No wonder they had made a carnival of it, and tricked themselves out in gala attire; no wonder they had brought a paste tiara and crowned Margot—­Margot, who was in flaming red to-night, and looked a devil’s daughter indeed, with her fire-like sequins and her red ankles twinkling as she threw herself into the thick of the dance and kicked, and whirled, and flung her bare arms about to the lilt of the music and the fluting of her own happy laughter.

“Per Bacco!  The devil’s in her to-night!” grinned old Marise, the innkeeper, from her place behind the bar, where the lid of the sewer-trap opened.  “She has not been like it since the cracksman broke with her, Toinette.  But that was before your time, ma fille.  Mother of the heavens! but there was a man for you!  There was a king that was worthy of such a queen.  Name of disaster! that she could not hold him, that the curse of virtue sapped such a splendid tree, and that she could take up with another after him!”

“Why not?” cried Toinette, as she tossed down the last half of her absinthe and twitched her flower-crowned head.  “A kingdom must have a king, ma mere; and Dieu:  but he is handsome, this Monsieur Gaston Merode!  And if he carries out his part of the work to-night he will be worthy of the homage of all.”

“‘If’ he carries it out—­’if’!” exclaimed Marise, with a lurch of the shoulders and a flirt of her pudgy hand.  “Soul of me! that’s where the difference lies.  Had it been the cracksman, there would have been no ’if’—­it were done as surely as he attempted it.  Name of misfortune!  I had gone into a nunnery had I lost such a man.  But she—­”

The voice of Margot shrilled out and cut into her words.  “Absinthe, Marise, absinthe for them all—­and set the score down to me!” she cried.  “Drink up, my bonny boys; drink up, my loyal maids.  Drink—­drink till your skins will hold no more.  No one pays to-night but me!”

They broke into a cheer, and bearing down in a body upon Marise, threw her into a fever of haste to serve them.

“To Margot!” they shouted, catching up the glasses and lifting them high. “Vive la Reine des Apaches!  Vive la compagnie! To Margot!  To Margot!”

She swept them a merry bow, threw them a laughing salute, and drank the toast with them.

“Messieurs, my love—­mesdames et mademoiselles, my admiration,” she cried, with a ripple of joy-mad laughter.  “To the success of the Apaches, to the glory of four hundred thousand francs, and to the quick arrival of Serpice and Gaston!” Then, her upward glance catching sight of the musicians sipping their absinthe in the little gallery above, she flung her empty glass against the wall behind them, and shook with laughter as they started in alarm and spilled the green poison when they dodged aside.  “Another dance, you dawdlers!” she cried.  “Does Marise pay you to sit there like mourners?  Strike up, you mummies, or you pay yourselves for what you drink to-night.  Soul of desires!”—­as the musicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting, quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbub—­“a quadrille, you angels of inspiration!  Partners, gentlemen!  Partners, ladies!  A quadrille!  A quadrille!”