Granet examined little Marie Launay with sly glances, toying with his
black moustache the while, and the other young girl Anna, very much
confused at the coarse laughter of Molina the "Tumbler," kept turning
around in her slender fingers the aluminum pencil-case and looking at
Marie as much as to say:

"You know I can never muster up courage to write down my name before all
these people!"

"Lend me your pencil, my child," Molina said to her.

She held it out towards him timidly.

"Where the baron has led the way, Molina the Tumbler may certainly
follow!" said the financier.

He turned the screw of the pencil-case to extend the lead, and placing
one of his huge feet upon a divan to steady himself, wrote rapidly with
the paper on his knee, as a man used to scribbling notes at the Bourse:

"Solomon Molina, 500 francs."

"Ah! monsieur," exclaimed Marie Launay upon reading it, "that is
handsome, that is! It is kind, very kind! If everybody were as generous
as you, we could give a statue of Terpsichore in gold to Mademoiselle
Legrand."

"If you should ever want one of Carpeaux's groups for yourself, my
child," said Molina, "you may go to the studio in a cab to look at it,
and fetch it away with you in--your own coupé."