Opposite him, very stiff in her green gown, upon which spangles of green steel glittered with a phosphorescent brilliancy, and wearing an aigrette of red feathers in her hair, Mme. Charrigaud bent to right and to left, and smiled, without ever a word,--a smile so eternally motionless that it seemed painted on her lips. "What a goose!" said Charrigaud to himself; "what a stupid and ridiculous woman! And what a carnival costume! To-morrow, because of her, we shall be the laughing-stock of Parisian society." And on her side Mme. Charrigaud, beneath the fixity of her smile, was thinking: "What an idiot this Victor is! And what a bad appearance he makes! To-morrow we shall catch it on account of his pellets." The topic of correctness in society being exhausted, there followed an embarrassing lull in the conversation, which Kimberly broke by telling of his last trip to London. "Yes," said he, "I spent in London an intoxicating week; and, ladies, I witnessed a unique thing. I attended a ritual dinner which the great poet, John-Giotto Farfadetti, gave to some friends to celebrate his betrothal to the wife of his dear Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton." "How exquisite that must have been!" minced the Countess Fergus. "You cannot imagine," answered Kimberly, whose look and gestures, and even the orchid that adorned the button-hole of his coat, expressed the most ardent ecstasy. And he continued: "Fancy, my dear friends, in a large hall, whose blue walls, though scarcely blue, are decorated with white peacocks and gold peacocks,--fancy a table of jade, inconceivably and delightfully oval. On the table some cups, in which mauve and yellow bonbons harmonized, and in the centre a basin of pink crystal, filled with kanaka preserves ... and nothing more. Draped in long white robes, we slowly passed in turn before the table, and we took, upon the points of our golden knives, a little of these mysterious preserves, which then we carried to our lips ... and nothing more." "Oh! I find that moving," sighed the countess, "so moving!" "You cannot imagine. But the most moving thing--a thing that really transformed this emotion into a painful laceration of our souls--was when Frederic-Ossian Pinggleton sang the poem of the betrothal of his wife and his friend. I know nothing more tragically, more superhumanly beautiful." "Oh! I beg of you," implored the Countess Fergus, "repeat this prodigious poem for our benefit, Kimberly." "The poem, alas! I cannot. I can give you only its essence." "That's it, that's it! The essence."