smile and talk in low, demure voices like so many brides; everything
about them looks girlish. Two hours later you might take the room for
a battlefield after the fight. Broken glasses, serviettes crumpled and
torn to rags lie strewn about among the nauseous-looking remnants of
food on the dishes. There is an uproar that stuns you, jesting toasts,
a fire of witticisms and bad jokes; faces are empurpled, eyes inflamed
and expressionless, unintentional confidences tell you the whole
truth. Bottles are smashed, and songs trolled out in the height of a
diabolical racket; men call each other out, hang on each other's
necks, or fall to fisticuffs; the room is full of a horrid, close
scent made up of a hundred odors, and noise enough for a hundred
voices. No one has any notion of what he is eating or drinking or
saying. Some are depressed, others babble, one will turn monomaniac,
repeating the same word over and over again like a bell set jangling;
another tries to keep the tumult within bounds; the steadiest will
propose an orgy. If any one in possession of his faculties should come
in, he would think that he had interrupted a Bacchanalian rite.

"It was in the thick of such a chaos that M. de Trailles tried to
insinuate himself into my good graces. My head was fairly clear, I was
upon my guard. As for him, though he pretended to be decently drunk,
he was perfectly cool, and knew very well what he was about. How it
was done I do not know, but the upshot of it was that when we left
Grignon's rooms about nine o'clock in the evening, M. de Trailles had
thoroughly bewitched me. I had given him my promise that I would
introduce him the next day to our Papa Gobseck. The words 'honor,'
'virtue,' 'countess,' 'honest woman,' and 'ill-luck' were mingled in
his discourse with magical potency, thanks to that golden tongue of
his.