companist of papa. There, what did I tell you? It's all settled beforehand! Look out! Maître Bottentuit, the attorney, the drawing-room howler, is going off, going off, I say. ... I defy you to make out a word he sings. ... People have been trying for ten years; and no one has ever succeeded. ... Excuse me ... got to stop ... can't hear myself talk ... the wretch is bawling too loud. ..."
After Maître Bottentuit, Mlle. du Bocage—a little old maid whose mouth opened so wide that you could have dived down her throat—struck up the duet in Mireille, supported by M. Lartiste the elder, an old man, with a clean-shaven face, whose mouth, on the contrary, remained hermetically closed, with the results that both parts of the duet—not only the cooing roulades of the woman, but also the frenzied appeals of the man, his prayers, his promises, his metamorphoses into a bird and a butterfly—seemed to issue from the yawning throat of Mireille, that
