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He laughed a heavy, vengeful laugh, and repeated his familiar refrain full-throated: "The sovereign people that can't stand on its own legs!" By the side of a few faint-hearted citizens who had already, since the morning, modified their political opinions, a great figure rises before my eyes Fontan.
"Aha, my buck, you've insulted Fontan," resumed Mignon, who was doing his best to force the joke. "Stand on guard! One two got him right in the middle of his chest!" He lunged and struck the young man with such force that the latter grew very pale and could not speak for some seconds. With a wink Clarisse showed the others where Rose Mignon was standing on the threshold of the greenroom.
The audience fill themselves with brazen music, and overflow in cheers. The ceremony is drawing to a close. They who were seated on the rostrum get up. Fontan, bewildered with sleepiness, struggles to put on a tall hat which is too narrow, and while he screws it round he grimaces. Then he smiles with his boneless mouth.
Bordenave agitated the whole table with the announcement that at one moment he had had the idea of bringing with him Prulliere, Fontan and old Bosc. At this Nana looked sedate and remarked dryly that she would have given them a pretty reception. Had she wanted colleagues, she would certainly have undertaken to ask them herself. No, no, she wouldn't have third-rate play actors.
Then, too, there would be no end of disputes and carking anxieties if she attempted to save her furniture from their clutches. And so she preferred giving up everything. Besides, the flat in the Boulevard Haussmann was plaguing her to death. It was so stupid with its great gilded rooms! In her access of tenderness for Fontan she began dreaming of a pretty little bright chamber.
She burst out laughing and gave vent to various expressions of surprise. It struck her as so queer, and yet she was a little shocked by it, for she was really quite the philistine outside the pale of her own habits. So she went back to Laure's and fed there when Fontan was dining out.
Why, it was even nice to be beaten if he struck the blow! After that night a new life began. For a mere trifle a yes, a no Fontan would deal her a blow. She grew accustomed to it and pocketed everything. Sometimes she shed tears and threatened him, but he would pin her up against the wall and talk of strangling her, which had the effect of rendering her extremely obedient.
After the third representation of the Petite Duchesse she had quitted the theater, leaving Bordenave to struggle on against a bankruptcy which, despite the count's money, was imminent. Nevertheless, she was still bitter about her failure. It added to that other bitterness, the lesson Fontan had given her, a shameful lesson for which she held all men responsible.
Fontan went to bed again, shivering, and told her to go to the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles of his feet carefully. And in the end she came back to her old position, but scarce had she stretched herself out than she danced again. There were fresh crumbs in the bed! "By Jove, it was sure to happen!" she cried. "You've brought them back again under your feet. I can't go on like this!
The generals beside him those glorious potentates whose smiles are made of so many souls and the administrators and the honorables only look like secondary actors. Fontan occupies considerable space on the rostrum. He drowses there, with his two spherical hands planted in front of him.
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