Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/111

Rh the satin surface of the dance-cards, and the beautiful girls were now showing each other their lists, murmuring, whispering, envying each other for having so many dances taken by the one man, consoling themselves in the fact that his name did not appear so frequently on their friends' cards.

The two brothers Saint-Fardier were very much in demand. They were on familiar terms with all the men, and they flirted with all the girls. But it was, however, the little Vanderlings who attracted them most. Nervous and excited, they had a stock of phrases which they kept repeating. "It is almost as good as the Count d'Hamberville's last affair," they were pleased to remark.

Monsieur Saint-Fardier, senior, ill at ease in his evening clothes, perorated and gesticulated as if he were setting upon the workmen in the factory. Angéle and Cora wore, with hoydenish ease, scandalous dresses designed by their mother, who, being the daughter of a wealthy cabinet-maker of the Faubourg Saint Antoine in Paris, professed a most aristocratic disdain for commercial and provincial society. She admired only Gaston and Athanasius Saint-Fardier de la Bellone, who at least had been educated in Paris, and as soon as they had seemed to select her daughters, she resolutely pushed Angéle and Cora upon them. Alluring, intoxicating, cleverly trained by the Parisienne—the nickname given to Madame Vanderling, a superior woman who was as crafty as a procuress—the two girls allowed their suitors no respite, and it seemed as if the game were hunting the hunters. Their father, the eminent Vanderling, a well-known figure in all important cases before the courts, abandoned to his wife the care of providing for their daughters,