existence, soft and gentle, full of a majestic serenity. What an abyss
is human nature! Before beginning a conversation, the baron looked
alternately at the wife and at the husband. How many were the
reflections he made! He recomposed the "Night Thoughts" of Young in a
second. And yet the music was sounding through the salons, the light
was pouring from a thousand candles. It was a banker's ball,--one of
those insolent festivals by means of which the world of solid gold
endeavored to sneer at the gold-embossed salons where the faubourg
Saint-Germain met and laughed, not foreseeing the day when the bank
would invade the Luxembourg and take its seat upon the throne. The
conspirators were now dancing, indifferent to coming bankruptcies,
whether of Power or of the Bank. The gilded salons of the Baron de
Nucingen were gay with that peculiar animation that the world of
Paris, apparently joyous at any rate, gives to its fetes. There, men
of talent communicate their wit to fools, and fools communicate that
air of enjoyment that characterizes them. By means of this exchange
all is liveliness. But a ball in Paris always resembles fireworks to a
certain extent; wit, coquetry, and pleasure sparkle and go out like
rockets. The next day all present have forgotten their wit, their
coquetry, their pleasure.

"Ah!" thought Auguste, by way of conclusion, "women are what the
vidame says they are. Certainly all those dancing here are less
irreproachable actually than Madame Jules appears to be, and yet
Madame Jules went to the rue Soly!"

The rue Soly was like an illness to him; the very word shrivelled his
heart.

"Madame, do you ever dance?" he said to her.