Page:The reign of greed (1912).pdf/234

 like songs of infancy, the murmur of lonely forests and gloomy rivulets, moonlit nights on the shore of the sea spread wide before his eyes. So the enamored youth considered himself very wretched and stared fixedly at the ceiling so that the tears should not fall from his eyes.

A burst of applause drew him from these meditations. The curtain had just risen, and the merry chorus of peasants of Corneville was presented, all dressed in cotton caps, with heavy wooden sabots on their feet. Some six or seven girls, well-rouged on the lips and cheeks, with large black circles around their eyes to increase their brilliance, displayed white arms, fingers covered with diamonds, round and shapely limbs. While they were chanting the Norman phrase "Allez, marchez! Allez, marchez!" they smiled at their different admirers in the reserved seats with such openness that Don Custodio, after looking toward Pepay's box to assure himself that she was not doing the same thing with some other admirer, set down in his note-book this indecency, and to make sure of it lowered his head a little to see if the actresses were not showing their knees.

"Oh, these Frenchwomen!" he muttered, while his imagination lost itself in considerations somewhat more elevated, as he made comparisons and projects.

"Quoi v'la tous les cancans d'la s'maine!" sang Gertrude, a proud damsel, who was looking roguishly askance at the Captain-General.

"We're going to have the cancan!" exclaimed Tadeo, the winner of the first prize in the French class, who had managed to make out this word. Makaraig, they're going to dance the cancan!"

He rubbed his hands gleefully. From the moment the curtain rose, Tadeo had been heedless of the music. He was looking only for the prurient, the indecent, the immoral in actions and dress, and with his scanty French was sharpening his ears to catch the obscenities that the austere guardians of the fatherland had foretold.

Sandoval, pretending to know French, had converted him-