Volume I Part 10 (1/2)
”Monsieur Freluchon, if you don't stop your spiteful remarks, I'll see that you're punished by my partner.”
”Ha! ha! ha! so you recognize me now, O fickle Henriette!”
”Yes, I recognize you, but I no longer know you; when a man treats a woman as you treated me this morning, and leaves her in a horrible plight without coming to her a.s.sistance, he's a rat! yes, he's worse than a _rat_, he's a _toad_![E] and I don't have anything to do with toads!”
”Ha! ha! very pretty! that word, in your mouth, has a wide meaning--inasmuch as your mouth is not small. Is it because you are covered with bells that you put on so many airs to-night? Bless my soul!
if you had asked me for nothing more than bells, I'd have given them to you. I didn't know that you were so fond of them as all this! But really, seeing how enthusiastically you dance, and especially these innumerable bells with which you are loaded down, I confess that I can hardly mourn over your terrible plight of this morning.--Come, leave your Don Quixote, who looks to me amazingly like a vender of theatre tickets, and come to supper with us. I'll give you as many kisses as you have bells; isn't that a seductive prospect?”
Meanwhile Edmond was saying to the _debardeur_:
”Look you, my dear Amelia, after the quadrille, leave your Roman, who looks to me too much like a _claquer_, and take my arm. We were not at odds this morning, why should we be now? You are wrong to espouse your friend's quarrel. Henriette will make you do all sorts of foolish things; you are too nice a girl to dance with such fellows!”
The young grisette seemed to hesitate; but every time that her friend pa.s.sed her, she said earnestly:
”Don't speak to these fellows! You know what I told you; it's all over between us if you go back to Edmond. My dear girl, women must stand by each other, or else these men will make fools of us.”
”Ah! the pretty bells! Mon Dieu! what a lot of bells!” cried Freluchon, still laughing as he watched Mademoiselle Henriette. ”I have seen many Follies, but none that approached this one in the matter of bells! I say, Edmond, if a poodle wore as many bells as this, he'd be mistaken for a mule. Oh! how tickled I should be to have bells on all my clothes instead of b.u.t.tons!”
The Folly was beside herself with rage; she whispered in her Cupid's ear. The Cupid--Don Quixote was a tall, solidly-built fellow, who had every appearance of being a formidable athlete. He walked up to Freluchon, planted himself directly in front of him, and said in a voice that seemed to issue from a cavern:
”I say, counter-jumper, ain't you about through bothering my partner?
Understand that if you don't leave her in peace, her and her bells, I'll knock off your hat with the top of my boot and send it up to the gallery.”
”Oho! my handsome Cupid, that's a trick I should be delighted to see,”
retorted Freluchon in a mocking tone. ”Really, it would please me immensely if you should succeed.”
”Ah! you want to see it, do you? well, look!”
As he spoke, the Cupid suddenly threw up his leg, expecting to kick Freluchon in the face. But he, by a gesture as quick as thought, seized the leg in its pa.s.sage, and grasping the ankle in his right hand, squeezed it so hard that the Cupid made a horrible grimace and cried:
”Ten thousand million milliards! Let me go, you hurt me, you squeeze too hard! Let me go, I say!”
”If you had struck my face with your foot, wouldn't you have hurt me, you second-hand Cupid?”
”Look here! just let him go this minute, will you!” observed the gentleman dressed as a Roman, approaching Freluchon with uplifted arm, while the latter still held the Cupid by the leg.
But the little fellow, with his left hand, struck his new adversary a blow that sent him reeling backward; there the Roman fell in with Edmond, who gave him an additional push, while Freluchon suddenly released the Cupid's leg with a violent jerk, so that he fell on his back among the dancers.
Thereupon there was a great outcry on all sides, and, as usually happens, the police appeared on the scene and ordered the combatants to leave the ball-room with them, to explain their conduct elsewhere.
Mesdemoiselles Henriette and Amelia took advantage of the moment when the young men were surrounded to glide among the dancers and disappear.
This scene had taken place almost in front of the box in which the pearl-gray domino and her friend Mademoiselle Helose were seated.
A few moments earlier, a little blue domino, the same who had questioned and mystified Edmond, had come to report to the fair Thelenie the result of her conversation with the young man. But when she saw the man she was looking for talking with the little _debardeur_, and observed the quarrel that followed their conversation, Thelenie at once divined that the woman disguised as a _debardeur_ was the woman for whose sake the man she loved had come to the ball.
Having watched with some anxiety the brief scrimmage which took place during the quadrille, she rose hurriedly and left the box, muttering: