“Very well, we shall not meet again, since it is your wish.”

The house at the Eden Reunis was as full as an over-filled basket The violins were playing a soft and delightful waltz of Gungl’s, which the reports of a revolver accentuated.

The Montefiores were standing opposite to one another, like in Cheret’s picture, and about a dozen yards apart, and an electric light was thrown on to the youngest, who was leaning against a large white target, and very slowly the other traced his living outline with bullet after bullet.  He aimed with prodigious skill, and the black dots showed on the cardboard, and marked the shape of his body.  The applause drowned the orchestra, and increased continually, when suddenly a shrill cry of horror resounded from one end of the hall to the other.  The women fainted, the violins stopped, and the spectators jostled each other.  At the ninth ball, the younger brother had fallen to the ground, an inert mass, with a gaping wound in his forehead.  His brother did not move, and there was a look of madness on his face, while the Countess de Villegby leaned on the ledge of her box, and fanned herself calmly, as implacable as any cruel goddess of ancient mythology.

The next day, between four and five, when she was surrounded by her usual friends in her little, warm, Japanese drawing room, it was strange to hear in what a languid and indifferent voice she exclaimed: 

“They say that an accident happened to one of those famous clowns, the Monta ... the Monti ... what is his name, Tom?”

“The Montefiores, Madame!”

And then they began to talk about the sale at Angele Velours, who was going to buy the former follies, at the hotel Drouot, before marrying Prince Storbeck.

THE SEQUEL TO A DIVORCE

Certainly, although he had been engaged in the most extraordinary, most unlikely, most extravagant and funniest cases, and had won legal games without a trump in his hand, although he had worked out the obscure law of divorce, as if it had been a Californian gold mine Maitre[4] Garrulier the celebrated, the only Garrulier, could not check a movement of surprise, nor a disheartening shake of the head, nor a smile when the Countess de Baudemont explained her affairs to him for the first time.

[Footnote 4:  Title given to advocates in France.—­TRANSLATOR.]

He had just opened his correspondence, and his long hands, on which he bestowed the greatest attention, buried themselves in a heap of female letters, and one might have thought oneself in the confessional of a fashionable preacher, so impregnated was the atmosphere with delicate perfumes.

Immediately, even before she had said a word, with the sharp glance of a practiced man of the world, that look which made beautiful Madame de Serpenoise say:  “He strips your heart bare!” The lawyer had classed her in the third category.  Those who suffer came into his first category, those who love, into the second, and those who are bored, into the third, and she belonged to the latter.