She had let her eyelids fall, and her face glowed as with a voluptuous ecstasy. While she was speaking, Rougon had left his table as though attracted by some force which he could not withstand, and his hands were trembling. But when he got near to Clorinde, the girl opened her eyes again and gave him a quiet glance. Then, as she looked at the clock, she said with a smile: 'This makes ten tickets.'
'Ten tickets! what do you mean?' asked Rougon, quite confused.
When he had recovered his self-possession, she burst into a laugh. It delighted her to bewitch him and intoxicate him in this way, and when he opened his arms to clasp her, to elude him with a laugh. She seemed in high glee. At this Rougon turned very pale, and cast a furious glance at her, which only served to increase her merriment. 'Well, I think I'd better be off now,' she said. 'You're not polite enough for ladies' society. No, really, my mother will be expecting me.'
Rougon, however, had resumed his paternal manner, and told her that she must spare him another five minutes. He had got tired of the work he was doing when she came in, he said; it was a report to be presented to the Senate on certain petitions. Then he began to talk to her about the Empress, for whom she professed enthusiastic devotion. The Empress, said he, had been at Biarritz for the last week. At this the girl again leant back in her arm-chair and began to chatter. She knew Biarritz very well; she had once spent a season there, before it had become such a fashionable watering-place; and she very much regretted that she was unable to revisit it while the Court was there. Then she went on to describe a meeting of the Academy to which M. de Plouguern had taken her on the previous day. An author had been admitted as a member, and she made many jokes at the expense of his baldness. She had a horror of books, she declared. Whenever she tried to read, she had to go off to bed, suffering from terrible nervous attacks. She could not understand what she read. Then, on Rougon telling her that the author received at the Academy on the previous day was an enemy of the Emperor's, and that his discourse had swarmed with abominable allusions, she seemed quite astounded.