supper.
“What's so tiresome of those shows is that it's always the same set of women. One wants a novelty. Do try and invent a new girl. By Jove, happy thought! I'll go and beseech that stout man to bring the woman he was trotting about the other evening at the Varietes.”
He referred to the chief clerk, sound asleep in the middle of the drawing room. Fauchery, afar off, amused himself by following this delicate negotiation. Vandeuvres had sat himself down by the stout man, who still looked very sedate. For some moments they both appeared to be discussing with much propriety the question before the house, which was, “How can one discover the exact state of feeling that urges a young girl to enter into the religious life?” Then the count returned with the remark:
“It's impossible. He swears she's straight. She'd refuse, and yet I would have wagered that I once saw her at Laure's.”
“Eh, what? You go to Laure's?” murmured Fauchery with a chuckle. “You venture your reputation in places like that? I was under the impression that it was only we poor devils of outsiders who—”
“Ah, dear boy, one ought to see every side of life.”
Then they sneered and with sparkling eyes they compared notes about the table d'hote in the Rue des Martyrs, where big Laure Piedefer ran a dinner at three francs a head for little women in difficulties. A nice hole, where all the little women used to kiss Laure on the lips! And as the Countess Sabine, who had overheard a stray word or two, turned toward them, they started back, rubbing shoulders in excited merriment. They had not noticed that Georges Hugon was close by and that he was listening to them, blushing so hotly the while that a rosy flush had spread from his ears to his girlish throat. The infant was full of shame and of ecstasy. From the moment his mother had turned him loose in the room he had been hovering in the wake of Mme. de Chezelles, the only woman present who struck him as being the thing. But after all is said and done, Nana licked her to fits!
“Yesterday evening,” Mme. Hugon was saying, “Georges took me to the play. Yes, we went to the Varietes, where I certainly had not set foot for the last ten years. That child adores music. As to me, I wasn't in the least amused, but he was so happy! They put extraordinary pieces on the stage nowadays. Besides, music delights me very little, I confess.”
“What! You don't love music, madame?” cried Mme. du Joncquoy, lifting her eyes to heaven. “Is it possible there should be people who don't love music?”
The exclamation of surprise was general. No one had dropped a single word concerning the performance at the Varietes, at which the good Mme. Hugon had not understood any of the allusions. The ladies knew the piece but said nothing about it, and with that they plunged into the realm of sentiment and began discussing the masters in a tone of refined and ecstatical admiration. Mme. du Joncquoy was not fond of any of them save Weber, while Mme. Chantereau stood up for the Italians. The ladies' voices had turned soft and languishing, and in front of the hearth one might have fancied one's self listening in meditative, religious retirement to the faint, discreet music of a little chapel.
“Now let's see,” murmured Vandeuvres, bringing Fauchery back into the middle of the drawing room, “notwithstanding it all, we must invent a woman for tomorrow. Shall we ask Steiner about it?”
“Oh, when Steiner's got hold of a woman,” said the journalist, “it's because Paris has done with her.”
Vandeuvres, however, was searching about on every side.
“Wait a bit,” he continued, “the other day I met Foucarmont with a charming blonde. I'll go and tell him to bring her.”
And he called to Foucarmont. They exchanged a few words rapidly. There must have been some sort of complication, for both of them, moving carefully forward and stepping over the dresses of the ladies, went off in quest of another young man with whom they continued the discussion in the embrasure of a window. Fauchery was left to himself and had just decided to proceed to the hearth, where Mme. du Joncquoy was announcing that she never heard Weber played without at the same time seeing lakes, forests and sunrises over landscapes steeped in dew, when a hand touched his shoulder and a voice behind him remarked:
“It's not civil of you.”
“What d'you mean?” he asked, turning round and recognizing La Faloise.
“Why, about that supper tomorrow. You might easily have got me invited.”
Fauchery was at length about to state his reasons when Vandeuvres came back to tell him:
“It appears it isn't a girl of Foucarmont's. It's that man's flame out there. She won't be able to come. What a piece of bad luck! But all the same I've pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he's going to try to get Louise from the Palais-Royal.”
“Is it not true, Monsieur de Vandeuvres,” asked Mme. Chantereau, raising her voice, “that Wagner's music was hissed last Sunday?”
“Oh, frightfully, madame,” he made answer, coming forward with his usual exquisite politeness.
Then, as they did not detain him, he moved off and continued whispering in the journalist's ear:
“I'm going to press some more of them. These young fellows must know some little ladies.”
With that he was observed to accost men and to engage them in conversation in his usual amiable and smiling way in every corner of the drawing room. He mixed with the various groups, said something confidently to everyone and walked away again with a sly wink and a secret signal or two. It looked as though he were giving out a watchword in that easy way of his. The news went round; the place of meeting was announced, while the ladies' sentimental dissertations on music served to conceal the small, feverish rumor of these recruiting operations.
“No, do not speak of your Germans,” Mme. Chantereau was saying. “Song is gaiety; song is light. Have you heard Patti in the Barber of Seville?”
“She was delicious!” murmured Leonide, who strummed none but operatic airs on her piano.
Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung. When on Tuesdays the number of visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself. While directing a footman to clear a round table the countess followed the Count de Vandeuvres with her eyes. She still smiled that vague smile which slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as the count passed she questioned him.
“What ARE you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?”
“What am I plotting, madame?” he answered quietly. “Nothing at all.”
“Really! I saw you so busy. Pray, wait, you shall make yourself useful!”
She placed an album in his hands and asked him to put it on the piano. But he found means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that they would have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl that winter, and Maria Blond, the same who had just made her first appearance at the Folies-Dramatiques. Meanwhile La Faloise stopped him at every step in hopes of receiving an invitation. He ended by offering himself, and Vandeuvres engaged him in the plot at once; only he made him promise to bring Clarisse with him, and when La Faloise pretended to scruple about certain points he quieted him by the remark:
“Since I invite you that's enough!”
Nevertheless, La Faloise would have much liked to know the name of the hostess. But the countess had recalled Vandeuvres
