who with their sharp eyes, wide-open nostrils, their cheeks covered with
brown or flaxen down, their hair carefully brushed, or already bald,
seemed quite surprised to find themselves in such a place, and chattered
and cackled among themselves like beardless conscripts, perverted and
immoral but with some scruples still remaining and less cunning than
these well-dressed old roués standing firmly at their posts like
veterans.

"The licentiates and the pensioners," whispered Vaudrey.

"You have a quickness of sight quite Parisian, your Excellency,"
returned Granet.

"There are Parisians in the Provinces, my dear Granet," replied Sulpice
with a heightened complexion, his blood flowing more rapidly than usual,
due to emotions at once novel and gay.

"Ah! your Excellency," exclaimed a fat, animated man with hair and
whiskers of quite snowy whiteness, and smiling as he spoke, "what in the
world brought you here?"

He approached Vaudrey, bowing but not at all obsequiously, with the air
of good humor due to a combination of wealth and embonpoint. Fat and
rich, in perfect health, and carrying his sixty years with the
lightness of forty, Molina--Molina the "Tumbler" as he was
nicknamed--spent his afternoons on the Bourse and his evenings in the
greenroom of the ballet.

He had a small interest in the theatre, but a large one in the
coryphées, in a paternal way, his white hair giving him the right to be