Meanwhile Edouard and Madame Germeuil strove to restore tranquillity and to bring order out of chaos. Adeline, for her part, could not help laughing, with all the other young women, at Madame Volenville’s attitude, Monsieur Tourte’s face and Monsieur Robineau’s fury. Monsieur Volenville finally left his game of écarté, went to get a carafe of water, and approached his wife, whom he did not recognize, so great was the havoc wrought upon her dress and her face. After taking his pinch of snuff, he relieved his wife of her wreath of roses and began to slap her hands, while Madame Germeuil held a phial of salts under her nose. But nothing availed, nothing had any effect on the benumbed senses of the formidable dancer. Madame Germeuil was at her wit’s end. Monsieur Tourte swore that he would bite Madame Volenville in the arm or somewhere else, if somebody did not instantly remove the burden that was suffocating him, and the auctioneer resorted to his snuff-box in quest of ideas. At that moment Monsieur Robineau was rushing about the ball-room in the guise of a cherub, and feeling angrily under the furniture and even under people’s feet, in search of his wig. He drew near the group surrounding the auctioneer’s unconscious wife; he spied something gray under the bench that supported his late partner and the stout clerk. Instantly he darted forward, pushed aside Monsieur Volenville, who was in front of him, threw himself on his hands and knees, and put his hand between the auctioneer’s legs to grasp the object which he believed to be his dear wig. Monsieur Robineau’s manœuvre was executed so suddenly that Monsieur Volenville lost his balance; as he was stooping forward, he fell almost upon his wife, and the snuff-box, which he had just opened, emptied itself entirely into his loving better half’s nose and mouth. This accident recalled Madame Volenville to life; she sneezed five times in rapid succession, rubbed her eyes, opened her mouth, swallowed a large quantity of snuff, made such horrible faces that they put to flight her husband and all the other persons who were near her, squirmed about and spat violently into the face of Monsieur Robineau, who at that moment withdrew his hand from under the bench and rose, swearing like the damned--who swear a great deal in this world, to say nothing of what they will do when they are roasting in hell like pork pies. And why did Monsieur Robineau swear? Why, reader? Because, instead of putting his hand on his wig, which, as you know, was reposing on the boulevard, the unlucky attorney had seized the tail of a cat, which, vexed at being pulled so violently by a sensitive part, had, in accordance with the custom of its kind, buried its claws in the cruel hand that had grasped it.