occupant of the box.

At the end of the second act, however, Lissac suddenly caught sight of
Vaudrey's smiling countenance beside Granet's waxed moustaches in the
manager's box.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "there is Vaudrey!"

Madame Marsy, however, had already caught sight of him. She turned her
opera-glass upon the new Cabinet Minister, whose carefully arranged
blonde beard was parted in the middle and spread out in two light tufts
over his white necktie, his silky moustaches turned jauntily upwards
against his fleshy cheeks. Sabine, continuing to look at the newcomer
through her glass, saw as he moved within the shadow of the box, this
man of forty, with a very agreeable and still youthful face, and as he
leaned over the edge of the box to look at the audience, she noted that
he had a slight bald spot on the top of his skull between the fair tufts
that adorned the sides of his head.

"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, "I thought that he was a dark man."

"No, no," answered Lissac, "on the contrary, he was a fair, handsome
youth when we both studied law here in Paris together."

Madame Marsy, as if she had been touched by an electric spark, turned
quickly round on her chair to look at Guy, displaying to him as she did
so, a lovely face, surmounting the most beautiful shoulders imaginable.

"What! you know the minister so intimately?"

"Very intimately."

"Then, my dear Lissac, you can do me the greatest favor. No, I do not
ask you to do it, I insist on it."

Over the pretty Andalusian features of Madame Gerson, a mocking smile
played.

"I have guessed it," she exclaimed.

"And so have I," said Lissac. "You wish me to present the new Minister
of the Interior to you? You have a friend you want appointed to a
prefecture."

"Not at all. I only want him to take Pichereau's place at my reception.
My dear Lissac, my kind Lissac," she continued in dulcet tones, and
clasping her little gloved hands entreatingly, like a child begging for
a toy, "persuade Monsieur Vaudrey to accept this invitation of mine and
you will be a love, you understand, Lissac, a love!"

But Guy had already risen and with a touch of his thumb snapping out his
crush hat, he opened the door of the box, saying to Sabine as he did so:

"Take notice that I ask nothing in return for this favor!"

Madame Marsy began to laugh.

"Ah!" she cried, "that is discreet, but I am willing to subscribe to any
condition!"

"Selika is cold beside you," said Liss