At this moment journalists, dandies, and idlers were all examining the
charming subject of their bet as horse-dealers examine a horse for
sale. These connoisseurs, grown old in familiarity with every form of
Parisian depravity, all men of superior talent each his own way,
equally corrupt, equally corrupting, all given over to unbridled
ambition, accustomed to assume and to guess everything, had their eyes
centered on a masked woman, a woman whom no one else could identify.
They, and certain habitual frequenters of the opera balls, could alone
recognize under the long shroud of the black domino, the hood and
falling ruff which make the wearer unrecognizable, the rounded form,
the individuality of figure and gait, the sway of the waist, the
carriage of the head--the most intangible trifles to ordinary eyes,
but to them the easiest to discern.

In spite of this shapeless wrapper they could watch the most appealing
of dramas, that of a woman inspired by a genuine passion. Were she La
Torpille, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, or Madame de Serizy, on the
lowest or highest rung of the social ladder, this woman was an
exquisite creature, a flash from happy dreams. These old young men,
like these young old men, felt so keen an emotion, that they envied
Lucien the splendid privilege of working such a metamorphosis of a
woman into a goddess. The mask was there as though she had been alone
with Lucien; for that woman the thousand other persons did not exist,
nor the evil and dust-laden atmosphere; no, she moved under the
celestial vault of love, as Raphael's Madonnas under their slender
oval glory. She did not feel herself elbowed; the fire of her glance
shot from the holes in her mask and sank into Lucien's eyes; the
thrill of her frame seemed to answer to every movement of her
companion. Whence comes this flame that radiates from a woman in love