Meanwhile, M. Richard was bending and bowing and scraping and walking backward, just as if he had that high and mighty minister, the undersecretary for fine arts, before him.
Only, though these marks of politeness would have created no astonishment if the undersecretary of state had really been in front of M. Richard, they caused an easily comprehensible amazement to the spectators of this very natural but quite inexplicable scene when M. Richard had nobody in front of him.
M. Richard bowed … to nobody; bent his back … before nobody; and walked backward … before nobody. … And, a few steps behind him, M. Moncharmin did the same thing that he was doing, in addition to pushing away M. Rémy and begging M. de La Borderie, the ambassador, and the manager of the Crédit Central “not to touch M. le directeur .”
Moncharmin, who had his own ideas, did not want Richard to come to him presently, when the twenty-thousand francs were gone, and say:
“Perhaps it was the ambassador … or the manager of the Crédit Central … or Rémy.”
The more so as, at the time of the first scene, as Richard himself admitted, Richard had met nobody in that part of the theater after Mame Giry had brushed up against him. …
Having begun by walking backward in order to bow, Richard continued to do so from prudence, until he reached the passage leading to the offices of the management. In this way, he was constantly watched by Moncharmin from behind and himself kept an eye on anyone approaching from the front. Once more, this novel method of walking behind the scenes, adopted by the managers of our National Academy of Music, attracted attention;