could be found to appeal to that monstrously apathetic nature?  And then, could he change the sky of Paris, restore to the unhappy Levantine her patio paved with marble, where she used to pass long hours in a cool, delicious sleepiness, listening to the water as it dripped on the great alabaster fountain with its three basins, one over the other, and her gilded barge, with its awning of crimson, which eight Tripolitan boatmen supple and vigorous rowed after sunset on the beautiful lake of El-Baheira?  However luxurious the apartment of the Place Vendome might be, it could not compensate for the loss of these marvels.  And then she would be more miserable than ever.  At last, a man who was a frequent visitor to the house succeeded in lifting her out of her despair.  This was Cabassu, the man who described himself on his cards as “professor of massage,” a big, dark, thick-set man, smelling of garlic and pomade, square-shouldered, hairy to the eyes, and who knew stories of Parisian seraglios, tales within the reach of madame’s intelligence.  Having once come to massage her, she wished to see him again, retained him.  He had to give up all his other clients, and became, at the salary of a senator, the masseur of this stout lady, her page, her reader, her body-guard.  Jansoulet, delighted to see his wife contented, was unconscious of the ridicule attached to this intimacy.

Cabassu was now seen in the Bois, seated beside the favourite maid in the huge and sumptuous open carriage, also at the back of the theatre boxes taken by the Levantine, for she began to go out, since she had grown less torpid under the treatment of her masseur and was determined to amuse herself.  The theatre pleased her, especially farces or melodramas.  The apathy of her large body found a stimulus in the false glare of the footlights.  But it was to Cardailhac’s theatre that she went for preference.  There, the Nabob found himself in his own house.  From the chief superintendent to the humblest ouvreuse, the whole staff was under his control.  He had a key which enabled him to pass from the corridors on to the stage; and the small drawing-room communicating with his box was decorated in Oriental manner, with a concave ceiling like a beehive, its couches covered in camel’s hair, the flame of the gas inclosed in a little Moorish lantern.  Here one could enjoy a siesta during rather long intervals between the acts; a gallant attention on the part of the manager to the wife of his partner.  Nor did that ape of a Cardailhac stop at this.  Remarking the taste of the Demoiselle Afchin for the drama, he had ended by persuading her that she also possessed the intuition, the knowledge of it, and by begging her when she had nothing better to do to glance over and let him know what she thought of the pieces that were submitted to him.  A good way of cementing the partnership more firmly.