"We’re going to hunt up Lady Wathe and Sir Thomas. Take care of Miss Saxham, Count von Herrnung, in case we get separated in the crush.... Don’t forget our programme, Pat. A whiff of Café Concert ... Colette Colin is billed to sing some of her old songs and the very newest of the new ones.... Then we’re coming to the Pavilion de la Danse to see the São Paulo sensation.... La Rivadavia and Herculano, and all the rest of the crowd.... Meet you there.... So long! Mind, you’re not to get lost!" "In London you often hear La Colette," said von Herrnung, as he paid the lean-jawed functionary in the gold-laced light-blue uniform—the usual notice of free entry having vanished from the entrance—and passed with his companion into the gravelled promenade of the open-air concert-hall. "But to-night you will hear no songs of old France, no Chansons Pompadour nor Chansons Crinoline. She comes to this place from her own theatre to oblige an old comrade. There is Nou-Nou in that box with some smart women and the Turk who wears our Prussian Order of the Red Eagle with the Star and Crescent of the Medjidie. He is Youssouf Pasha, the Sultan’s Envoy-Extraordinary. Nou-Nou has brought him to hear La Colette. Shall we not sit here?" "Who is Nou-Nou?" Patrine asked, as she settled her tall, luxuriant person on one of the little green-painted iron chairs. "Who is Nou-Nou?" her companion echoed. "You saw her to-day at Longchamps in her black confection. Everybody was looking.... She is wonderfully _chic_—Nou-Nou! May I be permitted to light a _zigarre_? ..." "Do! ... But—why is she so much the rage? She isn’t even pretty, your Mademoiselle Nou-Nou." Patrine said it with her bright gaze fastened on the famous Impropriety who had paraded under the chestnuts of Longchamps in the sheath of black gauze unlined, save with her own notorious attractions—both irresistible and fatal, judging by their recorded effects upon excitable Parisian _viveurs_ and _gommeux_. She saw a triangular and oddly-crumpled face, rouged high upon the cheek-bones in circular patches, a pair of almost extinguished eyes, indicated by streaks of blue pencil, and caught a sentence screamed at the stout Turk in a voice like a hoarse cockatoo’s. Boldly erect upon the skull adorned by a scanty thatch of lemon-yellow balanced a black feather, long and attenuated as the wearer. Nou-Nou’s stick-like, fleshless arms, the cadaverous and meagre torso unblushingly revealed by the transparent casing of her upper person, might have enthralled a keen student of anatomy. But of feminine charms, in the accepted sense of the word, she possessed not one, it seemed to Patrine. "Do not look at her too hard, or she may send round and invite you to supper," warned the laughing voice of von Herrnung speaking close to her ear. "She has all the vices—the good Nou-Nou!"