Thus some romance is left in old le Roué and old de Mô. They still seek out “Madeline.” They make her presents on New Year’s Day; nor do they ever fail to remember her birthday. Once they offered her an annuity—but whilst expressing her thanks and declaring herself “touched,” she assured her old admirers that she was content with the income she derived from her speculations in flowers and chocolates: although (so she added) she held but a scornful opinion of the modern young worldlings—the young worldlings of the “odious,” “sinister” Republic—who were her customers _chez_ Pichon. And so, attached, by force of memories and by reason of their long, constant gallantry, so attached is “Madeline” to old le Roué, and old de Mô, that when those two valiant old rakes are seized with rheumatism or gout, and are obliged most unwillingly and angrily to lie up, she pays them daily visits; and refreshes and embellishes their rooms with her flowers; and reminds them vivaciously and wittily of the epoch—the wonderful epoch—when all three of them were gay, brilliant ornaments of the Amazing City.... And now, night-time. Behold M. le Roué dining royally, and haunting the _coulisses_ of the Opera, and playing baccarat, with trembling hands, in the Cercle Doré, and entertaining (as we have already recorded) Mesdemoiselles Liane de Luneville and Marguerite de Millefleurs, and the eccentric Mademoiselle Pauline Boum, to supper in a gilded, bemirrored _cabinet particulier_. All this he does long after the innumerable electric advertising devices (Fontain’s Perfumes—Carré’s Gloves—Cherry Brandy of the Maison Joyeux et Fils) have begun to blink and dance on the boulevards; and long after M. le Roué, with his five and seventy years, should have been tucked up in bed—his old brain at rest and his old head enveloped in a night-cap. But M. le Roué declines to return home, M. le Roué refuses to close his dim eyes, until he has visited one of those modern rackety “American” bars—the “High Life,” for instance—where the young worldlings of to-day sit upon high stools, and absorb cocktails, _crème de menthe_ and icy “sherry-cobblers.” And it is wonderful to witness frail, shaky M. le Roué climb up on to his stool; and the spectacle becomes still more wonderful when apoplectic, gouty old de Mô laboriously follows his example. Thus M. le Roué goes to the “High Life,” goes here, there and everywhere, like the gayest and most adventurous of young worldlings. And wherever he goes, the waiters and attendants exclaim: “Monsieur is astonishing!” and “Monsieur is extraordinary!” and their flattery pleases the old gentleman. “Pas mal, pas mal,” he replies in his thin, feeble voice, and with his leer. However, there come times when M. le Roué is particularly shaky and shrunken, when he looks peculiarly superannuated and frail; and at these times he resents the obsequious compliments of the waiters.