o perfectly the ideal of the shopkeeper imagination, that
magnificent shepherd of the desert, who addressed lions with such an air
of authority and tended his flocks in full evening dress. And so, despite
their bourgeois bearing, their modest costumes and their expressionless
shop-girl smiles, all those women, made up their little mouths to be
caught by the hook of sentiment, and cast languishing glances upon the
singer. It was truly comical to see that glance at the platform suddenly
change and become contemptuous and fierce as it fell upon the husband,
the poor husband tranquilly drinking a glass of beer opposite his wife:
"You would never be capable of doing sentry duty in the very teeth of
lions, and in a black coat too, and with yellow gloves!"

And the husband's eye seemed to reply:

"Ah! 'dame', yes, he's quite a dashing buck, that fellow."

Being decidedly indifferent to heroism of that stamp, Risler and
Sigismond were drinking their beer without paying much attention to the
music, when, at the end of the song, amid the applause and cries and
uproar that followed it, Pere Planus uttered an exclamation:

"Why, that is odd; one would say--but no, I'm not mistaken. It is he,
it's Delobelle!"

It was, in fact, the illustrious actor, whom he had discovered in the
front row near the platform. His gray head was turned partly away from
them. He was leaning carelessly against a pillar, hat in hand, in his
grand make-up as leading man: dazzlingly white linen, hair curled with
the tongs, black coat with a camellia in the buttonhole, like the ribbon
of an order. He glanced at the crowd from time to time with a patronizing
air: but his eyes were most frequently turned toward the platform, with
encouraging little gestures and smiles and pretended applause, addressed
to some one whom Pere Planus could not see from his seat.

There was nothing very extraordinary in the presence of the illustrious
Delobelle at a cafe concert, as he spent all his evenings away from home;
and yet the old cashier felt vaguely disturbed, especially when he
discovered in the same row a blue cape and a pair of steely eyes. It was
Madame Dobson, the sentimental singing-teacher. The conjunction of those
two faces amid the pipe-smoke and the confusion of the crowd, produced
upon Sigismond the effect of two ghosts evoked by a bad dream. He was
afraid for his friend, without knowing exactly why; and suddenly it
occurred to him to take him away.

"Le