d by alcohol,
ready to make any conquest; and they began to deliberate how to spend
the evening, Bertin mentioning the Cirque, Rocdiane the Hippodrome,
Maldant the Eden, and Landa the Folies-Bergere, when a light and distant
sound of the tuning of violins reached their ears.

"Ah, there is music at the club to-day, it seems," said Rocdiane.

"Yes," Bertin replied. "Shall we listen for ten minutes before going
out?"

"Agreed."

They crossed a salon, a billiard-room, a card-room, and finally reached
a sort of box over the gallery of the musicians. Four gentlemen,
ensconced in armchairs, were waiting there already, in easy attitudes,
while below, among rows of empty seats, a dozen others were chatting,
sitting or standing.

The conductor tapped his desk with his bow; the music began.

Olivier adored music as an opium-eater adores opium. It made him dream.

As soon as the sonorous wave from the instruments reached him he felt
himself borne away in a sort of nervous intoxication, which thrilled
body and mind indescribably. His imagination ran riot, made drunk
by melody, and carried him along through sweet dreams and charming
reveries. With closed eyes, legs crossed, and folded arms, he listened
to the strains, and gave himself up to the visions that passed before
his eyes and into his mind.

The orchestra was playing one of Haydn's symphonies, and when Bertin's
eyelids drooped over his eyes, he saw again the Bois, the crowd of
carriages around him, and facing him in the landau the Countess and her
daughter. He heard their voices, followed their words, felt the movement
of the carriage, inhaled the air, filled with the odor of young leaves.

Three times, his neighbor, speaking to him, interrupted this vision,
which three times he began again, as the rolling of the vessel seems to
continue when, after crossing the ocean, one lies motionless in bed.

Then it extended itself to a long voyage, with the two women always
seated before him, sometimes on the railway, again at the table
of strange hotels. During the whole execution of the symphony they
accompanied him, as if, while driving with him in the sunshine, they had
left the image of their two faces imprinted on his vision.

Silence followed; then came a noise of seats being moved and chattering
of voices, which dispelled this vapor of a dream, and he perceived,
dozing around him, his four friends, relaxed from a listening attitude
to the comfortable posture of sl