“Have you a pair of clean trousers?” asked Marillac, hastily entering his friend’s room as the first bell rang for dinner.  An enormous green stain upon one of his knees was all the explanation necessary on this subject.

“You, lose no time,” said Gerfaut, as he opened a drawer in his closet.  “Which of these rustic beauties has had the honor of seeing you on your knees at her feet?”

“It was that confounded swing!  Silly invention!  To sacrifice one’s self to please little girls!  If I am ever caught at it again I’ll let you know!  Your selfish method is a better, one.  By the way, Madame de Bergenheim asked me, with a rather sly look, whether you were ill and whether you would not come down to dinner?”

“Irony!”

“It:  seemed like it.  The lady smiled in a decidedly disagreeable manner.  I am not timid, but I would rather write a vaudeville in three acts than to be obliged to make a declaration to her if she had that impish smile on her lips.  She has a way of protruding her under lip-ugh! do you know you are terribly slender?  Will you let me cut the band of your trousers?  I never could dance with my stomach compressed in this manner.”

“What about this secret you were to reveal to me?” Gerfaut interrupted, with a smile which seemed to denote perfect security.

Marillac looked at his friend with a grave countenance, then began to laugh in an embarrassed manner.

“We will leave serious matters until to-morrow,” he replied.  “The essential thing to-day is to make ourselves agreeable.  Madame de Bergenheim asked me a little while ago whether we would be kind enough to sing a few duets?  I accepted for us both.  I do not suppose that the inhabitants of this valley have often heard the duet from Mose with the embellishments a la Tamburini: 

Palpito a quello aspetto,
‘Gemo nel suo dolor.’

“Would you prefer that or the one from ‘Il Barbiere’? although that is out of date, now.”

“Whatever pleases you, but do not split my head about it in advance.  I wish that music and dancing were at the bottom of the Moselle.”

“With all my heart, but not the dinner.  I gave a glance into the dining-room; it promises to be very fine.  Now, then, everybody has returned to the house; to the table!”

The time has long since passed when Paris and the province formed two regions almost foreign to each other.  To-day, thanks to the rapidity of communication, and the importations of all kinds which reach the centre from the circumference without having time to spoil on the way, Paris and the rest of France are only one immense body excited by the same opinions, dressed in the same fashions, laughing at the same bon mot, revolutionized by the same opinions.

Provincial customs have almost entirely lost their peculiarities; a drawing-room filled with guests is the same everywhere.  There are sometimes exceptions, however.  The company gathered at the Bergenheim chateau was an example of one of those heterogeneous assemblies which the most exclusive mistress of a mansion can not avoid if she wishes to be neighborly, and in which a duchess may have on her right at the table the village mayor, and the most elegant of ladies a corpulent justice of the peace who believes he is making himself agreeable when he urges his fair neighbor to frequent potations.