There are nearly a dozen of them smoking cigars." As a matter of fact, all the gentlemen were meeting downstairs.

They had come strolling thither in order to have a look at the boulevards, and they hailed one another and commented loudly on that poor girl's death.
Then they began discussing politics and strategy.

Bordenave, Daguenet, Labordette, Prulliere and others, besides, had swollen the group, and now they were all listening to Fontan, who was explaining his plan for taking Berlin within a week.
Meanwhile Maria Blond was touched as she stood by the bedside and murmured, as the others had done before her: "Poor pet! The last time I saw her was in the grotto at the Gaite." "Ah, she's changed; she's changed!" Rose Mignon repeated with a smile of gloomiest dejection.
Two more women arrived.

These were Tatan Nene and Louise Violaine.
They had been wandering about the Grand Hotel for twenty minutes past, bandied from waiter to waiter, and had ascended and descended more than thirty flights of stairs amid a perfect stampede of travelers who were hurrying to leave Paris amid the panic caused by the war and the excitement on the boulevards.

Accordingly they just dropped down on chairs when they came in, for they were too tired to think about the dead.