For them the dance of the hours was already begun, and already
become a can-can. They watched it with an eager interest and excitement,
and the calm self-possession with which some of the men near them made
jokes to magnificently dressed women with diamond earrings struck them
dumb with admiration. Yet, later on, they too were fated to join in the
dance, when the stars affected to sleep on the clouds and the moon lay
wearily inattentive to the pilgrims of the night, like an invalid in a
blue boudoir. On the thick carpet by the wall attendants stood loaded
with programmes. One of them, very trim and respectable, in a white cap,
was named Clara and offered a drink by an impudent Oxonian. She giggled
with all the vanity of sixteen, happily forgetful of her husband and
of the seven children who called her mother. Yet the dance of the hours
was a venerable saraband to her, and she often wished she was in bed as
she stood listening to the familiar music. In the enclosure set apart for
the orchestra the massed musicians earned their living violently in the
midst of the gaily dressed idlers, who heard them with indifference, and
saw them as wound-up marionettes. The drummer hammered on his blatant
instrument with all the crude skill of his tribe, producing occasional
terrific noises with darting fists, while his face remained as immovable
as that of a Punchinello.
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