She grew warmer.

“I’m going to slap their faces with the bottles and the wax-candles——­”

Romantin said in a soft tone: 

“Mathilde——­”

But she did not pay any attention to him; she went on: 

“Wait a little, my fine fellow! wait a little!”

Romantin went over to her, and tried to take her by the hands.

“Mathilde——­”

But she was now fairly under way; and on she went, emptying the vials of her wrath with strong words and reproaches.  They flowed out of her mouth like, a stream sweeping a heap of filth along with it.  The words pouring forth seemed struggling for exit.  She stuttered, stammered, yelled, suddenly recovering her voice to cast forth an insult or a curse.

He seized her hands without her having noticed it.  She did not seem to see anything, so taken up was she in scolding and relieving her feelings.  And suddenly she began to weep.  The tears flowed from her eyes, but this did not stop her complaints.  But her words were uttered in a screaming falsetto voice with tears in it and interrupted by sobs.  She commenced afresh twice or three times, till she stopped as if something were choking her, and at last she ceased with a regular flood of tears.

Then he clasped her in his arms and kissed her hair, affected himself.

“Mathilde, my little Mathilde, listen.  You must be reasonable.  You know, if I give a supper-party to my friends, it is to thank these gentlemen for the medal I got at the Salon.  I cannot receive women.  You ought to understand that.  It is not the same with artists as with other people.”

She stammered, in the midst of her tears: 

“Why didn’t you tell me this?”

He replied: 

“It was in order not to annoy you, not to give you pain.  Listen, I’m going to see you home.  You will be very sensible, very nice; you will remain quietly waiting for me in bed, and I’ll come back as soon as it’s over.”

She murmured: 

“Yes, but you will not begin over again?”

“No, I swear to you!”

He turned towards M. Saval, who had at last hooked on the chandelier: 

“My dear friend, I am coming back in five minutes.  If anyone arrives in my absence, do the honors for me, will you not?”

And he carried off Mathilde, who kept drying her eyes with her handkerchief as she went along.

Left to himself, M. Saval succeeded in putting everything around him in order.  Then he lighted the wax-candles, and waited.

He waited for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour.  Romantin did not return.  Then, suddenly there was a dreadful noise on the stairs, a song shouted out in chorus by twenty mouths and a regular march like that of a Prussian regiment.  The whole house was shaken by the steady tramp of feet.  The door flew open, and a motley throng appeared—­men and women in file, two and two holding each other by the arm and stamping their heels on the ground to mark time, advanced into the studio like a snake uncoiling itself.  They howled: