ave you receiving that fool in your
dressing-room."

Looking at her cards she murmured:

"All the blacks are at the bottom of the pack."

"I say that fool. He is a diplomatist, and nowadays the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs is the refuge of incompetents." Raising his voice, he
continued: "Felicie, for your own sake, as well as for mine, listen to
me!"

"Well, don't shout, then. Mama is asleep."

He continued in muffled tones:

"Just get it into your head that I don't intend that Ligny shall be your
lover."

She raised her spiteful little face, and replied:

"And if he is my lover?"

He moved a step closer to her, raising his chair, gazing at her with the
eye of a madman, and laughing a cracked laugh.

"If he is your lover, he won't be so for long."

And he dropped the chair.

Now she was alarmed. She forced herself to smile.

"You know very well I'm joking!"

She succeeded without much difficulty in making him believe that she had
spoken thus merely to punish him, because he was getting unbearable. He
became calmer. She then informed him that she was tired out, that she
was dropping with sleep. At last he decided to go home. On the landing
he turned, and said:

"Felicie, I advise you, if you wish to avoid a tragedy, not to see Ligny
again."

She cried through the half-open door:

"Knock on the window of the porter's lodge, so that he can let you
out!"

CHAPTER IV

In the dark auditorium large linen sheets protected the balcony and the
boxes. The orchestra was covered with a huge dust-cloth, which, being
turned back at the edges, left room for a few human figures,
indistinctly seen in the gloom: actors, scene-shifters, costumiers,
friends of the manager, mothers and lovers and actresses. Here and there
shone a pair of eyes from the black recesses of the boxes.

They were rehearsing, for the fifty-sixth time, _La Nuit du 23 octobre
1812_, a celebrated drama, dating twenty years back, which had not as
yet been performed in this theatre. The actors knew their parts, and the
following day had been chosen for that last private rehearsal which on
stages less austere than that of the Odeon is known as "the dressmakers'
rehearsal."

Nanteuil had no part in the play. But she had had business at the
theatre that day, and, as she had been informed that Marie-Claire was
execrable in the part of General Malet's wife, she had come to have a
peep at her, concealed in the depths of a box.

The great