"'_L'âme d'un symboliste, Madame, est un coffret mélancolique d'améthyste A serrure de diamant. Il suffit de savoir l'ouvrir et la comprendre Et le trésor éclos illumine la chambre Et sourit la tristesse aux lèvres des amants._'"
"Is that at all amusing?" asked M. de Rueille.
"Well, hang it all!" exclaimed Jean irritably, "I do not say that it is precisely a _chef-d'oeuvre_! Bijou asked for a couplet--I have given her a couplet to the best of my ability, but I don't wish to hinder you from giving us a better one."
"Ah, yes, that's true, we want an air for it. What is there?"
"You might put '_Air. J'en guette un petit de mon âge_,'" suggested Rueille.
"What do you mean by 'does it go to it?'"
"I don't know. I don't even know what the air is."
"Then why do you suggest that we should take it?"
"Oh! because I often see things to that air: '_J'en guette un petit de mon âge._' I just remembered seeing it, and there are lots of couplets that are put to it."
"But the poet's lines are longer than that," remarked Bijou, "especially the second one. No--one could never sing them to that air--nor to any other."
"Fortunately, Bijou thinks of everything," put in Pierrot, with pride.
"We'll find an air for it presently," said Jean. "Let's go on; do let's go on, or we never shall finish it. Who's on the stage at present?"
And then, as M. de Rueille was biting the end of his pen and watching Bijou, so that he did not appear to have heard, Blaye exclaimed:
"Paul, are you there? or have you gone out for a time?"
"Oh, very well! then will you have the kindness to tell me which of the characters are at present on the scene?"
"What?" exclaimed Bijou, "do you mean to say you have to look before you can tell us?"
"Well, you do not imagine, I presume, that I know by heart all the insane things that each of you has been pleased to dictate to me."
"I know them all anyhow," and then, turning towards Jean de Blaye, she answered his question. "We have on the scene at present, Venus, the Poet, Thomas Vireloque, and the Opportunist, and we said yesterday that after the introduction of the Poet to Venus, we would let Madame de Staël come in."
"Very well, we will let her enter at once."
"Have you found anyone for Madame de Staël?" asked Rueille; "up to the present no one has wanted to act her part."