Madame shut her eyes to what was going on and she had long private talks in corners with Monsieur Vasse, as if to settle the last details of something that had already been settled.

At last, at one o’clock, the two married men, Monsieur Tournevau and Monsieur Pinipesse declared that they were going home, and wanted to pay.  Nothing was charged for except the champagne, and that only cost six francs a bottle, instead of ten, which was the usual price, and when they expressed their surprise at such generosity, Madame, who was beaming, said to them: 

“We don’t have a holiday every day.”

THE BANDMASTER’S SISTER

“What a joke!” the bandmaster said, twirling his moustache with the foolish smile of a good-looking man, who dangles after women’s petticoats, in order that he may get on all the quicker.

His comrades’ equivocal allusions puzzled him, though they flattered him like applause, and he stealthily looked in the large mirrors at the new lyres embroidered in gold on the collar of his tunic.  They fascinated him by their glitter, and half intoxicated by the doubtful champagne that he had drunk during dinner, and by the glasses of chartreuse and of Bavarian beer which he had imbibed afterwards, and excited by the songs, he was indulging in his usual dreams of success.

He saw himself on the platform of a public garden, standing before his musicians in a flood of light, and he fancied already that he could hear the whispers of women, and feel the caress of their look upon him.

He would be invited even into the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint Germain, which was so difficult of access.  With his handsome, pale face, and his wonderful manner of playing Chopin’s music, he would penetrate every where, and perhaps some romantic heiress would fall in love with him, and consent to forget that he was only a poor musician, the son of small shopkeepers, who were still in trade at Bayeux.

Lieutenant Varache, who was stirring the punch, shrugged his shoulders, and continued in a bantering voice: 

“Yes, Monsieur Parisel, they are sure to ask you whether you have just joined the regiment, or whether you have a mistress ...”

“What do I know?”

“But they say that you have, and that her eyes grow so bright when she speaks to you, that a man would forfeit three months’ pay for a glance of them, by Jove!”

Another traced her likeness in a few words, and described her as if she had been some knick-knack for sale at an auction.  Her hair came low on her forehead like a golden net, her skin was dazzlingly white, while her bright eyes threw out glances that were like those flashes of summer lightning which dart across the sky on a calm night in June.

Her delicate figure, and she did not look very strong, recalled a plant that has grown too rapidly.  She was a droll creature, on the whole, who at times looked as if she had made a mistake in the door, who buried herself in the shade, hid herself, and did not surrender either her heart or her body, and only left the impression of a statue on the bed in which she slept, who appeared delighted with the ignoble business she carried on, and who allured men, and surpassed the common streetwalkers in shamelessness.