He laughed again, very much amused at the irritable, peevish yet cringing attitude of Pichereau, the Genevan doctrinaire, who sought consolation in the greenroom of the ballet, whilst his five or six daughters sat at home, probably reading some chaste English romance, or practising sacred music within the range of the green spectacles of their governess.

“But!” said he gayly, “to fall from power is nothing, provided one falls into the arms of ballet-girls.”

* * * * *

Molina burst out laughing ... when he ran his eye over the list and found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and members of the chorus, the distinguished particles of some habitues.

[Illustration:  IN THE GREENROOM OF THE OPERA]

II

Madame Marsy was awaiting Guy de Lissac’s return from the greenroom.  From the moment she caught sight of Vaudrey standing within the range of her opera-glasses, she was seized with the eager desire to make him an habitue of her salon, the new salon that had just been launched.  Madame Marsy was bitten by that tarantula whose bite makes modern society move as if afflicted with Saint Vitus’s dance.  A widow, rich and still young, very much admired, she had set herself to play the role of a leader in society to pass away the time.  She was one of those women forever passing before the reporters’ note-book, as others pass in front of a photographic apparatus.  Of her inner life, however, very little was known to the public.  But the exact shade of her hair, the color of her eyes, the cut of her gowns, the address of her tradesmen, the menu of her dinners, the programme of her concerts, the names of her guests, the visitors to her salon, the address of her mansion, were all familiar to every one, and Madame Marsy was daily reported by the chroniclers to the letter, painted, dressed and undressed.

There was some romantic gossip whispered about her.  It was said that she had formerly led Philippe Marsy, the artist, a hard life.  This artist was the painter of Charity, the picture so much admired at the Luxembourg, where it hangs between a Nymph by Henner and a Portrait of a Lady by Carolus Duran.  She was pretty, free, and sufficiently rich since the sale of the contents of Philippe Marsy’s studio.  His slightest sketches had fetched enormous sums under Monsieur Pillet’s hammer at the Hotel Drouot, and Sabine after an appropriate interval of mourning, opened her salon.

Solitary, though surrounded by friends, she created no jealousy among her admirers, whose homage she received with perfect equanimity, as if become weary and desirous of a court but not of a favorite.  She had a son at college who was growing up; he, however, was rarely to be met with in his mother’s little hotel in the Boulevard Malesherbes.  This pale, slender youth in his student’s uniform would sometimes steal furtively up the staircase to pay his mother a visit as a stranger might have done, never staying long, however, but hurrying off again to rejoin an old woman who waited at the corner of the street and who would take him by the arm and walk away with him—­Madame Marsy, his grandmother.