"I began to think that Captain Dalrymple had forsworn Paris," said Rachel, still toying with the skeleton dagger. "It is surely a year since I last had this pleasure?" "Nay, Madame, you flatter me," said Dalrymple. "I have been absent only five months." "Then, you see, I have measured your absence by my loss." Dalrymple bowed profoundly. Rachel turned to a young man behind her chair. "Monsieur le Prince," said she, "do you know what is rumored in the _foyer_ of the Francais? That you have offered me your hand!" "I offer you both my hands, in applause, Madame, every night of your performance," replied the gentleman so addressed. She smiled and made a feint at him with the dagger. "Excellent!" said she. "One is not enough for a tragedian But where is Alphonse Karr?" "I have been looking for him all the evening," said a tall man, with an iron-gray beard. "He told me he was coming; but authors are capricious beings--the slaves of the pen." "True; he lives by his pen--others die by it," said Rachel bitterly. "By the way, has any one seen Scribe's new Vaudeville?" "I have," replied a bald little gentleman with a red and green ribbon in his button-hole. "And your verdict?" "The plot is not ill-conceived; but Scribe is only godfather to the piece. It is almost entirely written by Duverger, his _collaborateur_." "The life of a _collaborateur_," said Rachel, "is one long act of self-abnegation. Another takes all the honor--he all the labor. Thus soldiers fall, and their generals reap the glory." "A _collaborateur_," said a cynical-looking man who had not yet spoken, "is a hackney vehicle which one hires on the road to fame, and dismisses at the end of the journey." "Sometimes without paying the fare," added a gentleman who had till now been examining, weapon by weapon, all the curious poignards and pistols on the table. "But what is this singular ornament?" And he held up what appeared to be a large bone, perforated in several places. The bald little man with the red and green ribbon uttered an exclamation of surprise. "It is a tibia!" said he, examining it through his double eye-glass. "And what of that?" laughed Rachel. "Is it so wonderful to find one leg in a collection of arms? However, not to puzzle you, I may as well acknowledge that it was brought to me from Rome by a learned Italian, and is a curious antique. The Romans made flutes of the leg-bones of their enemies, and this is one of them." "A melodious barbarism!" exclaimed one. "Puts a 'stop,' at all events, to the enemy's flight!" said another. "Almost as good as drinking out of his skull," added a third. "Or as eating him, _tout de bon_," said Rachel. "There must be a certain satisfaction in cannibalism," observed the cynic who had spoken before. "There are people upon whom one would sup willingly." "As, for instance, critics, who are our natural enemies," said Rachel. "_C'est à dire_, if critics were not too sour to be eaten."