She was sitting in a large fauteuil of purple velvet.  One foot rested on a stool richly carved and gilt; one arm rested negligently on a table covered with curious foreign weapons.  In her right hand she held a singular poignard, the blade of which was damascened with gold, while the handle, made of bronze and exquisitely modelled, represented a tiny human skeleton.  With this ghastly toy she kept playing as she spoke, apparently unconscious of its grim significance.  She was surrounded by some ten or a dozen distinguished-looking men, most of whom were profusely decore.  They made way courteously at our approach.  Dalrymple then presented me.  I made my bow, was graciously received, and dropped modestly into the rear.

“I began to think that Captain Dalrymple had forsworn Paris,” said Rachel, still toying with the skeleton dagger.  “It is surely a year since I last had this pleasure?”

“Nay, Madame, you flatter me,” said Dalrymple.  “I have been absent only five months.”

“Then, you see, I have measured your absence by my loss.”

Dalrymple bowed profoundly.

Rachel turned to a young man behind her chair.

“Monsieur le Prince,” said she, “do you know what is rumored in the foyer of the Francais?  That you have offered me your hand!”

“I offer you both my hands, in applause, Madame, every night of your performance,” replied the gentleman so addressed.

She smiled and made a feint at him with the dagger.

“Excellent!” said she.  “One is not enough for a tragedian But where is Alphonse Karr?”

“I have been looking for him all the evening,” said a tall man, with an iron-gray beard.  “He told me he was coming; but authors are capricious beings—­the slaves of the pen.”

“True; he lives by his pen—­others die by it,” said Rachel bitterly.  “By the way, has any one seen Scribe’s new Vaudeville?”

“I have,” replied a bald little gentleman with a red and green ribbon in his button-hole.

“And your verdict?”

“The plot is not ill-conceived; but Scribe is only godfather to the piece.  It is almost entirely written by Duverger, his collaborateur.”

“The life of a collaborateur,” said Rachel, “is one long act of self-abnegation.  Another takes all the honor—­he all the labor.  Thus soldiers fall, and their generals reap the glory.”

“A collaborateur,” said a cynical-looking man who had not yet spoken, “is a hackney vehicle which one hires on the road to fame, and dismisses at the end of the journey.”

“Sometimes without paying the fare,” added a gentleman who had till now been examining, weapon by weapon, all the curious poignards and pistols on the table.  “But what is this singular ornament?”

And he held up what appeared to be a large bone, perforated in several places.

The bald little man with the red and green ribbon uttered an exclamation of surprise.