“Look! your Excellency—­It is stupendous!  Here:  Amelie Dunois, 2 francs. Jeanne Garnot, 5 francs. Bel-Enfant—­Charles—­, 1 fr., 50 centimes. Warnier I., 2 francs. Warnier II., 2 francs. Gigonnet, 4 francs. Baron Humann, 100 francs. The baron!—­the former prefect!  Humann writing his name down here with Bel-Enfant and Gigonnet.  Humann inscribing above his signature—­I vill supscribe von hundertfranc!  If one were to see it in a newspaper, one would not believe it!  If only a reporter were here now!  For a choice Paris echo what a rare one it would be!”

Granet examined little Marie Launay with sly glances, toying with his black moustache the while, and the other young girl Anna, very much confused at the coarse laughter of Molina the “Tumbler,” kept turning around in her slender fingers the aluminum pencil-case and looking at Marie as much as to say: 

“You know I can never muster up courage to write down my name before all these people!”

“Lend me your pencil, my child,” Molina said to her.

She held it out towards him timidly.

“Where the baron has led the way, Molina the Tumbler may certainly follow!” said the financier.

He turned the screw of the pencil-case to extend the lead, and placing one of his huge feet upon a divan to steady himself, wrote rapidly with the paper on his knee, as a man used to scribbling notes at the Bourse: 

“Solomon Molina, 500 francs.”

“Ah! monsieur,” exclaimed Marie Launay upon reading it, “that is handsome, that is!  It is kind, very kind!  If everybody were as generous as you, we could give a statue of Terpsichore in gold to Mademoiselle Legrand.”

“If you should ever want one of Carpeaux’s groups for yourself, my child,” said Molina, “you may go to the studio in a cab to look at it, and fetch it away with you in—­your own coupe.”

The girl grew as red as a cherry under her powder, even her graceful, childish shoulders turned pink, enhancing her blonde and childlike beauty.

Vaudrey was conscious of a strange and subtle charm in this intoxicating circle,—­a charm full of temptations which made him secretly uneasy.  There passed before his eyes visions of other days, he beheld the phantoms of gay dresses, the apparitions of spring landscapes, he felt the breezes of youth, laden with the scents of the upspringing grass, the lilacs at Meudon, the violets of Ville-d’Avray, the souvenirs of the escapades of his student days.  Their short, full skirts reminded him of white frocks that whisked gayly around the hazel-trees long ago, those ballet-girls bore a striking resemblance to the pink and white grisettes that he had flirted with when he was twenty.

He extended his hand in turn towards the sheet of paper to which Molina had just signed his name, saying to Marie Launay as he did so: