opéra?"
"Ah! your Excellency, how can it be helped? There are so many slips in this pirouetting business! It is as risky as politics!"
Fat Molina shouted with laughter at this clumsy jest, and placing a binocle upon his huge nose, which was cleft down the middle like that of a hunting-hound, he exclaimed suddenly, turning towards the door as he spoke:
"Eh! Marie Launay? What is she holding in her hand?"
Light, nimble and graceful in her costume of a Hindoo dancing girl, a young girl of sixteen or seventeen summers, already betraying her womanhood in the ardent glances half-hidden in the depths of her large, deep-blue eyes, tripped into the greenroom, humming an air and holding in her hand a long sheet of paper.
She shook, as if embarrassed by it, the broad necklace of large imitation pearls that danced on her fine neck and fell on her undeveloped bosom; and looking in search of some one among the crowd of girls, cried out from a distance to a plump little brunette who was talking and laughing within a circle of dress-coats at the other end of the room:
"Eh! Anna, you have not subscribed yet!"
The brunette, freeing herself unceremoniously enough from her living madrigals, came running lightly up to Marie Launay, who held out towards her an aluminum pencil-case and the sheet of paper.
"What the devil is that?" asked Molina.
"Let us go and see," said Granet.
"Would it not be an indiscretion on our part?" asked Vaudrey, half seriously.
The financier, however, was by this time at the side of the two pretty girls, and asked the blonde what the paper contained, the names on which her companion was spelling out.
Marie Launay, a lovely girl with little ringlets of fair hair curling low down upon her forehead, smiled like a pretty, innocent and still timid child, under the luring glances of the fat man, and glancing with an expression of virgin innocence at Sulpice and Granet, who were standing beside him, replied:
"That—Oh! that is the subscription we are getting up for Mademoiselle Legrand."
"Oh! that is so," said Molina. "You mean to make her a present of a statuette?"
"On her taking her leave of us. Yes, every one has subscribed to it—even the boxholders. Do you see?"
Marie Launay quickly snatched the paper from her friend; on it were several names, some written in ink, others in pencil, the whole presenting the peculiar appearance of schoolboys' pot-hooks or the graceful lines traced by crawling flies, while the fantastic spelling offered a strange medley. Molina burst out laughing, his ever-present laugh that sounded like the shaking of a money-bag—when he ran his eye over the list and found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and members of the chorus, the distinguished particles of some habitués.
"Look! your Excellency—It is stupendous! Here: Amélie Dunois, 2 francs. Jeanne Garnot, 5 francs. Bel-Enfant—Charles—, 1 fr., 50 centimes. Warnier I., 2 francs. Warnier II., 2 francs. Gigonnet, 4 francs. Baron Humann, 100 francs. The baron!—the former prefect! Humann writing his name down here with Bel-Enfant and Gigonnet. Humann inscribing above his signature—I vill supscribe von hundertfranc! If one were to see it in a newspaper, one would not believe it! If only a reporter were here now! For a choice Paris echo what a rare one it would be!"
Granet examined little Marie Launay with sly glances, toying with his black moustache the while, and the other young girl Anna, very much confused at the coarse laughter of Molina the "Tumbler," kept turning around in her slender fingers the aluminum pencil-case and looking at Marie as much as to say:
"You know I can never muster up courage to write down my name before all these people!"
"Lend me your pencil, my child," Molina said to her.
She held it out towards him timidly.
"Where the baron has led the way, Molina the Tumbler may certainly follow!" said the financier.
He turned the screw of the pencil-case to extend the lead, and placing one of his huge feet upon a divan to steady himself, wrote rapidly with the paper on his knee, as a man used to scribbling notes at the Bourse:
"Solomon Molina, 500 francs."
"Ah! monsieur," exclaimed Marie Launay upon reading it, "that is handsome, that is! It is kind, very kind! If everybody were as generous as you, we could give a statue of Terpsichore in gold to Mademoiselle Legrand."
"If you should ever want one of Carpeaux's groups for yourself, my child," said Molina, "you may go to the studio in a cab to look at it, and fetch it away with you in—your own coupé."
The girl grew as red as a cherry under her powder, even her graceful, childish shoulders turned pink, enhancing her blonde and childlike beauty.
Vaudrey was conscious of a strange and subtle charm in this intoxicating circle—a charm full of temptations which made him secretly uneasy. There passed before his eyes visions of other days, he beheld the phantoms of gay dresses, the apparitions of spring landscapes, he felt the breezes of youth, laden with the scents of the upspringing grass, the lilacs at Meudon, the violets of Ville-d'Avray, the souvenirs of the escapades of his student days. Their short, full skirts reminded him of white frocks that whisked gayly around the hazel-trees long ago, those ballet-girls bore a striking resemblance to the pink and white grisettes that he had flirted with when he was twenty.
He extended his hand in turn towards the sheet of paper to which Molina had just signed his name, saying to Marie Launay as he did so:
"Let me have it, if you please, mademoiselle."
Granet began to laugh.
"Ah! ah!" he cried, "you are really going to write down under Monsieur Gigonnet's signature the name of the Minister of the Interior?"
"Oh! bless me!" said Vaudrey, laughing, "that is true! You will believe it or not as you please, but I quite forgot that I was a minister."
"It was the same with me when I was decorated," said Molina. "I would not receive my great-coat from box-openers because I saw the morsel of red ribbon hanging on it, and I was sure the garment was not mine. But one grows used to it after a while! Now," and his laugh with the hundred-sou piece ring grew louder than ever, "I am really quite surprised not to find the rosette of red ribbon sticking to my flannel waistcoats."
Vaudrey left Marie Launay, greatly to her surprise, and listened to Molina's chronicles of the ballet.
Ah! if his Excellency had but the time, he would have seen the funniest
