came here to study aestheticism between the acts.

All members of the different regimes seemed to be fraternizing in
ironical promiscuousness here, and Vaudrey in a whisper drew Granet's
attention to this. Old beaux of the time of the Empire, with dyed and
waxed moustaches, with dyed or grizzled hair flattened on their temples,
their flabby cheeks cut across by stiff collars as jelly is cut by a
knife, were hobnobbing, fat and lean, with young fops of the Republic,
who with their sharp eyes, wide-open nostrils, their cheeks covered with
brown or flaxen down, their hair carefully brushed, or already bald,
seemed quite surprised to find themselves in such a place, and chattered
and cackled among themselves like beardless conscripts, perverted and
immoral but with some scruples still remaining and less cunning than
these well-dressed old roues standing firmly at their posts like
veterans.

"The licentiates and the pensioners," whispered Vaudrey.

"You have a quickness of sight quite Parisian, your Excellency,"
returned Granet.

"There are Parisians in the Provinces, my dear Granet," replied Sulpice
with a heightened complexion, his blood flowing more rapidly than usual,
due to emotions at once novel and gay.

"Ah! your Excellency," exclaimed a fat, animated man with hair and
whiskers of quite snowy whiteness, and smiling as he spoke, "what in the
world brought you here?"

He approached Vaudrey, bowing but not at all obsequiously, with the air
of good humor due to a combination of wealth and embonpoint. Fat and
rich, in perfect health, and carrying his sixty years with the
lightness of forty, Molina--Molina the "Tumbler" as he was
nicknamed--spent his afternoons on the Bourse and his evenings in the
greenroom of the ballet.

He had a small interest in the theatre, but a large one in the
coryphees, in a paternal way, his white hair giving him the right to be
respected and his crowns the right to respect nothing. Beginning life
very low down, and now enjoying a lofty position, the fat Molina haunted
the Bourse and the greenroom of the Opera. He glutted himself with all
the earliest delicacies of the season, like a man who when young, has
not always had enough to satisfy hunger.

Pictures that were famous, women of fashion, statues of marble and fair
flesh, he must have them all. He collected, without any taste whatever,
costly paintings, rare objects; he bought without love, girls who were
not wholly mercenary. At a