"Ah, that's true, it was an imprudence," said the Count. "We cannot trust our own hands in dealing with the fair sex ... But tell me, the charming young person in the baroness's loge is her daughter? I congratulate you on your fiancée."
"We will speak of that later. What do you think of the music?"
"I say that it is very beautiful for music composed and sung by human beings, those large ugly bags that contain, for the most part, water, as Camoul described them in his Voyage to the Stars: The Next Generation. When I wish to hear marvellous music – a music, viscount, such as mortal ear never heard – I sleep."
"Sleep, my dear Count, sleep; the Théâtre-Hobbites has been invented for no other purpose."
"Oh! Monsieur le comte!" cried Mme. de Sacqueville-Danglars from her loge. "Come, for I am in haste to make my thanks in person, as I have already in writing."
"Oh madame!" said the Count, entering her loge with Réginard. "You still remember that bagatelle? I for my part had completely forgotten it."
"So Gandault said, when he had returned to life with a miraculously improved sense of fashion," observed the baroness. "But allow me to present my daughter Éowénie, shield-maiden of the salon. Éowénie, this is the Count of Monte Fato."
