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By Root 1889 0

“So you think it’ll be fun, being married, do you?” he could not help repeating for the second time to Bibi, who, better prepared because he had had plenty of time to decide on the right attitude to adopt since the engagement had reached the semi-official stage, would reply with a smile: “I’m pleased, not to be getting married, which I didn’t particularly want to do, but to be marrying Daisy d’Ambresac whom I find charming.” In the time taken up by this response M. de Châtellerault would have recovered his composure, but then he would think that he must at the earliest possible moment execute an about-face in the direction of Mlle de la Canourgue or Miss Foster, numbers two and three on the list of heiresses, pacify somehow the creditors who were expecting the Ambresac marriage, and, finally, explain to the people to whom he too had declared that Mlle de Ambresac was charming that this marriage was all very well for Bibi, but that he himself would have had all his family down on him like a ton of bricks if he had married her. Mme Soléon (he would say) had actually gone so far as to announce that she would not have them in her house.

But if in the eyes of tradesmen, restaurant proprietors and the like they seemed of little account, conversely, being creatures of dual personality, the moment they appeared in society they ceased to be judged by the dilapidated state of their fortunes and the sordid occupations by which they sought to repair them. They became once more M. le Prince this, M. le Duc that, and were judged only by their quarterings. A duke who was practically a multimillionaire and seemed to combine in his person every possible distinction would give precedence to them because, being the heads of their various houses, they were by descent sovereign princes of small territories in which they were entitled to mint money and so forth. Often, in this café, one of them would lower his eyes when another came in so as not to oblige the newcomer to greet him. This was because in his imaginative pursuit of riches he had invited a banker to dine. Every time a man about town enters into relations with a banker in such circumstances, the latter leaves him the poorer by a hundred thousand francs, which does not prevent the man about town from at once repeating the process with another. We continue to burn candles in churches and to consult doctors.

But the Prince de Foix, who was himself rich, belonged not only to this fashionable set of fifteen or so young men, but to a more exclusive and inseparable group of four, which included Saint-Loup. These were never asked anywhere separately, they were known as the four gigolos, they were always to be seen riding together, and in country houses their hostesses gave them communicating bedrooms, with the result that, especially as they were all four extremely good-looking, rumours were current as to the extent of their intimacy. I was in a position to give these the lie direct so far as Saint-Loup was concerned. But the curious thing is that if, later on, it was discovered that these rumours were true of all four, each of the quartet had been entirely in the dark as to the other three. And yet each of them had done his utmost to find out about the others, to gratify a desire or (more probably) a grudge, to prevent a marriage or to secure a hold over the friend whose secret he uncovered. A fifth (for in groups of four there are always more than four) had joined this platonic party who was more so than any of the others. But religious scruples restrained him until long after the group had broken up and he himself was a married man, the father of a family, fervently praying at Lourdes that the next baby might be a boy or a girl, and in the meantime flinging himself upon soldiers.

Despite the Prince’s arrogant ways, the fact that the barrister’s comment, though uttered in his hearing, had not been directly addressed to him made him less angry than he would otherwise have been. Besides, this evening was somehow exceptional. And in any case the barrister had no more chance of getting to