Two numbers were again encored.  The opening waltz, that waltz with the naughty rhythmic beat, had returned and swept the gods with it.  Juno, as a peasant woman, caught Jupiter and his little laundress cleverly and boxed his ears.  Diana, surprising Venus in the act of making an assignation with Mars, made haste to indicate hour and place to Vulcan, who cried, “I’ve hit on a plan!” The rest of the act did not seem very clear.  The inquiry ended in a final galop after which Jupiter, breathless, streaming with perspiration and minus his crown, declared that the little women of Earth were delicious and that the men were all to blame.

The curtain was falling, when certain voices, rising above the storm of bravos, cried uproariously: 

“All!  All!”

Thereupon the curtain rose again; the artistes reappeared hand in hand.  In the middle of the line Nana and Rose Mignon stood side by side, bowing and curtsying.  The audience applauded; the clappers shouted acclamations.  Then little by little the house emptied.

“I must go and pay my respects to the Countess Muffat,” said La Faloise.  “Exactly so; you’ll present me,” replied Fauchery; “we’ll go down afterward.”

But it was not easy to get to the first-tier boxes.  In the passage at the top of the stairs there was a crush.  In order to get forward at all among the various groups you had to make yourself small and to slide along, using your elbows in so doing.  Leaning under a copper lamp, where a jet of gas was burning, the bulky critic was sitting in judgment on the piece in presence of an attentive circle.  People in passing mentioned his name to each other in muttered tones.  He had laughed the whole act through—­that was the rumor going the round of the passages—­nevertheless, he was now very severe and spoke of taste and morals.  Farther off the thin-lipped critic was brimming over with a benevolence which had an unpleasant aftertaste, as of milk turned sour.

Fauchery glanced along, scrutinizing the boxes through the round openings in each door.  But the Count de Vandeuvres stopped him with a question, and when he was informed that the two cousins were going to pay their respects to the Muffats, he pointed out to them box seven, from which he had just emerged.  Then bending down and whispering in the journalist’s ear: 

“Tell me, my dear fellow,” he said, “this Nana—­surely she’s the girl we saw one evening at the corner of the Rue de Provence?”

“By Jove, you’re right!” cried Fauchery.  “I was saying that I had come across her!”

La Faloise presented his cousin to Count Muffat de Beuville, who appeared very frigid.  But on hearing the name Fauchery the countess raised her head and with a certain reserve complimented the paragraphist on his articles in the Figaro.  Leaning on the velvet-covered support in front of her, she turned half round with a pretty movement of the shoulders.  They talked for a short time, and the Universal Exhibition was mentioned.