“Why isn’t your son here?”

“He is coming,” said Madame Phellion.  “His father talked to him very decidedly; but to-night there happens to be a conjunction of I don’t know what planets; it is a great night at the Observatory, and he did not feel willing to dispense with—­”

“It is inconceivable that a man should be so foolish!” exclaimed Madame de Godollo; “wasn’t theology bad enough, that he must needs bring in astronomy too?”

And her vexation gave to her voice so vibrating a tone that her song ended in the midst of what the English call a thunder of applause.  La Peyrade, who feared her extremely, was not one of the last, when she returned to her place, to approach her, and express his admiration; but she received his compliments with a coldness so near to incivility that their mutual hostility was greatly increased.  La Peyrade turned away to console himself with Madame Colleville, who had still too many pretensions to beauty not to be the enemy of a woman made to intercept all homage.

“So you also, you think that woman sings well?” she said, contemptuously, to Theodose.

“At any rate, I have been to tell her so,” replied la Peyrade, “because without her, in regard to Brigitte, there’s no security.  But do just look at your Celeste; her eyes never leave that door, and every time a tray is brought in, though it is an hour at least since the last guest came, her face expresses disappointment.”

We must remark, in passing, that since the reign of Madame de Godollo trays were passed round on the Sunday reception days, and that without scrimping; on the contrary, they were laden with ices, cakes, and syrups, from Taurade’s, then the best confectioner.

“Don’t harass me!” cried Flavie.  “I know very well what that foolish girl has in her mind; and your marriage will take place only too soon.”

“But you know it is not for myself I make it,” said la Peyrade; “it is a necessity for the future of all of us.  Come, come, there are tears in your eyes!  I shall leave you; you are not reasonable.  The devil! as that Prudhomme of a Phellion says, ’Whoso wants the end wants the means.’”

And he went toward the group composed of Celeste, Madame Thuillier, Madame de Godollo, Colleville, and Phellion.  Madame Colleville followed him; and, under the influence of the feeling of jealousy she had just shown, she became a savage mother.

“Celeste,” she said, “why don’t you sing?  These gentlemen wish to hear you.”

“Oh, mamma!” cried the girl, “how can I sing after Madame de Godollo, with my poor thread of a voice?  Besides, you know I have a cold.”

“That is to say that, as usual, you make yourself pretentious and disagreeable; people sing as they can sing; all voices have their own merits.”

“My dear,” said Colleville, who, having just lost twenty francs at the card-tables, found courage in his ill-humor to oppose his wife, “that saying, ‘People sing as they can sing’ is a bourgeois maxim.  People sing with a voice, if they have one; but they don’t sing after hearing such a magnificent opera voice as that of Madame la comtesse.  For my part, I readily excuse Celeste for not warbling to us one of her sentimental little ditties.”