er tomorrow. You might easily have got me invited."

Fauchery was at length about to state his reasons when Vandeuvres came
back to tell him:

"It appears it isn't a girl of Foucarmont's. It's that man's flame out
there. She won't be able to come. What a piece of bad luck! But all the
same I've pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he's going to try to
get Louise from the Palais-Royal."

"Is it not true, Monsieur de Vandeuvres," asked Mme Chantereau, raising
her voice, "that Wagner's music was hissed last Sunday?"

"Oh, frightfully, madame," he made answer, coming forward with his usual
exquisite politeness.

Then, as they did not detain him, he moved off and continued whispering
in the journalist's ear:

"I'm going to press some more of them. These young fellows must know
some little ladies."

With that he was observed to accost men and to engage them in
conversation in his usual amiable and smiling way in every corner of
the drawing room. He mixed with the various groups, said something
confidently to everyone and walked away again with a sly wink and a
secret signal or two. It looked as though he were giving out a watchword
in that easy way of his. The news went round; the place of meeting was
announced, while the ladies' sentimental dissertations on music served
to conceal the small, feverish rumor of these recruiting operations.

"No, do not speak of your Germans," Mme Chantereau was saying. "Song is
gaiety; song is light. Have you heard Patti in the Barber of Seville?"

"She was delicious!" murmured Leonide, who strummed none but operatic
airs on her piano.

Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung. When on Tuesdays the number of
visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself. While
directing a footman to clear a round table the countess followed the
Count de Vandeuvres with her eyes. She still smiled that vague smile
which slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as the count passed she
questioned him.

"What ARE you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?"

"What am I plotting, madame?" he answered quietly. "Nothing at all."

"Really! I saw you so busy. Pray, wait, you shall make yourself useful!"

She placed an album in his hands and asked him to put it on the piano.
But he found means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that they would
have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl that winter, and
Maria Blond, the same who had just made her first appearance at the
Folies-Dramatiq