Madame shut her eyes to what was going on and
she had long private talks in corners with Monsieur
Vasse, as if to settle the last details of something
that had already been settled.
At last, at one o’clock, the two married men,
Monsieur Tournevau and Monsieur Pinipesse declared
that they were going home, and wanted to pay.
Nothing was charged for except the champagne, and that
only cost six francs a bottle, instead of ten, which
was the usual price, and when they expressed their
surprise at such generosity, Madame, who was
beaming, said to them:
“We don’t have a holiday every day.”
“What a joke!” the bandmaster said, twirling
his moustache with the foolish smile of a good-looking
man, who dangles after women’s petticoats, in
order that he may get on all the quicker.
His comrades’ equivocal allusions puzzled him,
though they flattered him like applause, and he stealthily
looked in the large mirrors at the new lyres embroidered
in gold on the collar of his tunic. They fascinated
him by their glitter, and half intoxicated by the doubtful
champagne that he had drunk during dinner, and by
the glasses of chartreuse and of Bavarian beer which
he had imbibed afterwards, and excited by the songs,
he was indulging in his usual dreams of success.
He saw himself on the platform of a public garden,
standing before his musicians in a flood of light,
and he fancied already that he could hear the whispers
of women, and feel the caress of their look upon him.
He would be invited even into the drawing-rooms of
the Faubourg Saint Germain, which was so difficult
of access. With his handsome, pale face, and
his wonderful manner of playing Chopin’s music,
he would penetrate every where, and perhaps some romantic
heiress would fall in love with him, and consent to
forget that he was only a poor musician, the son of
small shopkeepers, who were still in trade at Bayeux.
Lieutenant Varache, who was stirring the punch, shrugged
his shoulders, and continued in a bantering voice:
“Yes, Monsieur Parisel, they are sure to ask
you whether you have just joined the regiment, or
whether you have a mistress ...”
“What do I know?”
“But they say that you have, and that her eyes
grow so bright when she speaks to you, that a man
would forfeit three months’ pay for a glance
of them, by Jove!”
Another traced her likeness in a few words, and described
her as if she had been some knick-knack for sale at
an auction. Her hair came low on her forehead
like a golden net, her skin was dazzlingly white, while
her bright eyes threw out glances that were like those
flashes of summer lightning which dart across the
sky on a calm night in June.
Her delicate figure, and she did not look very strong,
recalled a plant that has grown too rapidly.
She was a droll creature, on the whole, who at times
looked as if she had made a mistake in the door, who
buried herself in the shade, hid herself, and did
not surrender either her heart or her body, and only
left the impression of a statue on the bed in which
she slept, who appeared delighted with the ignoble
business she carried on, and who allured men, and
surpassed the common streetwalkers in shamelessness.
