“The Marquise is on the lookout. But I fancy she has her eye on me. She knows I’m very rich and she knows less about the others.
“Her house is the most extraordinary place of the kind that I have ever seen. You meet some very decent fellows there; we’re going ourselves and we shall not be the only ones. As for the women, she has come across, or rather picked out, the choicest fruit on the professional stall. Lord knows where she found them. And she was magnificently inspired to make a point of taking those who had children of their own, daughters for choice. The result is that a greenhorn might think the house was full of honest women!”
They had reached the Avenue of the Champs Élysées. A faint breeze whispered among the leaves, and was now and again wafted against their faces, like the soft breath of a giant fan swinging somewhere in the sky. Mute shadows drifted under the trees, others were visible as dark blots on the benches. And all these shadows spoke in very low tones, as though confiding important or shameful secrets.
“You cannot imagine,” went on Servigny, “what a collection of fancy titles you come across in this rabbit-warren. By the way, I hope you know I’m going to introduce you as Count Saval. Saval by itself would not be at all popular, I assure you.”
“No, damn it, certainly not!” cried his friend. “I’m hanged if anyone is going to think me fool enough to scrape up a comic-opera title even for ‘one night only,’ and for that crowd. With your leave, we’ll cut that out.”
Servigny laughed.
“You old idiot! Why, I’ve been christened the Duc de Servigny. I don’t know how or why it was done. I have just always been the Duc de Servigny; I never made trouble about it. It’s no discomfort. Why, without it I should be utterly looked down on!”
But Saval was not to be persuaded.
“You’re a nobleman, you can carry it off. As for me, I shall remain, for better or worse, the only commoner in the place. That will be my mark of distinctive superiority.”
But Servigny was obstinate.
“I tell you it can’t be done, absolutely cannot be done. It would be positively indecent. You would be like a rag-and-bone man at an assemblage of emperors. Leave it to me; I’ll introduce you as the Viceroy of Upper Mississippi, and no one will be surprised. If you’re going to go in for titles, you might as well do it with an air.”
“No; once more, I tell you I won’t have it.”
“Very well, then. I was a fool really to try persuading you, for I defy you to get in without someone decorating you with a title; it’s like those shops a lady can’t pass without being given a bunch of violets at the doorstep.”
They turned to the right down the Rue de Berri, climbed to the first floor of a fine modern mansion, and left their coats and sticks in the hands of four flunkeys in knee-breeches. The air was heavy with the warm festive odour of flowers, scent, and women; and a ceaseless murmur of voices, loud and confused, came from the crowded rooms beyond.
A tall, upright, solemn, potbellied man, in some sort master of the ceremonies, his face framed in white whiskers, approached the newcomers and, making a short, stiff bow, asked:
“What name, please?”
“Monsieur Saval,” replied Servigny.
Whereupon the man flung open the door and in a loud voice announced to the crowd of guests:
“Monsieur le Duc de Servigny. Monsieur le Baron Saval.”
The first room was full of women. The eye was filled at once by a vast vision of bare bosoms lifting from billows of white lace.
The lady of the house stood talking to three friends; she turned and came forward with stately steps, grace in her bearing and a smile upon her lips.
Her low, narrow forehead was entirely hidden by masses of black, gleaming hair, thick and fleecy, encroaching even on her temples. She was tall, a little too massive, a little too fat, a little overripe, but very handsome, with a warm, heady, and powerful beauty. Her crown of hair, with the large black eyes beneath it, provoked entrancing dreams and made her subtly desirable. Her nose was rather thin, her mouth large and infinitely alluring, made for speech and conquest.
But her liveliest charm lay in her voice. It sprang from her mouth like water from a spring, so easily, so lightly, so well pitched, so clear, that listening to it was sheer physical joy. It thrilled the ear to hear the smooth words pour forth with the sparkling grace of a brook bubbling from the ground, and fascinated the eye to watch the lovely, too-red lips part to give them passage.
She held out her hand to Servigny, who kissed it, and, dropping the fan that hung from a thin chain of wrought gold, she gave her other hand to Saval, saying:
“You are welcome, Baron. My house is always open to any friend of the Duc’s.”
Then she fixed her brilliant eyes on the giant to whom she was being introduced. On her upper lip was a faint smudge of black down, the merest shadow of a moustache, more plainly visible when she spoke. Her scent was delicious, strong and intoxicating, some American or Indian perfume.
But other guests were arriving, marquises, counts, or princes. She turned to Servigny and said, with the graciousness of a mother:
“You will find my daughter in the other room. Enjoy yourselves, gentlemen. The house is yours.”
She left them in order to greet the new arrivals, giving Saval that fugitive smiling glance with which women let men know that they have found favour.
Servigny took his friend’s arm.
“I’ll be your pilot,” he said. “Here, where we are at present, are the women; this is the temple of the Flesh, fresh or otherwise. Bargains as
