It was as though the parts had been allotted beforehand. Two groups were formed: the audience and the performers. Gilberte found herself seated between Mme. Charmeron, who was famed for her persistent dumbness and distinction, and M. Simare junior, the best-dressed and most dissipated young man in the town. He went twice a year to Paris and was looked upon as a master of wit and satire. As a matter of fact, he started chaffing at once: “Ah, the overture of _The Bronze Horse_ by a Demoiselle Charmeron and a Demoiselle Bottentuit! That’s the invariable first piece here. Ten years ago, it seems, it was played by Mme. Bottentuit and her sister, Mme. Charmeron; to-day, their heiresses are following in their footsteps. Observe how beautifully the two young ladies hold themselves. Their ambition is to realize the back view of a pair of sticks. They practise it for four hours every morning....” When the last chords had been banged out, he continued: “Now, the little Charmeron girl will move off on the right, taking her stool with her, and the little Bottentuit girl will slide to the middle of the key-board. From the performer that she was she will become the accompanist of papa. There, what did I tell you? It’s all settled beforehand! Look out! Maître Bottentuit, the attorney, the drawing-room howler, is going off, going off, I say.... I defy you to make out a word he sings.... People have been trying for ten years; and no one has ever succeeded.... Excuse me ... got to stop ... can’t hear myself talk ... the wretch is bawling too loud....” After Maître Bottentuit, Mlle. du Bocage--a little old maid whose mouth opened so wide that you could have dived down her throat--struck up the duet in _Mireille_, supported by M. Lartiste the elder, an old man, with a clean-shaven face, whose mouth, on the contrary, remained hermetically closed, with the results that both parts of the duet--not only the cooing roulades of the woman, but also the frenzied appeals of the man, his prayers, his promises, his metamorphoses into a bird and a butterfly--seemed to issue from the yawning throat of Mireille, that gulf where you saw a host of little pieces of mechanism madly at work. The loving couple had a great success. “M. le Hourteulx next,” said young Simare. “Our millionaire is going to sing for you, madame, for, you know, he has been smitten with a passion since he saw you in church; a passion shared, of course, by his enemy Beaufrelant, for the two men always form the same wishes, so as to have the pleasure of thwarting each other. It’s a long-standing hatred: le Hourteulx was married once; and it seems that Beaufrelant....” Simare bent over towards Gilberte and whispered a few words in her ear. Young Lartiste, who owed his fame as a great actor to his name and to his name alone, was reserved for the end. “No one recites like young Lartiste,” people said at Domfront.