“And how did he look?”

“Restless, I think.”

“He might well be,” observed a stout, elderly gentleman, who was said not to be very happily married.

Everybody laughed; but a very young man, a mere youth, who did not catch the joke, said,—­

“Why so?”

A man of about thirty years, a perfect model of elegance, whom the others called, according to the degree of intimacy which they could claim, either “Your Grace,” or “Duke” simply replied,—­

“Because, my dear viscount, Miss Brandon is one of those ladies who never are married.  They are courted; they are worshipped; they make us commit a thousand follies for their sakes; they allow us to ruin ourselves, and, finally, to blow our brains out for them, all right!  But to bear our name, never!”

“It is true,” said Brevan, “that they tell a number of stories about her; but it is all gossip.  However”—­

“You certainly would not ask,” replied the duke, “that I should prove her to have been brought before a police-court, or to have escaped from the penitentiary?”

And, without permitting himself to be interrupted, he went on,—­

“Good society in France, they say, is very exclusive.  It does not deserve that reputation.  Except, perhaps, a score of houses, where old traditions are still preserved, all other houses are wide open to the first-comer, man or woman, who drives up in a carriage.  And the number of such first-comers is prodigiously large.  Where do they come from?  No one knows.  From Russia, from Turkey, from America, from Hungary, from very far, from everywhere, from below, I do not count the impudent fellows who are still muddy from the gutter in which they have been lying.  How do all these people live?  That is a mystery.  But they do live, and they live well.  They have, or at least seem to have, money; and they shine, they intrigue, they conspire, they make believe, and they extort.  So that I verily believe all this high-life society, by dint of helping one another, of pushing and crowding in, will, in the end, be master of all.  You may say that I am not in the crowd.  Very true.  I willingly shake hands with the workmen who work for me, and who earn their living worthily; but I do not shake hands with these ambiguous personages in yellow kids, who have no title but their impudence, and no means of living but their underhand intrigues.”

He addressed himself apparently to no one, following, with his absent-minded glance, the crowd in the garden; and yet, by his peculiar manner, you would have known that he was speaking at some one among the listeners.

However, it was evident that he had no success, and that his doctrine seemed to be utterly out of season, and almost ridiculous.  A young man with a delicate black mustache, and extremely well dressed, even turned to his neighbor, and asked,—­

“Who is our friend, the preacher?”

“What! don’t you know him?” replied the other.