Nobody answered.  Several had tried to buy it, but in Paris scandal sells like bread.  At ten o’clock in the morning there was not a single copy of the Messenger left in the office.  Then it occurred to one of my nieces—­a sharp girl, if ever there was one—­to look in the pocket of one of the numerous overcoats in the cloak-room, folded carefully in large pigeon-holes.  At the first which she examined: 

“Here it is!” exclaimed the charming child with an air of triumph, as she drew out a Messenger crumpled in the folding like a paper that has just been read.

“Here is another!” cried Tom Bois l’Hery, who was making a search on his own account.  A third overcoat, a third Messenger.  And in every one the same thing:  pushed down to the bottom of a pocket, or with its titlepage protruding, the newspaper was everywhere, just as its article must have been in every memory; and one could imagine the Nabob up above exchanging polite phrases with his guests, while they could have reeled off by heart the atrocious things that had been printed about him.  We all laughed much at this idea; but we were anxious to make acquaintance in our own turn with this curious article.

“Come, pere Passajon, read it aloud to us.”

It was the general desire, and I assented.

I don’t know if you are like me, but when I read aloud I gargle my throat with my voice; I introduce modulations and flourishes to such an extent that I understand nothing of what I am saying, like those singers to whom the sense of the words matters little, provided the notes be true.  The thing was entitled “The Boat of Flowers”—­a sufficiently complicated story, with Chinese names, about a very rich mandarin, who had at one time in the past kept a “boat of flowers” moored quite at the far end of the town near a barrier frequented by the soldiers.  At the end of the article we were not farther on than at the beginning.  We tried certainly to wink at each other, to pretend to be clever; but, frankly, we had no reason.  A veritable puzzle without solution; and we should still be stuck fast at it if old Francis, a regular rascal who knows everything, had not explained to us that this meeting place of the soldiers must stand for the Military School, and that the “boat of flowers” did not bear so pretty a name as that in good French.  And this name, he said it aloud notwithstanding the presence of the ladies.  There was an explosion of cries, of “Ah’s!” and “Oh’s!” some saying, “I suspected it!” others, “It is impossible!”

“Pardon me,” added Francis, formerly a trumpeter in the Ninth Lancers—­the regiment of Mora and of Monpavon—­“pardon me.  Twenty years ago, during the last half year of my service, I was in barracks in the Military School, and I remember very well that near the fortifications there was a dirty dancing-hall known as the Jansoulet Rooms, with a little furnished flat above and bedrooms at twopence-halfpenny the hour, to which one could retire between two quadrilles.”