Old De Nani ate his oysters, glancing sideways, this way and that way, at the triumvirate of talent, as if to say, “Who the devil are you?” and “Who the devil are you?” Pelisson groaned and grunted; he was writing the beginning of a leading article in that wonderful head of his, where a clerk always sat taking notes in indelible ink, an artist beside him taking sketch-portraits of everyone and pictures of everything. Toto looked bored and the dinner unpromising, till suddenly Struve broke the ice by choking over his soup. With the laughter, conversation broke out and babbled. The fish was served, and one might have fancied twenty people were talking, Toto’s voice raised shrill against Gaillard’s periods, and the trumpet tones of Pelisson dominating all like the notes of a sax-horn. “I don’t believe in God, you say?” said Gaillard, savagely attacking a fillet of sole. “Well, perhaps not, according to your ideas; according to mine, I have the pleasure of worshiping a god. He has fifty-three names. The Chinese call him Fot; benighted Asiatic tribes, Buddha; Kempfer, by the way, wrote it——” “No, no, no!” cried Toto. “No theology, or I’ll turn M. le Marquis de Nani upon you, and he’ll eat you up, for he’s an atheist.” “An atheist!” cried Pelisson, turning his broad face on De Nani. “I thought they were all dead. M. de Nani, beware! They’ll kill you and stuff you for the Musée Carnavalet.” “I’ll stuff him,” shouted Toto, imagining himself a wit. “What shall it be, Marquis—bran, sawdust?” “Ortolans,” answered De Nani, too busily engaged in stuffing himself to find passage for more than one word. “By my soul, the Marquis is right!” cried the great newspaper man. “An atheist stuffed with ortolans is all they want to complete their collection now they have crowned their idiocy by buying ——’s collection of bronzes.” “Talking of crowns,” came the insidious lisp of Struve, “have you heard the news? Willy Hohenzollern has—guess what.” “Written a farce?” “Painted his face?” “Become a telegraph clerk?” “Gone mad,” replied Struve. “What’s his madness?” roared Pelisson, glaring at this opposition newsman. “They say he fancies himself an Emperor.” “Throw flowers over him to cool him,” cried Toto, snatching a rose out of a dish and flinging it in Struve’s face as the _entrée_ was brought in. De Nani listened to the random conversation as he ate, or at least seemed to; a dull flush was apparent under the paint on his face. Each guest had his own attendant, and the service was conducted with the precision of mechanism. The glass of the Marquis was always full, yet he was continually emptying it; like the old gentleman at M. de Richelieu’s feast, he felt his teeth growing again, and for a little while, under the influence of the powerful Rhone wines, his youth seemed to return.