"Yes, some very fine fetes are promised," said Mme du Joncquoy.

The banker Steiner, not long since introduced into this circle by
Leonide de Chezelles, who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian
society, was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows.
He was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring with much
adroitness to elicit news about a movement on the stock exchange of
which he had his suspicions, while the Count Muffat, standing in front
of them, was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he did so,
even grayer than was his wont.

Four or five young men formed another group near the door round the
Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who in a low tone was telling them an
anecdote. It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking with
laughter. Companionless in the center of the room, a stout man, a chief
clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, sat heavily in an armchair,
dozing with his eyes open. But when one of the young men appeared to
doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres raised his voice.

"You are too much of a skeptic, Foucarmont; you'll spoil all your
pleasures that way."

And he returned to the ladies with a laugh. Last scion of a great
family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time
running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which nothing
could appease. His racing stable, which was one of the best known in
Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting losses at the
Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number of pounds, while
taking one year with another, his mistresses would be always devouring