In the corridor on the first floor a domino stopped him, and Chamoureau shuddered as he recognized the shoe-st.i.tcher's false light hair.

"Ah! I have found you again at last, my dear monsieur!" cried the scrawny creature. "I am so glad! I have been looking for you ever since that unlucky galop, when I fell; you let go with your left arm, I was a little dizzy, and--_patatras_! And I lost my cap, too, and had hard work finding it; I bruised myself somewhere when I fell, but it won't amount to anything."

"But why were you looking for me, madame?" rejoined the Spaniard, wrapping himself in his cloak, with a savage glare. "I was not looking for you."

"Why, as it's pretty late, I was thinking about supper, as you asked me to take supper with your friends."

"I think I see myself taking you to supper! You had a stick of candy from me, and that's all you will get; for it's not decent to deceive everybody as you do. At your age, and with a face like yours--to try to make a conquest! Go and hide yourself!"

"Let me tell you that you're an impudent wretch, monsieur, and that a man don't talk like that to a woman. When a man has such spindleshanks as yours, he shouldn't put on so many airs. Did anyone ever hear of such a thing! This blockhead flinging a miserable stick of candy in my face!

You might stuff it into your nose, your sweetmeat; it would go in. I'll show you what I think of it!"

And the domino hurled her stick of candy at Chamoureau's legs and angrily turned her back on him.

While the widower gazed in stupefaction at the shattered fragments of the bonbon, Freluchon took his arm.

"What the deuce are you doing here," he said, "in rapt contemplation before these broken bits of candy?"

"Faith! I was thinking, as I looked at them, what a pity it is to waste good stuff like that."

"Pshaw! let's go to supper; that will be better fun than staying here.

We are just going; we are all downstairs, and I left my Marquise Pompadour to come in search of you; I should say that that was rather kind on my part, eh?"

"Parbleu! you couldn't leave me here and go off without me, when my clothes are at your rooms."

"Come, come; we are going to have supper at Vachette's."

"Why not at the Maison d'Or? it's nearer. You see I never thought to bring a cloak or an overcoat to wear over my disguise. You have a carriage, I trust?"

"A carriage, when there are eight of us! We will run; the weather's fine and that will warm us up."

Edmond was in the vestibule with his little _debardeur_ on his arm; two young men, friends of Freluchon and himself, each accompanied by an unmasked domino, and the little woman dressed as a Louis XV marchioness completed the party. The merry band walked away, shouting _oh!_ and _eh!_ as the custom is during the Carnival, each with his chosen companion on his arm; our widower alone had no one, which fact did not prevent his shouting louder than the others, for he said to himself:

"If I haven't a woman on my arm at this moment, I flatter myself that the one I have captivated is worth more alone than all four of their supper companions."

They arrived at Vachette's, where Freluchon, being a man of forethought, had engaged a private room beforehand. The table was laid; the ladies removed their hoods, caps, gloves, everything that would interfere with their eating; and they all whispered and laughed as they glanced at the Spaniard.

"Who on earth is this tall scarecrow without a lady?" they asked Freluchon; "is he a provincial on his first visit to Paris?"

"No, mesdames," Freluchon replied, "he's a widower who has sworn to remain faithful to his defunct spouse; he's a male Artemis; he is Orpheus, who has lost his Eurydice and is constantly looking for her. If you wish, I will make him weep in a moment."

"No, no, thanks! we prefer to laugh. But why does he wear a disguise if he's so grief-stricken?"

"To disguise his grief; he is persuaded that he has no right to divert himself except in that costume."

"Mesdames, don't you think Freluchon is stuffing us?"

"To table! to table!"

"See, there are ten places, and only nine of us," observed one of the young men.

"True," replied Freluchon, "I ordered supper for ten because I thought that Chamoureau would bring a lady."

"That's so!" cried Edmond; "I hadn't noticed. How's this, my dear Chamoureau, didn't you make a little acquaintance at the ball? What does this mean? how, then, did you pa.s.s the time?"

Chamoureau drank a gla.s.s of chablis and replied with a triumphant smile:

"I beg pardon, messieurs, I beg pardon! if I haven't brought a lady to supper, that doesn't prove by any means that I am not so highly favored as you are by--by Cupid!"

"The deuce! do you mean it, Chamoureau?" cried Freluchon; "you've been favored by Cupid! Come, tell us about it! When I found you in the foyer, looking, as if stupefied, at the remains of a stick of candy, I supposed that your presents had been repulsed with loss."

"Oh! not by any means! on the contrary my candy was not once repulsed; in fact, I have given away a great deal of it during the night!"

"Really! then you have had a number of intrigues."

"I have had nothing else all night long; I left one woman to take another, and vice versa!"

"What a Lovelace!"

"How is it, monsieur," said the little Pompadour, "that after making so many conquests at the ball, you haven't brought a single one to supper?

That is not very gallant for a hidalgo!"

"Pardon me, pretty marchioness," rejoined Chamoureau, after tossing off another gla.s.s of chablis, with which he constantly watered his oysters, "my first conquests were worth little more than a stick of candy.

Frankly, I found that they were not what I was looking for, so I dropped them, as Henri Monnier says in his _Famille Improvisee_. But the last--oh! the last----"

"She dropped you, I suppose," said Freluchon.

"No indeed! _Diantre!_ let us not joke about her! it's a very serious affair with her. Ah! Dieu!"

"Ha! ha! what a touching sigh!"

"Well, monsieur, why didn't you bring that one to supper--the one who is responsible for that groan?"

"I promise you that I would have asked nothing better; indeed, I invited her, but she refused--she couldn't come."

"Perhaps she was afraid of compromising herself?"

"I don't say that; and yet I can understand that in her position----"

"Ah! she's a woman with a position! Is she on the stage?"

"Well, hardly! no, no! she's a very great lady."

"About five feet six?"

"I am not joking; she's a lady of the very best society."

"Ha! ha! you rascal of a Chamoureau! I believe you are laughing at us."