This was a long, triangular, open space, the most animated and luxurious of the squares of the old town, the one where the cafés, the chemists, all the finest shops were situated. And, among the latter, one showed conspicuously, coloured as it was a lively green, adorned with lofty mirrors, and surmounted by a broad board bearing in gilt letters the inscription: “Cazaban, Hairdresser”.
de Guersaint and Pierre went in, but there was nobody in the salon and they had to wait. A terrible clatter of forks resounded from the adjoining room, an ordinary dining-room transformed into a table d’hôte, in which some twenty people were having déjeuner although it was already two o’clock. The afternoon was progressing, and yet people were still eating from one to the other end of Lourdes. Like every ot
