Penetrating the crowd which surrounded him, Moessard--the handsome Moessard, in a sky-blue cravat, pale and bloated like a white embodiment of disease, and pinched at the waist in a fine frock-coat--seeing that the Nabob, after having gone twenty times round the hall of sculpture, was making for the door, dashed forward, and passing his arm through his, said: “You are taking me with you, you know.” Especially of late, since the time of the election, he had assumed, in the establishment of the Place Vendome, an authority almost equal to that of Monpavon, but more impudent; for, in point of impudence, the Queen’s lover was without his equal on the pavement that stretches from the Rue Drouot to the Madeleine. This time he had gone too far. The muscular arm which he pressed was shaken violently, and the Nabob answered very dryly: “I am sorry, _mon cher_, but I have not a place to offer you.” No place in a carriage that was as big as a house, and which five of them had come in! Moessard gazed at him in stupefaction. “I had, however, a few words to say to you which are very urgent. With regard to the subject of my note--you received it, did you not?” “Certainly; and M. de Gery should have sent you a reply this very morning. What you ask is impossible. Twenty thousand francs! _Tonnerre de Dieu!_ You go at a fine rate!” “Still, it seems to me that my services--” stammered the beauty-man. “Have been amply paid for. That is how it seems to me also. Two hundred thousand francs in five months! We will draw the line there, if you please. Your teeth are long, young man; you will have to file them down a little.” They exchanged these words as they walked, pushed forward by the surging wave of the people going out. Moessard stopped: “That is your last word?” The Nabob hesitated for a moment, seized by a presentiment as he looked at that pale, evil mouth; then he remembered the promise which he had given to his friend: “That is my last word.” “Very well! We shall see,” said the handsome Moessard, whose switch-cane cut the air with the hiss of a viper; and, turning on his heel, he made off with great strides, like a man who is expected somewhere on very urgent business. Jansoulet continued his triumphal progress. That day much more would have been required to upset the equilibrium of his happiness; on the contrary, he felt himself relieved by the so-quickly achieved fulfilment of his purpose. The immense vestibule was thronged by a dense crowd of people whom the approach of the hour of closing was bringing out, but whom one of those sudden showers, which seem inseparable from the opening of the _Salon_, kept waiting beneath the porch, with its floor beaten down and sandy like the entrance to the circus where the young dandies strut about. The scene that met the eye was curious, and very Parisian.