ors of the Chamber, were re-decocted and reproduced in the corners
of the salon of the Ministry, and around the besieged buffet attacked by
the most ferocious gluttony. _Interpellation_, _Majority_, _New
Cabinet_, _Homogeneous_, _Ministry of the Elections_, _Ballot_, _One Man
Ballot_. Guy went, weary of the conflict, to the room in which the
concert was given and listened to some operatic piece, or watched
between the heads, the hidden profile of some female singer or an actor
and heard the bursts of laughter that greeted the new monologue _The
Telephone_, rendered in a clear voice with the coolness of an English
clown, by a gentleman in a dress coat: _See! I am Monsieur Durand--you
know, Durand--of Meaux?--Exactly--A woman deceives me--How did I learn
it?--By the telephone. My friend Durand--Durand--of Etampes--We are not
related--Emile Durand said to me: Durand, why haven't you a
telephone?--It is true, I hadn't one--Durand--the other
Durand--Durand--of Etampes--has one--Then--_And Lissac, somewhat
listless, left this corner of the salon and stumbled against a group of
men who surrounded an old gentleman much decorated, wearing the _grand
cordon rouge_ crosswise, a yellow ribbon at his neck, who, with the
gravity of an English statesman, said, thrusting his tongue slightly
forward to secure his false teeth from falling:

"I like monologues less than chansonnettes!--I, who address you, have
taken lessons from Levassor."

"Levassor, Your Excellency?" answered in chorus a lot of little
bald-headed young men--diplomats.

"Levassor," replied the old gentleman who was the very celebrated
ambassador of a great foreign power. "Oh! I was famous in the song: _The
Englishman Who Was Seasick_!"

While the little young men smiled, approved and loudly applauded, the
old ambassador to whom the interests of a people were entrusted, hummed
in a low tone, amid the noise of the reception:

"Aoh! aoh! Je suis _melede_,
Bien _melede_! Tres _melede_!"

Guy de Lissac shrugged his shoulders. He had heard a great deal of this
man. This diplomat of the chansonnette evoked his pity. Where was he
then? At Paris or at Brives-la-Gaillarde? At a ball at the Hotel Beauvau
or in some provincial sub-prefecture?

Just before, he had heard Warcolier utter this epic expression:

"If I were minister, I would give fireworks. They are warlike and
inoffensive at the same time!"

The voice of a young man with a Russian accent who talked pol