In the middle of this group Fontan and Prulliere were listening to Rose Mignon, to whom the manager of the Folies-Dramatique Theatre had been making magnificent offers.

But a voice was heard shouting: "The duchess! Saint-Firmin! The duchess and Saint-Firmin are wanted!" Only when the call was repeated did Prulliere remember that he was Saint-Firmin! Rose, who was playing the Duchess Helene, was already waiting to go on with him while old Bosc slowly returned to his seat, dragging one foot after the other over the sonorous and deserted boards.
Clarisse offered him a place on the bench beside her.
"What's he bawling like that for ?" she said in allusion to Bordenave.
"Things will be getting rosy soon! A piece can't be put on nowadays without its getting on his nerves." Bosc shrugged his shoulders; he was above such storms.

Fontan whispered: "He's afraid of a fiasco.

The piece strikes me as idiotic." Then he turned to Clarisse and again referred to what Rose had been telling them: "D'you believe in the offers of the Folies people, eh?
Three hundred francs an evening for a hundred nights! Why not a country house into the bargain?
If his wife were to be given three hundred francs Mignon would chuck my friend Bordenave and do it jolly sharp too!" Clarisse was a believer in the three hundred francs.

That man Fontan was always picking holes in his friends' successes! Just then Simonne interrupted her.