Presently down she went to the Collevilles’ to make the same disturbance; and there she put her veto on the costume, far too elegant, which Flavie meditated wearing, and told Celeste the hat and gown she wished her to appear in.  As for Colleville, who could not, he declared, stay away all the morning from his official duties, she compelled him to put on his dress-suit before he went out, made him set his watch by hers, and warned him that if he was late no one would wait for him.

The amusing part of it was that Brigitte herself, after driving every one at the point of the bayonet, came very near being late herself.  Under pretext of aiding others, independently of minding her own business, which, for worlds, she would never have spared herself, she had put her fingers and eyes into so many things that they ended by overwhelming her.  However, she ascribed the delay in which she was almost caught to the hairdresser, whom she had sent for to make, on this extraordinary occasion, what she called her “part.”  That artist having, unadvisedly, dressed her hair in the fashion, he was compelled, after she had looked at herself in the glass, to do his work over again, and conform to the usual style of his client, which consisted chiefly in never being “done” at all, a method that gave her head a general air of what is vulgarly called “a cross cat.”

About half-past one o’clock la Peyrade, Thuillier, Colleville, Madame Thuillier, and Celeste were assembled in the salon.  Flavie joined them soon after, fastening her bracelets as she came along to avoid a rebuff, and having the satisfaction of knowing that she was ready before Brigitte.  As for the latter, already furious at finding herself late, she had another cause for exasperation.  The event of the day seemed to require a corset, a refinement which she usually discarded.  The unfortunate maid, whose duty it was to lace her and to discover the exact point to which she was willing to be drawn in, alone knew the terrors and storms of a corset day.

“I’d rather,” said the girl, “lace the obelisk; I know it would lend itself to being laced better than she does; and, anyhow, it couldn’t be bad-tongued.”

While the party in the salon were amusing themselves, under their breaths, at the “flagrante delicto” of unpunctuality in which Queen Elizabeth was caught, the porter entered, and gave to Thuillier a sealed package, addressed to “Monsieur Thuillier, director of the ‘Echo de la Bievre.’ In haste.”

Thuillier opened the envelope, and found within a copy of a ministerial journal which had hitherto shown itself discourteous to the new paper by refusing the exchange which all periodicals usually make very willingly with one another.

Puzzled by the fact of this missive being sent to his own house and not to the office of the “Echo,” Thuillier hastily opened the sheet, and read, with what emotion the reader may conceive, the following article, commended to his notice by a circle in red ink:—­