`What's everything?' asked Rémy. `What was there to tell the police? Why don't you answer, Gabriel?...Ah, so you know something! Well, you would do better to tell me, too, if you don't want me to shout out that you are all going mad!...Yes, that's what you are: mad!'

Gabriel put on a stupid look and pretended not to understand the private secretary's unseemly outburst.

`What `something' am I supposed to know?' he said. `I don't know what you mean.'

Rémy began to lose his temper.

`This evening, Richard and Moncharmin were behaving like lunatics, here, between the acts.'

`I never noticed it,' growled Gabriel, very much annoyed.

`Then you're the only one!...Do you think that I didn't see them?...And that M. Parabise, the manager of the Credit Central, noticed nothing?...And that M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, has no eyes to see with?...Why, all the subscribers were pointing at our managers!'

`But what were our managers doing?' asked Gabriel, putting on his most innocent air.

`What were they doing? You know better than any one what they were doing!...You were there!...And you were watching them, you and Mercier!...And you were the only two who didn't laugh.

`I don't understand!'

Gabriel raised his arms and dropped them to his sides again, which gesture was meant to convey that the question did not interest him in the least. Rémy continued:

`What is the sense of this new mania of theirs? Why won't they have any one come near them now?'

`What? Won't they have any one come near them?'

`And they won't let any one touch them!'

`Really? Have you noticed that they won't let any one touch them? That is certainly odd!'

`Oh, so you admit it! And high time, too! And then, they walk backward!'

`Backward! You have seen our managers walk backward? Why, I thought that only crabs walked backward!'

`Don't laugh, Gabriel; don't laugh!'

`I'm not laughing,' protested Gabriel, looking as solemn as a judge.

`Perhaps you can tell me this, Gabriel, as you're an intimate friend of the management: When I went up to M. Richard, outside the foyer, during the Garden interval, with my hand out before me, why did M. Moncharmin hurriedly whisper to me, `Go away! Go away! Whatever you do, don't touch M. le Directeur!' Am I supposed to have an infectious disease?'

`It's incredible!'

`And, a little later, when M. de La Borderie went up to M. Richard, didn't you see M. Moncharmin fling himself between them and hear him exclaim, `M. l'ambassadeur I entreat you not to touch M. le Directeur'?'

`It's terrible!...And what was Richard doing meanwhile?'