“Presently he found his legs again and tottered up to the staircase.  The picture of the black, shrivelled little man dragging his lifeless legs up to the gallery step by step was never forgotten by anyone who saw it.  At the top he turned and said in ominous tones:  ’I do not wish to be disturbed in the morning.  I shall need a long sleep’; and dragged himself out of sight.  He had been on the stage five minutes and had said scarcely fifty words.  The picture and the effect were unmistakable.  The audience capitulated.  There was a roar of applause which lasted several minutes.

“The whispered discussion of this scene was such that scarcely any attention was paid to the stage until the Baron returned.  Almost immediately afterward the ballet girls pirouetted into the hall in a flutter of gauze, and the places at the tables were filled.  No one listened to the lines; all eyes in the house were focussed on the withered, shrunken, flaccid little old Baron, who sat at Rosa’s right, ignored by everyone about him as they gorged on his food and drank his wines.

“Soon he drew himself up on his feet and, raising his glass, said:  ’Here’s to the god from whom our pleasures come.  Here’s to Plutus and a million!”

“The gay throng about the table echoed the toast:  To Plutus and a million!’ and Chevrial continued: 

“’While I am up I will give a second toast:  ’Here’s to Rosa!  The most splendid incarnation that I know!’

“Placing the glass to her lips for a first sip, the lecherous old pagan’s own lips sought the spot, sipped, and he sank back into his chair.

“What else went on till he rose again no one knew or minded.  No eye in the house could wander from the haggard, evil, smiling, but sinister, old face.  Presently he was up once more and, with his raised goblet brimming with champagne, he offered a third toast: 

“’Here’s to material Nature, the prolific mother of all we know, see, or hear.  Here’s to the matter that sparkles in our glasses, and runs through our veins as a river of youth; here’s to the matter that our eyes caress as they dwell on the bloom of those young cheeks.  Here’s to the matter that—­here’s to—­here’s—­the matter—­the matter that—­here’s—­’

“The attack had seized him.  Terrible and unforgetable was the picture of the dissolution.  The lips twitched, the eyes rolled white, the raised hand trembled, the wine sputtered like the broken syllables which the shattered memory would not send and the swollen tongue suddenly could not utter.  For one moment of writhing agony he held the trembling glass aloft; then his arm dropped with a swiftness that shattered the crystal.  Instinctively he groped up to the stairs for light and air.  He reeled as if every step would be his last.  Rosa helped him up to the window, but recoiled from him with a shriek.  Again his hand flew up, but there was neither glass, wine, nor words.  He rolled helplessly and fell to the floor, dead.  The curtain fell.