more ingenious perhaps than of yore, invite a glance through the
opera-glass by other audacious devices. One is the first to hit on a
rosette in her hair with a diamond in the centre, and she attracts
every eye for a whole evening; another revives the hair-net, or sticks
a dagger through the twist to suggest a garter; this one wears velvet
bands round her wrists, that one appears in lace lippets. These
valiant efforts, an Austerlitz of vanity or of love, then set the
fashion for lower spheres by the time the inventive creatress has
originated something new. This evening, which Valerie meant to be a
success for her, she had placed three patches. She had washed her hair
with some lye, which changed its hue for a few days from a gold color
to a duller shade. Madame Steinbock's was almost red, and she would be
in every point unlike her. This new effect gave her a piquant and
strange appearance, which puzzled her followers so much, that Montes
asked her:

"What have you done to yourself this evening?"--Then she put on a
rather wide black velvet neck-ribbon, which showed off the whiteness
of her skin. One patch took the place of the _assassine_ of our
grandmothers. And Valerie pinned the sweetest rosebud into her bodice,
just in the middle above the stay-busk, and in the daintiest little
hollow! It was enough to make every man under thirty drop his eyelids.

"I am as sweet as a sugar-plum," said she to herself, going through
her attitudes before the glass, exactly as a dancer practises her
curtesies.

Lisbeth had been to market, and the dinner was to be one of those
superfine meals which Mathurine had been wont to cook for her Bishop
when he entertained the prelate of the adjoining diocese.