satin, and that the girls of the middle class danced quite as well as
ladies--nay, sometimes better. Most of the women were simply and
suitably dressed. Those who in this assembly represented the ruling
power, that is to say, the country-folk, kept apart with wonderful
politeness. In fact, Mademoiselle Emilie had to study the various
elements that composed the mixture before she could find any subject
for pleasantry. But she had not time to give herself up to malicious
criticism, or opportunity for hearing many of the startling speeches
which caricaturists so gladly pick up. The haughty young lady suddenly
found a flower in this wide field--the metaphor is reasonable--whose
splendor and coloring worked on her imagination with all the
fascination of novelty. It often happens that we look at a dress, a
hanging, a blank sheet of paper, with so little heed that we do not at
first detect a stain or a bright spot which afterwards strikes the eye
as though it had come there at the very instant when we see it; and by
a sort of moral phenomenon somewhat resembling this, Mademoiselle de
Fontaine discovered in a young man the external perfection of which
she had so long dreamed.

Seated on one of the clumsy chairs which marked the boundary line of
the circular floor, she had placed herself at the end of the row
formed by the family party, so as to be able to stand up or push
forward as her fancy moved her, treating the living pictures and
groups in the hall as if she were in a picture gallery; impertinently
turning her eye-glass on persons not two yards away, and making her
remarks as though she were criticising or praising a study of a head,
a painting of genre. Her eyes, after wandering over the vast moving
picture, were suddenly caught by this figure, which seemed to have
been placed on purpose in one corner of the canvas, and in the best
light, like a person out of all proportion with the rest.