"Well?" said the three first, with anxiety.
"He is there."
"Are you sure of it?"
"Are there two Sleepers-in-buff on earth?" replied the other. "I have just seen him; he is togged out like one of the swell mob. They will be at table for three hours at least."
"Then wait for me, you others. Keep as quiet as possible. I will go and fetch the captain, and the game is bagged." So saying, one of the three men walked off quickly, and disappeared in a street leading from the square.
At this same instant the Baccha.n.a.l Queen entered the banqueting-room, accompanied by Jacques, and was received with the most frenzied acclamations from all sides.
"Now then," cried Cephyse, with a sort of feverish excitement, as if she wished to stun herself; "now then, friends--noise and tumult, hurricane and tempest, thunder and earthquake--as much as you please!" Then, holding out her gla.s.s to Ninny Moulin, she added: "Pour out! pour out!"
"Long live the Queen!" cried they all, with one voice.
CHAPTER III. THE CAROUSE.
The Baccha.n.a.l Queen, having Sleepinbuff and Rose-Pompon opposite her, and Ninny Moulin on her right hand, presided at the repast, called a reveille-matin (wake-morning), generously offered by Jacques to his companions in pleasure.
Both young men and girls seemed to have forgotten the fatigues of a ball, begun at eleven o"clock in the evening, and finished at six in the morning; and all these couples, joyous as they were amorous and indefatigable, laughed, ate, and drank, with youthful and Pantagruelian ardor, so that, during the first part of the feast, there was less chatter than clatter of plates and gla.s.ses.
The Baccha.n.a.l Queen"s countenance was less gay, but much more animated than usual; her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes announced a feverish excitement; she wished to drown reflection, cost what it might. Her conversation with her sister often recurred to her, and she tried to escape from such sad remembrances.
Jacques regarded Cephyse from time to time with pa.s.sionate adoration; for, thanks to the singular conformity of character, mind, and taste between him and the Baccha.n.a.l Queen, their attachment had deeper and stronger roots than generally belong to ephemeral connections founded upon pleasure. Cephyse and Jacques were themselves not aware of all the power of a pa.s.sion which till now had been surrounded only by joys and festivities, and not yet been tried by any untoward event.
Little Rose-Pompon, left a widow a few days before by a student, who, in order to end the carnival in style, had gone into the country to raise supplies from his family, under one of those fabulous pretences which tradition carefully preserves in colleges of law and medicine--Rose Pompon, we repeat, an example of rare fidelity, determined not to compromise herself, had taken for a chaperon the inoffensive Ninny Moulin.
This latter, having doffed his helmet, exhibited a bald head, encircled by a border of black, curling hair, pretty long at the back of the head.
By a remarkable Bacchic phenomenon, in proportion as intoxication gained upon him, a sort of zone, as purple as his jovial face, crept by degrees over his brow, till it obscured even the shining whiteness of his crown.
Rose-Pompon, who knew the meaning of this symptom, pointed it out to the company, and exclaimed with a loud burst of laughter: "Take care, Ninny Moulin! the tide of the wine is coming in."
"When it rises above his head he will be drowned," added the Baccha.n.a.l Queen.
"Oh, Queen! don"t disturb me; I am meditating, answered Dumoulin, who was getting tipsy. He held in his hand, in the fashion of an antique goblet, a punch-bowl filled with wine, for he despised the ordinary gla.s.ses, because of their small size.
"Meditating," echoed Rose-Pompon, "Ninny Moulin is meditating. Be attentive!"
"He is meditating; he must be ill then!"
"What is he meditating? an illegal dance?"
"A forbidden Anacreontic att.i.tude?"
"Yes, I am meditating," returned Dumoulin, gravely; "I am meditating upon wine, generally and in particular--wine, of which the immortal Bossuet"--Dumoulin had the very bad habit of quoting Bossuet when he was drunk--"of which the immortal Bossuet says (and he was a judge of good liquor): "In wine is courage, strength joy, and spiritual fervor"--when one has any brains," added Ninny Moulin, by way of parenthesis.
"Oh, my! how I adore your Bossuet!" said Rose-Pompon.
"As for my particular meditation, it concerns the question, whether the wine at the marriage of Cana was red or white. Sometimes I incline to one side, sometimes to the other--and sometimes to both at once."
"That is going to the bottom of the question," said Sleepinbuff.
"And, above all, to the bottom of the bottles," added the Baccha.n.a.l Queen.
"As your majesty is pleased to observe; and already, by dint of reflection and research, I have made a great discovery--namely, that, if the wine at the marriage of Cana was red--"
"It couldn"t "a" been white," said Rose-Pompon, judiciously.
"And if I had arrived at the conviction that it was neither white nor red?" asked Dumoulin, with a magisterial air.
"That could only be when you had drunk till all was blue," observed Sleepinbuff.
"The partner of the Queen says well. One may be too athirst for science; but never mind! From all my studies on this question, to which I have devoted my life--I shall await the end of my respectable career with the sense of having emptied tuns with a historical--theological--and archeological tone!"
It is impossible to describe the jovial grimace and tone with which Dumoulin p.r.o.nounced and accentuated these last words, which provoked a general laugh.
"Archieolopically?" said Rose-Pompon. "What sawnee is that? Has he a tail? does he live in the water?"
"Never mind," observed the Baccha.n.a.l Queen; "these are words of wise men and conjurers; they are like horsehair bustles--they serve for filling out--that"s all. I like better to drink; so fill the gla.s.ses, Ninny Moulin; some champagne, Rose-Pompon; here"s to the health of your Philemon and his speedy return!"
"And to the success of his plant upon his stupid and stingy family!"
added Rose-Pompon.
The toast was received with unanimous applause.
"With the permission of her majesty and her court," said Dumoulin, "I propose a toast to the success of a project which greatly interests me, and has some resemblance to Philemon"s jockeying. I fancy that the toast will bring me luck."
"Let"s have it, by all means!"
"Well, then--success to my marriage!" said Dumoulin, rising.
These words provoked an explosion of shouts, applause, and laughter.
Ninny Moulin shouted, applauded, laughed even louder than the rest, opening wide his enormous mouth, and adding to the stunning noise the harsh springing of his rattle, which he had taken up from under his chair.
When the storm had somewhat subsided, the Baccha.n.a.l Queen rose and said: "I drink to the health of the future Madame Ninny Moulin."
"Oh, Queen! your courtesy touches me so sensibly that I must allow you to read in the depths of my heart the name of my future spouse," exclaimed Dumoulin. "She is called Madame Honoree-Modeste-Messaline-Angele de la Sainte-Colombe, widow."
"Bravo! bravo!"
"She is sixty years old, and has more thousands of francs-a-year than she has hair in her gray moustache or wrinkles on her face; she is so superbly fat that one of her gowns would serve as a tent for this honorable company. I hope to present my future spouse to you on Shrove Tuesday, in the costume of a shepherdess that has just devoured her flock. Some of them wish to convert her--but I have undertaken to divert her, which she will like better. You must help me to plunge her headlong into all sorts of skylarking jollity."
"We will plunge her into anything you please."
"She shall dance like sixty!" said Rose-Pompon, humming a popular tune.