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.