"Oh, I see; you want to go to court," said Newman, vaguely conjecturing
that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to
smooth her way to the imperial halls.

The marquise gave a little sharp laugh. "You are a thousand miles away.
I will take care of the Tuileries myself; the day I decide to go they
will be very glad to have me. Sooner or later I shall dance in an
imperial quadrille. I know what you are going to say: 'How will you
dare?' But I SHALL dare. I am afraid of my husband; he is soft,
smooth, irreproachable; everything that you know; but I am afraid of
him--horribly afraid of him. And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries.
But that will not be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must
live. For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it's my dream. I want
to go to the Bal Bullier."

"To the Bal Bullier?" repeated Newman, for whom the words at first meant
nothing.

"The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their
mistresses. Don't tell me you have not heard of it."

"Oh yes," said Newman; "I have heard of it; I remember now. I have even
been there. And you want to go there?"

"It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please. But I want to go.
Some of my friends have been, and they say it is awfully drole. My
friends go everywhere; it is only I who sit moping at home."

"It seems to me you are not at home now," said Newman, "and I shouldn't
exactly say you were moping."

"I am bored to death. I have been to the opera twice a week for the last
eight years. Whenever I ask for anything my mouth is stopped with that:
Pray, madam, haven't you an opera box? Could a woman of taste want more?
In the first place, my opera box was down in my contrat; they have
to give it to me. To-night, for instance, I should have preferred a
thousand times to go to the Palais Royal. But my husband won't go to the
Palais Royal because the ladies of the court go there so much. You may
imagine, then, whether he would take me to Bullier's; he says it is
a mere imitation--and a bad one--of what they do at the Princess
Kleinfuss's. But as I don't go to the Princess Kleinfuss's, the next
best thing is to go to Bullier's. It is my dream, at any rate, it's
a fixed idea. All I ask of you is to give me your arm; you are less
compromising than any one else. I don't know why, but you are. I can
arrange it. I shall risk something, but that is my own affair. Besides,
fortune favors the bold. Do