“Dough, madame?”
“Dough from the kitchen! And an empty fruit-bowl or something. Hurry!” The servant hustled out. “Places, everyone! Act the Second begins. Monsieur le comte de Pontchartrain, pray continue playing your beautiful music, it is entirely fitting.” Indeed, some of the guests who had not been assigned specific r?les had begun dancing to it, so that “Paris” had already become a center of beauty, culture, and romance.
“I am your servant, madame,” said Pontchartrain.
“No, I am Mercury. And I say you have dough!”
“Dough, Mercury?” Pontchartrain looked about curiously but continued to play.
“You rarely see it, of course, and you never handle it. Pourquoi non, for you are a member of the Conseil d’en-Haut and a trusted confidant of le Roi Soleil. But you know that you have dough!”
“How do I know it, Mercury?”
“Because I have whispered it into your ear. You have a thousand kitchens in which it is being prepared, all the time. Now, call Monsieur Bernard to your side, and let him know.”
Monsieur Bernard did not need to be summoned. Using his billiard-cue as cane, he staggered over—for he had perfected his Jew act—and bent close to Pontchartrain, rubbing his hands together.
“Monsieur Bernard! I have dough.”
“I believe it, monseigneur.”
“I should like to see, oh, a hundred pieces of dough transferred safely and swiftly to the hands of Monsieur Dubois in London.”
“Hold!” commanded Mercury, “you do not yet know the identity of your payee in London.”
“Very well—make the Bill endorsable to one of my agents, to be determined later.”
“It shall be done, my lord!” announced “Bernard,” who then leered up at Eliza for his cue.
“Go and tell your friend,” Eliza said.
“Don’t I get anything?”
“Monsieur! You have got the word of the contr?leur-général of France! What more could you possibly ask for?”
“I was just asking,” said “Bernard” a little bit resentfully, and then crab-walked across the Petit Salon to “Lyon,” where his billiards-partner awaited. “Mon vieux, bonjour. Monsieur le comte de Pontchartrain has dough and wants a hundred pieces of it in London.”
“Very well,” said “Castan” after some sotto voce prompting from Mercury. “Lothar, if you would get a hundred pieces of dough to our man in London, I shall give you a hundred and ten pieces of dough here.”
“Heavens! Where is this dough?” étienne demanded—a bit confused, for in the first run-through, he had been given actual silver.
“I don’t have any just now,” said “Castan,” who had been a bit quicker than étienne to see where this was going, “but my friend Monsieur Bernard has heard from Monsieur le comte de Pontchartrain who has heard from Mercury himself that there is dough aplenty, and so, in the sight of all these good Lyonnaise—”
“We call them le Dép?t,” put in Eliza, indicating several persons who had gathered round the basset-table to watch.
“—I say that I shall pay you a hundred and ten pieces of dough any day now.”
“Very well,” said “Lothar,” after looking up at Eliza for permission.
Now some time was spent in draughting the necessary papers. Meanwhile Eliza had thrust her hands into a great warm ellipsoid of bread-dough that had been fetched out of the kitchens by a cook, and torn it apart into two pieces, a small and a large. The small she placed in an empty fruit-bowl, which she took into the Grand Salon and slammed down on a gilded sideboard near the backgammontable, astonishing Madame de Bearsul. “Tear this in half, and continue tearing the halves in half, until you have thirty-two pieces of dough,” decreed “Mercury,” then stormed away before de Bearsul could pout or fret. Eliza fetched the great bowl containing the larger amount of dough, and set it into the arms of the young banker she had posted in “Amsterdam.” Three younger guests, eight to twelve years of age, had already converged on the sideboard, overturned the fruit-bowl, and begun tearing the dough into bits. “Very good, you are the English Mint, and that is the Tower of London,” Eliza informed them. Then, because they were being a bit too enthusiastic, she cautioned them: “Remember, I desire only thirty or so.”
“We thought a hundred!” said the oldest of the children.