"Monsieur Freluchon, if you don't stop your spiteful remarks, I'll see that you're punished by my partner."

"Ha! ha! ha! so you recognize me now, O fickle Henriette!"

"Yes, I recognize you, but I no longer know you; when a man treats a woman as you treated me this morning, and leaves her in a horrible plight without coming to her a.s.sistance, he's a rat! yes, he's worse than a _rat_, he's a _toad_![E] and I don't have anything to do with toads!"

"Ha! ha! very pretty! that word, in your mouth, has a wide meaning--inasmuch as your mouth is not small. Is it because you are covered with bells that you put on so many airs to-night? Bless my soul!

if you had asked me for nothing more than bells, I'd have given them to you. I didn't know that you were so fond of them as all this! But really, seeing how enthusiastically you dance, and especially these innumerable bells with which you are loaded down, I confess that I can hardly mourn over your terrible plight of this morning.--Come, leave your Don Quixote, who looks to me amazingly like a vender of theatre tickets, and come to supper with us. I'll give you as many kisses as you have bells; isn't that a seductive prospect?"

Meanwhile Edmond was saying to the _debardeur_:

"Look you, my dear Amelia, after the quadrille, leave your Roman, who looks to me too much like a _claquer_, and take my arm. We were not at odds this morning, why should we be now? You are wrong to espouse your friend's quarrel. Henriette will make you do all sorts of foolish things; you are too nice a girl to dance with such fellows!"

The young grisette seemed to hesitate; but every time that her friend pa.s.sed her, she said earnestly:

"Don't speak to these fellows! You know what I told you; it's all over between us if you go back to Edmond. My dear girl, women must stand by each other, or else these men will make fools of us."

"Ah! the pretty bells! Mon Dieu! what a lot of bells!" cried Freluchon, still laughing as he watched Mademoiselle Henriette. "I have seen many Follies, but none that approached this one in the matter of bells! I say, Edmond, if a poodle wore as many bells as this, he'd be mistaken for a mule. Oh! how tickled I should be to have bells on all my clothes instead of b.u.t.tons!"

The Folly was beside herself with rage; she whispered in her Cupid's ear. The Cupid--Don Quixote was a tall, solidly-built fellow, who had every appearance of being a formidable athlete. He walked up to Freluchon, planted himself directly in front of him, and said in a voice that seemed to issue from a cavern:

"I say, counter-jumper, ain't you about through bothering my partner?

Understand that if you don't leave her in peace, her and her bells, I'll knock off your hat with the top of my boot and send it up to the gallery."

"Oho! my handsome Cupid, that's a trick I should be delighted to see,"

retorted Freluchon in a mocking tone. "Really, it would please me immensely if you should succeed."

"Ah! you want to see it, do you? well, look!"

As he spoke, the Cupid suddenly threw up his leg, expecting to kick Freluchon in the face. But he, by a gesture as quick as thought, seized the leg in its pa.s.sage, and grasping the ankle in his right hand, squeezed it so hard that the Cupid made a horrible grimace and cried:

"Ten thousand million milliards! Let me go, you hurt me, you squeeze too hard! Let me go, I say!"

"If you had struck my face with your foot, wouldn't you have hurt me, you second-hand Cupid?"

"Look here! just let him go this minute, will you!" observed the gentleman dressed as a Roman, approaching Freluchon with uplifted arm, while the latter still held the Cupid by the leg.

But the little fellow, with his left hand, struck his new adversary a blow that sent him reeling backward; there the Roman fell in with Edmond, who gave him an additional push, while Freluchon suddenly released the Cupid's leg with a violent jerk, so that he fell on his back among the dancers.

Thereupon there was a great outcry on all sides, and, as usually happens, the police appeared on the scene and ordered the combatants to leave the ball-room with them, to explain their conduct elsewhere.

Mesdemoiselles Henriette and Amelia took advantage of the moment when the young men were surrounded to glide among the dancers and disappear.

This scene had taken place almost in front of the box in which the pearl-gray domino and her friend Mademoiselle Helose were seated.

A few moments earlier, a little blue domino, the same who had questioned and mystified Edmond, had come to report to the fair Thelenie the result of her conversation with the young man. But when she saw the man she was looking for talking with the little _debardeur_, and observed the quarrel that followed their conversation, Thelenie at once divined that the woman disguised as a _debardeur_ was the woman for whose sake the man she loved had come to the ball.

Having watched with some anxiety the brief scrimmage which took place during the quadrille, she rose hurriedly and left the box, muttering:

"I will find that woman, and I will see to whom he sacrifices me!"

A few moments later, Edmond and Freluchon returned in triumph to the ball-room. Their adversaries, whose too delirious style of dancing had already been remarked, had been turned out, and when Freluchon offered them his card, they had declined it, saying:

"Thanks! it isn't worth while; we've had enough."

"And now," said Edmond to his friend, as they returned to the ball-room, "let us try to find those girls again."

"Thanks," said Freluchon; "you can look for your Amelia, if it amuses you, but from this moment I no longer know Henriette! I can forgive a woman her infidelities, her lies, her tricks, her humbug! But when a woman tries to make two men fight, I see nothing more in her than an evil-minded wretch whom I despise, and I never speak to her again."

V

CHAMOUREAU'S STICKS OF CANDY

Chamoureau had hastily left Edmond, to run after a pink domino whom Edmond had pointed out to him as having expressed a desire, as she pa.s.sed them, to make a conquest of the Spaniard.

Our widower pushed and elbowed his way through the crowd, jostled by this one and tossed aside by that one; but at last he succeeded in overtaking the domino who had been pointed out to him, and who had on her arm a poorly dressed shepherdess, without a mask, whose common face suggested a fruit woman enjoying the Carnival.

Chamoureau took his stand in front of the domino and gazed amorously at her. She seemed to pay no heed to him, but pushed him aside so that she could pa.s.s. The two women left the dancing enclosure and walked toward the foyer.

But our Spaniard followed them, and they were no sooner in the foyer than he once more placed himself in front of them.

"Well, well! are we bound to find this tall Spaniard in front of us all the time?" said the pink domino to the shepherdess. "Is he chasing us?

What on earth does he want of us?"

"My dear, you or me must have made a conquest!"

"Do you think so? Then it must be you, as you are not masked."

"But he seems to be looking at you."

"He looks to me like a big simpleton."

"We might as well have some fun with him while we're waiting for our men to join us."

"We must make him treat us to something."

Notice that this is the constant refrain of the ladies whom one meets at public b.a.l.l.s.

While the two women whispered to each other, Chamoureau, with one hand on his hip, a.s.sumed a seductive smile and kept his eyes fixed on the pink domino, who finally said to him in a voice that seemed in the habit of crying fish for sale:

"What makes you look in my eyes like that, my handsome Spaniard? Do you know me? If you do, say something to prove it, instead of standing there staring at me like a porcelain dog!"

"I do not know whether I know you, fascinating domino," replied Chamoureau, still smiling, "but I certainly should be most happy to make your acquaintance; and if you have no objection, why then--it seems to me--you understand----"

"Pardi! it isn't hard to understand. You want to make a conquest; you're a seducer--anyone can see that at once!"