"
The prince having made answer with a smile, Fontan's sally was voted
charming. But the dressing room was too small to accommodate everybody,
and it became necessary to crowd up anyhow, Satin and Mme Jules standing
back against the curtain at the end and the men clustering closely round
the half-naked Nana. The three actors still had on the costumes they had
been wearing in the second act, and while Prulliere took off his Alpine
admiral's cocked hat, the huge plume of which would have knocked the
ceiling, Bosc, in his purple cloak and tinware crown, steadied himself
on his tipsy old legs and greeted the prince as became a monarch
receiving the son of a powerful neighbor. The glasses were filled, and
the company began clinking them together.
"I drink to Your Highness!" said ancient Bosc royally.
"To the army!" added Prulliere.
"To Venus!" cried Fontan.
The prince complaisantly poised his glass, waited quietly, bowed thrice
and murmured:
"Madame! Admiral! Your Majesty!"
Then he drank it off. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had
followed his example. There was no more jesting now--the company were at
court. Actual life was prolonged in the life of the theater, and a sort
of solemn farce was enacted under the hot flare of the gas.
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