Old Bosc, too, had just made his appearance.  He came in dragging one foot behind the other and coughing.  He was wrapped in an old box coat, part of which had slipped from his shoulder in such a way as to uncover the gold-laced cloak of King Dagobert.  He put his crown on the piano and for a moment or two stood moodily stamping his feet.  His hands were trembling slightly with the first beginnings of alcoholism, but he looked a sterling old fellow for all that, and a long white beard lent that fiery tippler’s face of his a truly venerable appearance.  Then in the silence of the room, while the shower of hail was whipping the panes of the great window that looked out on the courtyard, he shook himself disgustedly.

“What filthy weather!” he growled.

Simonne and Prulliere did not move.  Four or five pictures—­a landscape, a portrait of the actor Vernet—­hung yellowing in the hot glare of the gas, and a bust of Potier, one of the bygone glories of the Varietes, stood gazing vacant-eyed from its pedestal.  But just then there was a burst of voices outside.  It was Fontan, dressed for the second act.  He was a young dandy, and his habiliments, even to his gloves, were entirely yellow.

“Now say you don’t know!” he shouted, gesticulating.  “Today’s my patron saint’s day!”

“What?” asked Simonne, coming up smilingly, as though attracted by the huge nose and the vast, comic mouth of the man.  “D’you answer to the name of Achille?”

“Exactly so!  And I’m going to get ’em to tell Madame Bron to send up champagne after the second act.”

For some seconds a bell had been ringing in the distance.  The long-drawn sound grew fainter, then louder, and when the bell ceased a shout ran up the stair and down it till it was lost along the passages.  “All on the stage for the second act!  All on the stage for the second act!” The sound drew near, and a little pale-faced man passed by the greenroom doors, outside each of which he yelled at the top of his shrill voice, “On the stage for the second act!”

“The deuce, it’s champagne!” said Prulliere without appearing to hear the din.  “You’re prospering!”

“If I were you I should have it in from the cafe,” old Bosc slowly announced.  He was sitting on a bench covered with green velvet, with his head against the wall.

But Simonne said that it was one’s duty to consider Mme Bron’s small perquisites.  She clapped her hands excitedly and devoured Fontan with her gaze while his long goatlike visage kept up a continuous twitching of eyes and nose and mouth.

“Oh, that Fontan!” she murmured.  “There’s no one like him, no one like him!”