The Count of Plouernel was breakfasting _tête-a-tête_ with a pretty girl of about twenty years--a brunette, lively and laughterful, who had been surnamed Pradeline because of her readiness, at the suppers of which she always was the soul and often the queen also, in improvising upon all imaginable subjects, ditties that the celebrated improviser, whose name she bore with a feminine termination, would surely not have cared to father, but which had at least the redeeming feature of lacking neither in point nor in mirthfulness. The Count of Plouernel, having heard speak of Pradeline, invited her to sup the previous night with him and some of his friends. After the supper, which was prolonged until three in the morning, the right of hospitality for the night had been earned by the girl. After the hospitality came breakfast the following morning. The two companions were, accordingly, at table in a little boudoir fitted out in Louis XV style, and contiguous to the bed chamber. A good fire blazed in the marble-tipped hearth. Thick curtains of light blue damask, covered with roses, softened the glare of the daylight. Flowers filled large porcelain vases. The atmosphere was warm and perfumed. The wines were choice, the dishes toothsome. Pradeline and the Count of Plouernel were doing honor to both. The colonel was a man of about thirty-eight years of age--tall, and at once lithe and robust. His face, though rather haggard, on that morning, was of a species of bold beauty, and strongly betrayed his German or Frankish stock, the characteristic traits of which Tacitus and Caesar frequently described. His hair was light blonde, his moustache long and reddish, his eyes light grey, and his nose hooked like an eagle's beak. Wrapped in a costly morning gown, the Count of Plouernel seemed no less hilarious than the young girl. "Come, Pradeline," said he, pouring out to her a glass of generous old Burgundy wine, "to the health of your lover." "Nonsense! Do you think I keep a lover?" "You are right. To the health of your lovers!" "You don't seem to be jealous, darling!" "And you?" At this question Pradeline nonchalantly opened her red corsage, and clinking her glass with the blade of her knife she answered the Count of Plouernel with an improvisation to the tune then in vogue of _La Rifla_: "For ague-cheeked Sir Fidelity I only have duplicity. When some gay lover pleases me, 'Tis quickly done! He pleases me-- La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla-fla-fla-fla, La rifla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla." "Bravo, my dear!" cried the colonel, laughing boisterously. And joining in chorus with Pradeline, he sang, also clinking his glass with the edge of his knife: "When some gay lover pleases me, 'Tis quickly done! He pleases me. La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla-fla-fla-fla, La rifla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla."