with anecdotes of artists and pretty women.

In his prosperous days he had built country villas for actresses
and attended many a joyous house-warming, the fun and frolic of
which were still fresh in the light-hearted veteran's memory. He
had long ceased to care who heard him, and primed with maraschino,
he would unfold his reminiscences like some sumptuous tapestry
gone to tatters. The bookseller's son, meeting an artist for the
first time, listened to the old Bohemian with rapt enthusiasm.
All these forgotten celebrities, or half-celebrities, all these
old young beauties of whom Théroulde spoke, came to life again
for him, fascinated him with an unexpected charm and a piquant
sense of familiarity. Servien pictured them as he had seen them
represented in the old foxed lithographs that litter the second-hand
bookstalls along the _Quais_, wearing the hair in flat bandeaux
with a jewel on a gold chain in the middle of the forehead, or
else in heavy ringlets _à l'Anglaise_ brushing the cheeks. Obsessed
by his one idea, he endeavoured to recall one who seemed so well
acquainted with ladies of the stage to the present day. He spoke
of tragedy, but Théroulde said he thought that sort of plays
ridiculous, and repeated a number of parodies. Jean mentioned
Gabrielle T----.

"T----," exclaimed the artist-architect; "I knew her mother well."

Never in all his life had Jean heard a sentence that interested
him so profoundly.

"I knew her in 1842," Théroulde went on, "at Nantes, where she
created fourteen rôles in six weeks. And folks imagine actresses