Twice Fauchery had to repeat his explanation, each time acting it out with more warmth than before.

The actors listened to him with melancholy faces, gazed momentarily at one another, as though he had asked them to walk on their heads, and then awkwardly essayed the passage, only to pull up short directly afterward, looking as stiff as puppets whose strings have just been snapped.
"No, it beats me; I can't understand it," said Fontan at length, speaking in the insolent manner peculiar to him.
Bordenave had never once opened his lips.

He had slipped quite down in his armchair, so that only the top of his hat was now visible in the doubtful flicker of the gaslight on the stand.

His cane had fallen from his grasp and lay slantwise across his waistcoat.

Indeed, he seemed to be asleep.