"I said to her: 'You have a charming costume,' and she answered--" "'I have a much prettier one underneath,'" quietly added Monsieur de Saffré. "It's old, my dear fellow, very old." Monsieur Hupel de la Noue looked at him in consternation. The remark was old, and he had meant to sift his commentary on the naivete of this cry from the heart! "Old, as old as the world," repeated the secretary. "Madame d'Espanet has said it twice already at the Tuileries." This was the last blow. After that the prefect no longer cared a fig for the minister or the whole drawing-room. He was proceeding towards the platform when the piano began a prelude, in a saddened tone, with trembling notes which seemed to weep; then the complaint expanded, dragged on at length, and the curtains parted. Monsieur Hupel de la Noue, who had already half disappeared, returned into the drawing-room on hearing the slight grating of the rings. He was pale, exasperated; he made a violent effort to restrain himself from apostrophizing the ladies. What! they had taken up their positions unassisted! It must be that little d'Espanet who had fomented a plot to hasten the change of costume and dispense with him. That wasn't it, that was worth nothing at all! He returned, mumbling indistinct words. He looked on to the platform, shrugging his shoulders, and murmuring: "The nymph Echo is too near the edge--And that leg of handsome Narcissus, nothing noble in its attitude, nothing noble at all." Mignon and Charrier, who had approached him to hear "the explanation," ventured to ask "what the young man and the young woman were doing there, lying on the ground." But he did not answer, he refused to explain any more of his poem; and as the contractors insisted: "Why," he said, "it no longer concerns me, since the ladies set themselves in position without me!"