The curtain was raised on the wine-shop of Bacchus.  The students were singing their second chorus when Madame Martin appeared in her box.  Her white gown had sleeves like wings, and on the drapery of her corsage, at the left breast, shone a large ruby lily.

Miss Bell sat near her, in a green velvet Queen Anne gown.  Betrothed to Prince Eusebio Albertinelli della Spina, she had come to Paris to order her trousseau.

In the movement and the noise of the kermess she said: 

“Darling, you have left at Florence a friend who retains the charm of your memory.  It is Professor Arrighi.  He reserves for you the praise-which he says is the most beautiful.  He says you are a musical creature.  But how could Professor Arrighi forget you, darling, since the trees in the garden have not forgotten you?  Their unleaved branches lament your absence.  Even they regret you, darling.”

“Tell them,” said Therese, “that I have of Fiesole a delightful reminiscence, which I shall always keep.”

In the rear of the opera-box M. Martin-Belleme was explaining in a low voice his ideas to Joseph Springer and to Duviquet.  He was saying:  “France’s signature is the best in the world.”  He was inclined to prudence in financial matters.

And Miss Bell said: 

“Darling, I will tell the trees of Fiesole that you regret them and that you will soon come to visit them on their hills.  But I ask you, do you see Monsieur Dechartre in Paris?  I should like to see him very much.  I like him because his mind is graceful.  Darling, the mind of Monsieur Dechartre is full of grace and elegance.”

Therese replied M. Jacques Dechartre was doubtless in the theatre, and that he would not fail to come and salute Miss Bell.

The curtain fell on the gayety of the waltz scene.  Visitors crowded the foyers.  Financiers, artists, deputies met in the anteroom adjoining the box.  They surrounded M. Martin-Belleme, murmured polite congratulations, made graceful gestures to him, and crowded one another in order to shake his hand.  Joseph Schmoll, coughing, complaining, blind and deaf, made his way through the throng and reached Madame Martin.  He took her hand and said: 

“They say your husband is appointed Minister.  Is it true?”

She knew they were talking of it, but she did not think he had been appointed yet.  Her husband was there, why not ask him?

Sensitive to literal truths only, Schmoll said: 

“Your husband is not yet a Minister?  When he is appointed, I will ask you for an interview.  It is an affair of the highest importance.”

He paused, throwing from his gold spectacles the glances of a blind man and of a visionary, which kept him, despite the brutal exactitude of his temperament, in a sort of mystical state of mind.  He asked, brusquely: 

“Were you in Italy this year, Madame?”

And, without giving her time to answer: