bdued hooting.

XVII

Jupillon promised Germinie not to go to the ball again. But he was just
beginning to make a name for himself at La Brididi, among the low haunts
near the barrier, the _Boule-Noire_, the _Reine-Blanche_ and the
_Ermitage_. He had become one of the dancers who make the guests leave
their seats, who keep a whole roomful of people hanging on the soles of
their boots as they toss them two inches above their heads, and whom the
fair dancers of the locality invite to dance with them and sometimes pay
for their refreshment to that end. The ball to him was not a ball
simply; it was a stage, an audience, popularity, applause, the
flattering murmur of his name among the groups of people, an ovation
accorded to saltatory glory in the glare of the reverberators.

On Sunday he did not go to the _Boule-Noire_; but on the following
Thursday he went there again; and Germinie, seeing plainly enough that
she could not prevent him from going, decided to follow him and to stay
there as long as he did. Sitting at a table in the background, in the
least brilliantly lighted corner of the ball-room, she would follow him
eagerly with her eyes throughout the whole contra-dance; and when it was
at an end, if he held back, she would go and seize him, take him almost
by force from the hands and caresses of the women who persisted in
trying to pull him back, to detain him by wicked wiles.

As they soon came to know her, the insulting remarks in her neighborhood
ceased to be vague and indistinct and muttered under the breath, as at
the first ball. The words were thrown in her face, the laughter spoke
aloud. She was obliged to pass her three hours amid a chorus of derision
that pointed its finger at her, called her by name and cast her age in
her face. At every turn she was forced to submit to the appellation of:
_old woman!_ which the young hussies spat at her over their shoulders as
they passed. But they did at least look at her; often, however, dancing
women invited by Jupillon to drink, and brought by him to the table at
which Germinie was, would sit with their elbows on the table and their
cheeks resting on their hands, drinking the bowl of mulled wine for
which she paid, apparently unaware that there was another woman there,
crowding into her place as if it were unoccupied, and making no reply
when she spoke to them. Germinie could have killed these creatures whom
Jupillon forced her to entertain and who despised