so. De Gery, after having wandered through the doctor's library, the
conservatory, the billiard-room, where men were smoking, weary of
serious and dry conversation which seemed to him out of place amid
surroundings so decorated and in the brief hour of pleasure--some one
had asked him carelessly, without looking at him, what the Bourse
was doing that day--made his way again towards the door of the large
drawing-room, which was barricaded by a wedged crowd of dress-coats, a
sea of heads bent sideways and peering past each other, watching.

This salon was a spacious apartment richly furnished with the artistic
taste which distinguished the host and hostess. There were a few
old pictures on the light background of the hangings. A monumental
chimneypiece, adorned by a handsome group in marble--"The Seasons," by
Sebastien Ruys--around which long green stems cut in lacework or of a
goffered bronze-like rigidity curved back towards the mirror as towards
the limpidity of a clear lake. On the low seats, women in close groups,
so close as almost to blend the delicate colours of their toilettes,
forming an immense basket of living flowers, above which there floated
the gleam of bare shoulders, of hair sown with diamonds that looked like
drops of water on the dark women, glittering reflections on the fair,
and the same heady perfume, the same confused and gentle hum, compact
of vibrant warmth and intangible wings, which, in summer, caresses a
garden-bed through all its flowering time. Now and then a little laugh,
rising into this luminous atmosphere, a quicker inspiration in the air,
which would cause aigrettes and curls to tremble, a handsome profile to
stand out suddenly. Such was the aspect of the drawing-room.

A few men were present, a very small number, however, and all of them
personages of note, laden with years and decorations. They were standing
about near couches, leaning over the backs of chairs, with that air of