who was humming a tune.  None of the party, with the exception of the poor country girl, had lost their reason; the drinkers and the women were the experienced elite of the society that sups.  Their wits were bright, their eyes glistened, but with no loss of intelligence, though the talk drifted into satire, anecdote, and gossip.  Conversation, hitherto confined to the inevitable circle of racing, horses, hammerings on the Bourse, the different occupations of the lions themselves, and the scandals of the town, showed a tendency to break up into intimate tete-a-tete, the dialogues of two hearts.

And at this stage, at a signal from Carabine to Leon de Lora, Bixiou, la Palferine, and du Tillet, love came under discussion.

“A doctor in good society never talks of medicine, true nobles never speak of their ancestors, men of genius do not discuss their works,” said Josepha; “why should we talk business?  If I got the opera put off in order to dine here, it was assuredly not to work.—­So let us change the subject, dear children.”

“But we are speaking of real love, my beauty,” said Malaga, “of the love that makes a man fling all to the dogs—­father, mother, wife, children—­and retire to Clichy.”

“Talk away, then, ‘don’t know yer,’” said the singer.

The slang words, borrowed from the Street Arab, and spoken by these women, may be a poem on their lips, helped by the expression of the eyes and face.

“What, do not I love you, Josepha?” said the Duke in a low voice.

“You, perhaps, may love me truly,” said she in his ear, and she smiled.  “But I do not love you in the way they describe, with such love as makes the world dark in the absence of the man beloved.  You are delightful to me, useful—­but not indispensable; and if you were to throw me over to-morrow, I could have three dukes for one.”

“Is true love to be found in Paris?” asked Leon de Lora.  “Men have not even time to make a fortune; how can they give themselves over to true love, which swamps a man as water melts sugar?  A man must be enormously rich to indulge in it, for love annihilates him—­for instance, like our Brazilian friend over there.  As I said long ago, ‘Extremes defeat—­themselves.’  A true lover is like an eunuch; women have ceased to exist for him.  He is mystical; he is like the true Christian, an anchorite of the desert!—­See our noble Brazilian.”

Every one at table looked at Henri Montes de Montejanos, who was shy at finding every eye centred on him.

“He has been feeding there for an hour without discovering, any more than an ox at pasture, that he is sitting next to—­I will not say, in such company, the loveliest—­but the freshest woman in all Paris.”

“Everything is fresh here, even the fish; it is what the house is famous for,” said Carabine.

Baron Montes looked good-naturedly at the painter, and said: 

“Very good!  I drink to your very good health,” and bowing to Leon de Lora, he lifted his glass of port wine and drank it with much dignity.