“I am,” continued the strolling-player, “I am, sir, an artist, and I have permitted myself to interrupt you on an affair of business. To-night I give a trifling musical entertainment at the Café of the Triumphs of the Plough—permit me to offer you this little programme—and I have come to ask you for the necessary authorisation.” At the word “artist,” the Commissary had replaced his hat with the air of a person who, having condescended too far, should suddenly remember the duties of his rank. “Go, go,” said he, “I am busy—I am measuring butter.” “Heathen Jew!” thought Léon. “Permit me, sir,” he resumed aloud. “I have gone six times already—” “Put up your bills if you choose,” interrupted the Commissary. “In an hour or so I will examine your papers at the office. But now go; I am busy.” “Measuring butter!” thought Berthelini. “Oh, France, and it is for this that we made ’93!” The preparations were soon made; the bills posted, programmes laid on the dinner-table of every hotel in the town, and a stage erected at one end of the Café of the Triumphs of the Plough; but when Léon returned to the office, the Commissary was once more abroad. “He is like Madame Benoîton,” thought Léon, “Fichu Commissaire!” And just then he met the man face to face. “Here, sir,” said he, “are my papers. Will you be pleased to verify?” But the Commissary was now intent upon dinner. “No use,” he replied, “no use; I am busy; I am quite satisfied. Give your entertainment.” And he hurried on. “Fichu Commissaire!” thought Léon. CHAPTER II The audience was pretty large; and the proprietor of the café made a good thing of it in beer. But the Berthelinis exerted themselves in vain. Léon was radiant in velveteen; he had a rakish way of smoking a cigarette between his songs that was worth money in itself; he underlined his comic points, so that the dullest numskull in Castel-le-Gâchis had a notion when to laugh; and he handled his guitar in a manner worthy of himself. Indeed his play with that instrument was as good as a whole romantic drama; it was so dashing, so florid, and so cavalier. Elvira, on the other hand, sang her patriotic and romantic songs with more than usual expression; her voice had charm and plangency; and as Léon looked at her, in her low-bodied maroon dress, with her arms bare to the shoulder, and a red flower set provocatively in her corset, he repeated to himself for the many hundredth time that she was one of the loveliest creatures in the world of women.