brutal, as he had been at Florence. At the corner of the avenue she said
to the coachman:

"To the Ternes."




CHAPTER XXXII

THE RED LILY

It was Friday, at the opera. The curtain had fallen on Faust's
laboratory. From the orchestra, opera-glasses were raised in a surveying
of the gold and purple theatre. The sombre drapery of the boxes framed
the dazzling heads and bare shoulders of women. The amphitheatre bent
above the parquette its garland of diamonds, hair, gauze, and satin.
In the proscenium boxes were the wife of the Austrian Ambassador and the
Duchess Gladwin; in the amphitheatre Berthe d'Osigny and Jane Tulle, the
latter made famous the day before by the suicide of one of her lovers;
in the boxes, Madame Berard de La Malle, her eyes lowered, her long
eyelashes shading her pure cheeks; Princess Seniavine, who, looking
superb, concealed under her fan panther--like yawnings; Madame de
Morlaine, between two young women whom she was training in the elegances
of the mind; Madame Meillan, resting assured on thirty years of sovereign
beauty; Madame Berthierd'Eyzelles, erect under iron-gray hair sparkling
with diamonds. The bloom of her cheeks heightened the austere dignity of
her attitude. She was attracting much notice. It had been learned in
the morning that, after the failure of Garain's latest combination,
M. Berthier-d'Eyzelles had, undertaken the task of forming a Ministry.