He went everywhere, witnessed ten sights a day,--a parliamentary sitting, a funeral, a wedding, any festive or mourning scene,--when he wanted a good subject for an article.

"What! Monsieur l'Abbe," he resumed, "and so you have come to our amiable Princess's to see the Mauritanians dance!" He was jesting, for the so-called Mauritanians were simply six Spanish dancing-girls, who by the sensuality of their performance were then making all Paris rush to the Folies-Bergere.

For drawing-room entertainments these girls reserved yet more indecorous dances--dances of such a character indeed that they would certainly not have been allowed in a theatre.

And the _beau monde_ rushed to see them at the houses of the bolder lady-entertainers, the eccentric and foreign ones like the Princess, who in order to draw society recoiled from no "attraction." But when Pierre had explained to little Massot that he was still running about on the same business, the journalist obligingly offered to pilot him.

He knew the house, obtained admittance by a back door, and brought Pierre along a passage into a corner of the hall, near the very entrance of the grand drawing-room.