“Very well, we shall not meet again, since it
is your wish.”
The house at the Eden Reunis was as full as
an over-filled basket The violins were playing a soft
and delightful waltz of Gungl’s, which the reports
of a revolver accentuated.
The Montefiores were standing opposite to one another,
like in Cheret’s picture, and about a dozen
yards apart, and an electric light was thrown on to
the youngest, who was leaning against a large white
target, and very slowly the other traced his living
outline with bullet after bullet. He aimed with
prodigious skill, and the black dots showed on the
cardboard, and marked the shape of his body. The
applause drowned the orchestra, and increased continually,
when suddenly a shrill cry of horror resounded from
one end of the hall to the other. The women fainted,
the violins stopped, and the spectators jostled each
other. At the ninth ball, the younger brother
had fallen to the ground, an inert mass, with a gaping
wound in his forehead. His brother did not move,
and there was a look of madness on his face, while
the Countess de Villegby leaned on the ledge of her
box, and fanned herself calmly, as implacable as any
cruel goddess of ancient mythology.
The next day, between four and five, when she was
surrounded by her usual friends in her little, warm,
Japanese drawing room, it was strange to hear in what
a languid and indifferent voice she exclaimed:
“They say that an accident happened to one of
those famous clowns, the Monta ... the Monti ... what
is his name, Tom?”
“The Montefiores, Madame!”
And then they began to talk about the sale at Angele
Velours, who was going to buy the former follies,
at the hotel Drouot, before marrying Prince Storbeck.
Certainly, although he had been engaged in the most
extraordinary, most unlikely, most extravagant and
funniest cases, and had won legal games without a
trump in his hand, although he had worked out the obscure
law of divorce, as if it had been a Californian gold
mine Maitre[4] Garrulier the celebrated, the only
Garrulier, could not check a movement of surprise,
nor a disheartening shake of the head, nor a smile
when the Countess de Baudemont explained her affairs
to him for the first time.
[Footnote 4: Title given to advocates in France.—TRANSLATOR.]
He had just opened his correspondence, and his long
hands, on which he bestowed the greatest attention,
buried themselves in a heap of female letters, and
one might have thought oneself in the confessional
of a fashionable preacher, so impregnated was the
atmosphere with delicate perfumes.
Immediately, even before she had said a word, with
the sharp glance of a practiced man of the world,
that look which made beautiful Madame de Serpenoise
say: “He strips your heart bare!”
The lawyer had classed her in the third category.
Those who suffer came into his first category, those
who love, into the second, and those who are bored,
into the third, and she belonged to the latter.
