a young man near Georges, having evinced a desire to kiss Lea de Horn, received a sharp rap, accompanied by a “Look here, you, let me go!” which was spoken in a tone of fine indignation; and Georges, who was now very tipsy and greatly excited by the sight of Nana, hesitated about carrying out a project which he had been gravely maturing.  He had been planning, indeed, to get under the table on all fours and to go and crouch at Nana’s feet like a little dog.  Nobody would have seen him, and he would have stayed there in the quietest way.  But when at Lea’s urgent request Daguenet had told the young man to sit still, Georges all at once felt grievously chagrined, as though the reproof had just been leveled at him.  Oh, it was all silly and slow, and there was nothing worth living for!  Daguenet, nevertheless, began chaffing and obliged him to swallow a big glassful of water, asking him at the same time what he would do if he were to find himself alone with a woman, seeing that three glasses of champagne were able to bowl him over.

“Why, in Havana,” resumed Foucarmont, “they make a spirit with a certain wild berry; you think you’re swallowing fire!  Well now, one evening I drank more than a liter of it, and it didn’t hurt me one bit.  Better than that, another time when we were on the coast of Coromandel some savages gave us I don’t know what sort of a mixture of pepper and vitriol, and that didn’t hurt me one bit.  I can’t make myself drunk.”

For some moments past La Faloise’s face opposite had excited his displeasure.  He began sneering and giving vent to disagreeable witticisms.  La Faloise, whose brain was in a whirl, was behaving very restlessly and squeezing up against Gaga.  But at length he became the victim of anxiety; somebody had just taken his handkerchief, and with drunken obstinacy he demanded it back again, asked his neighbors about it, stooped down in order to look under the chairs and the guests’ feet.  And when Gaga did her best to quiet him: 

“It’s a nuisance,” he murmured, “my initials and my coronet are worked in the corner.  They may compromise me.”

“I say, Monsieur Falamoise, Lamafoise, Mafaloise!” shouted Foucarmont, who thought it exceedingly witty thus to disfigure the young man’s name ad infinitum.

But La Faloise grew wroth and talked with a stutter about his ancestry.  He threatened to send a water bottle at Foucarmont’s head, and Count de Vandeuvres had to interfere in order to assure him that Foucarmont was a great joker.  Indeed, everybody was laughing.  This did for the already flurried young man, who was very glad to resume his seat and to begin eating with childlike submissiveness when in a loud voice his cousin ordered him to feed.  Gaga had taken him back to her ample side; only from time to time he cast sly and anxious glances at the guests, for he ceased not to search for his handkerchief.