Then ensued confusion.  The scene went no better than before.  Bordenave, in his turn, showed them how to act it about as gracefully as an elephant might have done, while Fauchery sneered and shrugged pityingly.  After that Fontan put his word in, and even Bosc made so bold as to give advice.  Rose, thoroughly tired out, had ended by sitting down on the chair which indicated the door.  No one knew where they had got to, and by way of finish to it all Simonne made a premature entry, under the impression that her cue had been given her, and arrived amid the confusion.  This so enraged Bordenave that he whirled his stick round in a terrific manner and caught her a sounding thwack to the rearward.  At rehearsal he used frequently to drub his former mistress.  Simonne ran away, and this furious outcry followed her: 

“Take that, and, by God, if I’m annoyed again I shut the whole shop up at once!”

Fauchery pushed his hat down over his forehead and pretended to be going to leave the theater.  But he stopped at the top of the stage and came down again when he saw Bordenave perspiringly resuming his seat.  Then he, too, took up his old position in the other armchair.  For some seconds they sat motionless side by side while oppressive silence reigned in the shadowy house.  The actors waited for nearly two minutes.  They were all heavy with exhaustion and felt as though they had performed an overwhelming task.

“Well, let’s go on,” said Bordenave at last.  He spoke in his usual voice and was perfectly calm.

“Yes, let’s go on,” Fauchery repeated.  “We’ll arrange the scene tomorrow.”

And with that they dragged on again and rehearsed their parts with as much listlessness and as fine an indifference as ever.  During the dispute between manager and author Fontan and the rest had been taking things very comfortably on the rustic bench and seats at the back of the stage, where they had been chuckling, grumbling and saying fiercely cutting things.  But when Simonne came back, still smarting from her blow and choking with sobs, they grew melodramatic and declared that had they been in her place they would have strangled the swine.  She began wiping her eyes and nodding approval.  It was all over between them, she said.  She was leaving him, especially as Steiner had offered to give her a grand start in life only the day before.  Clarisse was much astonished at this, for the banker was quite ruined, but Prulliere began laughing and reminded them of the neat manner in which that confounded Israelite had puffed himself alongside of Rose in order to get his Landes saltworks afloat on ’change.  Just at that time he was airing a new project, namely, a tunnel under the Bosporus.  Simonne listened with the greatest interest to this fresh piece of information.

As to Clarisse, she had been raging for a week past.  Just fancy, that beast La Faloise, whom she had succeeded in chucking into Gaga’s venerable embrace, was coming into the fortune of a very rich uncle!  It was just her luck; she had always been destined to make things cozy for other people.  Then, too, that pig Bordenave had once more given her a mere scrap of a part, a paltry fifty lines, just as if she could not have played Geraldine!  She was yearning for that role and hoping that Nana would refuse it.