The masters, however, were not so contented as we were. When I reached my post, at nine o'clock, I was struck by the anxious, nervous face of the Nabob, whom I spied walking with M. de Gery through the brilliantly-lighted, empty salons, talking earnestly and gesticulating wildly. "I will kill him," he said, "I will kill him." The other tried to soothe him, then Madame appeared and they talked about something else. A magnificent figure of a woman, that Levantine, twice as powerful as I am, and dazzling to look at with her diamond diadem, the jewels that covered her huge white shoulders, her back as round as her breast, her waist squeezed into a breastplate of greenish gold, which extended in long stripes the whole length of her skirt. I never saw anything so rich, so imposing. She was like one of those beautiful white elephants with towers on their backs that we read about in books of travel. When she walked, clinging painfully to the furniture, all her flesh shook and her ornaments jangled like old iron. With it all a very shrill little voice and a beautiful red face which a little negro boy kept fanning all the time with a fan of white feathers as big as a peacock's tail. It was the first time that that indolent savage had made her appearance in Parisian society, and M. Jansoulet seemed very proud and very happy that she had consented to preside at his fete: a task that involved no great labor on the lady's part, however, for, leaving her husband to receive his guests in the first salon, she went and stretched herself out on the couch in the little Japanese salon, wedged between two piles of cushions, and perfectly motionless, so that you could see her in the distance, at the end of the line of salons, like an idol, under the great fan which her negro waved with a clocklike motion, as if by machinery. These foreigners have the brass for you! The Nabob's irritation had impressed me all the same, and as I saw his valet going downstairs four steps at a time, I caught him on the wing and whispered in his ear: "What the deuce is the matter with your governor, Monsieur Noel?" "It's the article in the _Messager_," he replied, and I had to abandon the idea of finding out anything more for the moment, as a loud ring at the bell announced the arrival of the first carriage, and it was followed by a multitude of others.