“No!” he thundered in a voice which filled the room. “_Nom de dieu!_ No!” And Ventrillon was himself again. “A chair!” he shouted. “Somebody find me a chair!” Nobody knew what was going to happen next, but everybody was ready and delighted to do anything which might promote its happening. From somewhere a chair was passed over the heads of the crowd. Ventrillon mounted upon it. For a moment he paused. The beauty of his young face and the verve of his pose commanded a spontaneous burst of applause; but as he opened his mouth to speak, the noise died quickly into breathless silence. “_Messieurs et ’dames_,” he cried, “Regard me this hat! There is none other like it. Never has such a thing happened before, and never will it happen again. Here is the unique hat crushed by the umbrella of the great Belletaille, and merely to own it is to render yourself famous. Now attend to this extraordinary fact! I, Odillon Ventrillon, stand here upon this chair, willing to part with this treasure. It is incredible, but, _messieurs et ’dames_, how much am I bid?” This turn of affairs was not banal; it was not at all banal. And it was perfectly true that the shapeless hat which Ventrillon was offering was already historic. It was on a par with the shoes of Catherine de’ Medici in the Musée de Cluny. The highest bidder would be the envied of _tout Paris_. “Six hundred francs,” piped the tenor of the blond youth, breaking the silence. “A thousand francs,” cried an extravagantly dressed South American, enjoying himself hugely. There was a burst of applause. “Ah, no, monsieur,” regretted Ventrillon; “there will be higher bids than that.” “Two thousand,” abruptly announced an ambitious lady, wearing pink pearls, from the midst of a group of her three daughters dressed exactly alike in yellow cotton. “Only _two thousand francs_!” shouted Ventrillon. “Madame, you do yourself the injustice of underestimating its value.” “Two thousand, five hundred,” recklessly screamed the blond youth. The ambitious lady turned pale. “O _Maman_,” cried the eldest of her three daughters, “bid again! We are so rich, and he is so beautiful!” “Yes, _Maman_!” urged the other two, breathlessly. A ripple of amusement spread through the crowd. “Two thousand, five hundred, and seventy-five,” announced that lady with excessive poise, and switched a superior smile over the entire assembly. But the bidding became general, and little by little the price went up. The hat was now the sensation of Paris; every franc bid increased the sensation; and _tout Paris_, which lives on sensation, bid on. Then entered the lists a modest little gentleman with a pince-nez, a _nouveau riche_ of the war, who felt himself intruding wherever he went. His timid voice becoming weaker with every increase until at last it was only a whisper, he began persistently overtopping every bid made. “Four thousand, forty-five,” bid the blond youth. “Four thousand, fifty,” bid the gentleman in the pince-nez.