costume showed to great
advantage the perfection of Montcornet's fine shape. He was
five-and-thirty, and attracted attention by his stalwart height,
insisted on for the Cuirassiers of the Imperial Guard whose handsome
uniform enhanced the dignity of his figure, still youthful in spite
of the stoutness occasioned by living on horseback. A black moustache
emphasized the frank expression of a thoroughly soldierly countenance,
with a broad, high forehead, an aquiline nose, and bright red lips.
Montcornet's manner, stamped with a certain superiority due to the habit
of command, might please a woman sensible enough not to aim at making a
slave of her husband. The Colonel smiled as he looked at the lawyer, one
of his favorite college friends, whose small figure made it necessary
for Montcornet to look down a little as he answered his raillery with a
friendly glance.

Baron Martial de la Roche-Hugon was a young Provencal patronized by
Napoleon; his fate might probably be some splendid embassy. He had
won the Emperor by his Italian suppleness and a genius for intrigue, a
drawing-room eloquence, and a knowledge of manners, which are so good a
substitute for the higher qualities of a sterling man. Through young
and eager, his face had already acquired the rigid brilliancy of tinned
iron, one of the indispensable characteristics of diplomatists, which
allows them to conceal their emotions and disguise their feelings,
unless, indeed, this impassibility indicates an absence of all emotion
and the death of every feeling. The heart of a diplomate may be regarded
as an insoluble problem, for the three most illustrious ambassadors of
the time have been distinguished by perdurable hatreds and most romantic
attachments.

Martial, however, was one of those men who are capable of reckoning on
the future in the midst of their intensest enjoyment; he had already
learned to judge the world, and hid his ambition under the fatuity of a
lady-killer, cloaking his talent under the commonplace of mediocrity
as soon as he observed the rapid advancement of those men who gave the
master little umbrage.

The two friends now had to part with a cordial grasp of hands. The
introductory tune, warning the ladies to form in squares for a fresh
quadrille, cleared the men away from the space they had filled while
talking in the middle of the large room. This hurried dialogue had taken
place during the usual interval between two dances, in front of the
firep