Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/238

very badly got up I would willingly compromise myself by dancing with him if he would invite me.”

Two seconds later Rodolphe, who had overheard her, was at her feet, enveloping his invitation in a speech, scented with all the musk and benjamin of a gallantry at eighty degrees Richelieu. The lady was confounded by the language sparkling with dazzling adjectives, and phrases modelled on those in vogue during the Regency, and the invitation was accepted.

Rodolphe was as ignorant of the elements of dancing as of the rule of three. But he was impelled by an extraordinary audacity. He did not hesitate, but improvised a dance unknown to all by-gone chorography. It was a step the originality of which obtained an incredible success, and that has been celebrated under the title of “regrets and sighs.” It was all very well for the three thousand jets of gas to blink at him, Rodolphe went on at it all the same, and continued to pour out a flood of novel madrigals to his partner.

“Well,” said Marcel, “this is incredible. Rodolphe reminds me of a drunken man rolling amongst broken glass.”

“At any rate he has got hold of a deuced fine woman,” said another, seeing Rodolphe about to leave with his partner.

“Won’t you say good-night?” cried Marcel after him.

Rodolphe came back to the artist and held out his hand, it was cold and damp as a wet stone.

Rodolphe’s companion was a strapping Normandy wench, whose native rusticity had promptly acquired an aristocratic tinge amidst the elegancies of Parisian luxury and an idle life. She was styled Madame Seraphine, and was for the time being mistress of an incarnate rheumatism in the shape of a peer of France, who gave her fifty louis a month, which she shared with a counter-jumper who