or of their dress. This brief hour is, as it were, the springtime of a
ball. An hour after, when pleasure falls flat and fatigue is
encroaching, everything is spoilt. Madame de Vaudremont never
committed the blunder of remaining at a party to be seen with drooping
flowers, hair out of curl, tumbled frills, and a face like every other
that sleep is courting--not always without success. She took good care
not to let her beauty be seen drowsy, as her rivals did; she was so
clever as to keep up her reputation for smartness by always leaving a
ballroom in brilliant order, as she had entered it. Women whispered to
each other with a feeling of envy that she planned and wore as many
different dresses as the parties she went to in one evening.

On the present occasion Madame de Vaudremont was not destined to be
free to leave when she would the ballroom she had entered in triumph.
Pausing for a moment on the threshold, she shot swift but observant
glances on the women present, hastily scrutinizing their dresses to
assure herself that her own eclipsed them all.

The illustrious beauty presented herself to the admiration of the
crowd at the same moment with one of the bravest colonels of the
Guards' Artillery and the Emperor's favorite, the Comte de Soulanges.
The transient and fortuitous association of these two had about it a
certain air of mystery. On hearing the names announced of Monsieur de
Soulanges and the Comtesse de Vaudremont, a few women sitting by the
wall rose, and men, hurrying in from the side-rooms, pressed forward
to the principal doorway. One of the jesters who are always to be
found in any large assembly said, as the Countess and her escort came
in, that "women had quite as much curiosity about seeing a man who was
faithful to his passion as men had in studying a woman who was
difficult to enthrall."