is how it seems to me also. Two hundred
thousand francs in five months! We will draw the line there, if you
please. Your teeth are long, young man; you will have to file them down
a little."

They exchanged these words as they walked, pushed forward by the surging
wave of the people going out. Moessard stopped:

"That is your last word?"

The Nabob hesitated for a moment, seized by a presentiment as he looked
at that pale, evil mouth; then he remembered the promise which he had
given to his friend:

"That is my last word."

"Very well! We shall see," said the handsome Moessard, whose switch-cane
cut the air with the hiss of a viper; and, turning on his heel, he made
off with great strides, like a man who is expected somewhere on very
urgent business.

Jansoulet continued his triumphal progress. That day much more would
have been required to upset the equilibrium of his happiness; on the
contrary, he felt himself relieved by the so-quickly achieved fulfilment
of his purpose.

The immense vestibule was thronged by a dense crowd of people whom the
approach of the hour of closing was bringing out, but whom one of those
sudden showers, which seem inseparable from the opening of the _Salon_,
kept waiting beneath the porch, with its floor beaten down and sandy
like the entrance to the circus where the young dandies strut about. The
scene that met the eye was curious, and very Parisian.

Outside, great rays of sunshine traversing the rain, attaching to
its limpid beads those sharp and brilliant blades which justify the
proverbial saying, "It rains halberds"; the young greenery of the
Champs-Elysees, the clumps of rhododendrons, rustling and wet, the
carriages ranged in the avenue, the mackintosh capes of the coachmen,
all the splendid harness-trappings of the horses receiving from the
rain and the sunbeams an added richness and effect, and blue everywhere
looming out, the blue of a sky which is about to smile in the interval
between two downpours.

Within, laughter, gossip, greetings, impatience, skirts held up, satins
bulging out above the delicate folds of frills, of lace, of flounces
gathered up in the hands of their wearers in heavy, terribly frayed
bundles. Then, to unite the two sides of the picture, these prisoners
framed in by the vaulted ceiling of the porch and in the gloom of its
shadow, with the immense background in brilliant light, footmen running
beneath umbrellas, crying out names of coachmen or of m