Among the crowd directly in front of the Tuilleries was Jean Leroux, not the Jean Leroux of that winter in Bienville five years before, but another Jean, well dressed, well mannered, successful, but modest withal.
As the carriages moved slowly past, going a few feet and then stopping, blockaded by the crowd, a pretty victoria, well horsed, came directly abreast of Jean Leroux. In it sat Diane, whom he had often seen on the stage in those five years, but to whom he had never had the courage to speak; for if Jean was successful, Diane was a hundred times more so. She was on that day the most popular music-hall artist in Paris. Like Jean, she was Diane and yet not Diane. Her beautiful, mysterious dark eyes were unchanged, her frank, sweet smile was the same, but she was Mademoiselle Dorian, not merely Diane, or worse still, Skinny; that expressed it all. She had eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; she knew the great, ugly, beautiful, laughing, weeping, snarling, generous, wicked, pious world; she was able to take care of herself; she could stand upon her feet and look the ferocious human race in the eye as Una faced the lion.
She wore a charming white gown and a lovely flower-crowned hat, and carried a tiny white lace parasol as if she were accustomed to lace parasols. Her white kid gloves were dainty, and a great bunch of white and crimson roses combined with the blue cornflower made a tricolor in her lap, while on her breast was pinned a tricolor rosette.
As her carriage stopped, the crowd recognized her, and a huge shout went up:
Diane was used to this cry. She bowed and smiled prettily, like the experienced actress she was, but that was not what the crowd wanted.
“Sing us La Marseillaise!” they shouted; “you can sing it as no one else can! Sing it, sing it to us!”
Diane stood up in the carriage holding her tricolor bouquet, and a great roar of cheering a thousand times greater than she had ever heard before, stormed the air. Diane stood erect, with her head thrown back.
At last there was silence, and Diane, pointing with her white gloved hand straight at Jean not ten feet away, cried in her clear, practised, penetrating voice:
“There is a man who can sing La Marseillaise better than I can. Bring him here, and make him sing it, too.”