though he might be drinking a glass of champagne, that dreamy look,
that air of silently despising life, that nebulous expression which
belongs, though for other reasons, to _blases_ men,--men dissatisfied
with hollow lives. To love without hope, to be disgusted with life,
constitute, in these days, a social position. The enterprise of
winning the heart of a sovereign might give, perhaps, more hope than a
love rashly conceived for a happy woman. Therefore Maulincour had
sufficient reason to be grave and gloomy. A queen has the vanity of
her power; the height of her elevation protects her. But a pious
_bourgeoise_ is like a hedgehog, or an oyster, in its rough wrappings.

At this moment the young officer was beside his unconscious mistress,
who certainly was unaware that she was doubly faithless. Madame Jules
was seated, in a naive attitude, like the least artful woman in
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