"So this is the first time you have been to the gaming-rooms, madame? In that case I shall ask you to let me play as you think best, in case we meet in the rooms.--Good, here is another tunnel.--Do you know what the Americans call this bit of the railway?--Has Miss Marsh not told you, Marchesa?--No?--Well, they call it 'the flute,' because there are only a few holes up above from time to time.--Isn't it pretty? How did you like Egypt, madame?—They say Alexandria is like Marseilles.--But the Marseillais would say they have no mistral.--Hautefeuille, you know my _cocher_, L'Ainé, as they call him?--About a couple of months ago at Cannes--one day when all the villas were rocking--he said to me: 'Do you like the South, Monsieur Marius?'--'Yes,' I replied, 'if it were not for the wind.' '_Hé, pécheire_!' he cried, 'wind! Why, there is never any wind upon this coast, from Marseilles to Nice!' 'What is that?' I asked, pointing to one of the palms on the Croisette, which was so much bent upon one side that it was slipping into the sea. 'Do you call that the wind, Monsieur Marius?' he said; 'why, that is not wind--it is the mistral, which makes Provence so bright and cheerful!'" "No, Corancez is the Italian's real lover," thought Olivier. He had only needed to see Hautefeuille with Andryana a couple of minutes to be quite convinced. She was certainly not the unknown mistress with whom the young man had passed part of the previous night. The evident intimacy existing between her and the Southerner, their pleasure together, the too apparent falsehood she had told, the fascination Corancez's showiness had for her, as well as a host of indications, left no room for doubt. "Yes," he repeated, "there is her lover.--They are worthy of each other. This beautiful, luxuriant woman, who might sell oranges on the Riva dei Schiavoni, is a fitting mate for this handsome chatterbox! Heavens! What an accurate observer he was who said:--'Will you be quiet a minute, Bouches-du-Rhône?'--Just look how complacently Hautefeuille listens to him! He does not seem at all astonished at these people vaunting their adultery in a train side by side with a young married couple. How he has changed!"