and telling each other about their private
affairs--about a dispute with a coachman, a projected picnic and
innumerable complex stories of lovers stolen or restored. Meanwhile a
young man near Georges, having evinced a desire to kiss Lea de Horn,
received a sharp rap, accompanied by a "Look here, you, let me go!"
which was spoken in a tone of fine indignation; and Georges, who was
now very tipsy and greatly excited by the sight of Nana, hesitated about
carrying out a project which he had been gravely maturing. He had been
planning, indeed, to get under the table on all fours and to go and
crouch at Nana's feet like a little dog. Nobody would have seen him, and
he would have stayed there in the quietest way. But when at Lea's urgent
request Daguenet had told the young man to sit still, Georges all at
once felt grievously chagrined, as though the reproof had just been
leveled at him. Oh, it was all silly and slow, and there was nothing
worth living for! Daguenet, nevertheless, began chaffing and obliged him
to swallow a big glassful of water, asking him at the same time what
he would do if he were to find himself alone with a woman, seeing that
three glasses of champagne were able to bowl him over.

"Why, in Havana," resumed Foucarmont, "they make a spirit with a certain
wild berry; you think you're swallowing fire! Well now, one evening I
drank more than a liter of it, and it didn't hurt me one bit. Better
than that, another time when we were on the coast of Coromandel some
savages gave us I don't know what sort of a mixture of pepper and
vitriol, and that didn't hurt me one bit. I can't make myself drunk."

For some moments past La Faloise's face opposite had excited his
displeasure. He began sneering and giving vent to disagreeable
witticisms. La Faloise, whose brain was in a whirl, was behaving very
restlessly and squeezing up against Gaga. But at length he became the
victim of anxiety; somebody had just taken his handkerchief, and with
drunken obstinacy he demanded it back again, asked his neighbors about
it, stooped down in order to look under the chairs and the guests' feet.
And when Gaga did her best to quiet him:

"It's a nuisance," he murmured, "my initials and my coronet are worked
in the corner. They may compromise me."

"I say, Monsieur Falamoise, Lamafoise, Mafaloise!" shouted Foucarmont,
who thought it exceedingly witty thus to disfigure the young man's name
ad infinitum.

But La Faloise grew wroth and