“Monsieur Steiner, you will sit next to me.”

With that there came from the anteroom a sound of laughter and whispering and a burst of merry, chattering voices, which sounded as if a runaway convent were on the premises.  And Labordette appeared, towing five women in his rear, his boarding school, as Lucy Stewart cruelly phrased it.  There was Gaga, majestic in a blue velvet dress which was too tight for her, and Caroline Hequet, clad as usual in ribbed black silk, trimmed with Chantilly lace.  Lea de Horn came next, terribly dressed up, as her wont was, and after her the big Tatan Nene, a good-humored fair girl with the bosom of a wet nurse, at which people laughed, and finally little Maria Blond, a young damsel of fifteen, as thin and vicious as a street child, yet on the high road to success, owing to her recent first appearance at the Folies.  Labordette had brought the whole collection in a single fly, and they were still laughing at the way they had been squeezed with Maria Blond on her knees.  But on entering the room they pursed up their lips, and all grew very conventional as they shook hands and exchanged salutations.  Gaga even affected the infantile and lisped through excess of genteel deportment.  Tatan Nene alone transgressed.  They had been telling her as they came along that six absolutely naked Negroes would serve up Nana’s supper, and she now grew anxious about them and asked to see them.  Labordette called her a goose and besought her to be silent.

“And Bordenave?” asked Fauchery.

“Oh, you may imagine how miserable I am,” cried Nana; “he won’t be able to join us.”

“Yes,” said Rose Mignon, “his foot caught in a trap door, and he’s got a fearful sprain.  If only you could hear him swearing, with his leg tied up and laid out on a chair!”

Thereupon everybody mourned over Bordenave’s absence.  No one ever gave a good supper without Bordenave.  Ah well, they would try and do without him, and they were already talking about other matters when a burly voice was heard: 

“What, eh, what?  Is that the way they’re going to write my obituary notice?”

There was a shout, and all heads were turned round, for it was indeed Bordenave.  Huge and fiery-faced, he was standing with his stiff leg in the doorway, leaning for support on Simonne Cabiroche’s shoulder.  Simonne was for the time being his mistress.  This little creature had had a certain amount of education and could play the piano and talk English.  She was a blonde on a tiny, pretty scale and so delicately formed that she seemed to bend under Bordenave’s rude weight.  Yet she was smilingly submissive withal.  He postured there for some moments, for he felt that together they formed a tableau.

“One can’t help liking ye, eh?” he continued.  “Zounds, I was afraid I should get bored, and I said to myself, ‘Here goes.’”

But he interrupted himself with an oath.

“Oh, damn!”