ed her as a woman, she was only the more poetic and
the more attractive to Calyste. Until the age of thirty the pretty women
of Paris ask nothing more of their toilet than clothing; but after they
pass through the fatal portal of the thirties, they look for weapons,
seductions, embellishments among their _chiffons;_ out of these they
compose charms, they find means, they take a style, they seize youth,
they study the slightest accessory,--in a word, they pass from nature to
art.

Madame de Rochefide had just come through the vicissitudes of a drama
which, in this history of the manners and morals of France in the
nineteenth century may be called that of the Deserted Woman. Deserted by
Conti, she became, naturally, a great artist in dress, in coquetry, in
artificial flowers of all kinds.

"Why is Conti not here?" inquired Calyste in a low voice of Canalis,
after going through the commonplace civilities with which even the most
solemn interviews begin when they take place publicly.

The former great poet of the faubourg Saint-Germain, twice a cabinet
minister, and now for the fourth time an orator in the Chamber, and
aspiring to another ministry, laid a warning finger significantly on his
lip. That gesture explained everything.

"I am happy to see you," said Beatrix, demurely. "I said to myself when
I recognized you just now, before you saw me, that _you_ at least would
not disown me. Ah! my Calyste," she added in a whisper, "why did you
marry?--and with such a little fool!"

As soon as a woman whispers in the ear of a new-comer and makes him sit
beside her, men of the world find an immediate excuse for leaving the
pair alone together.

"Come, Nathan," said Canalis, "Madame la marquise will, I am sure, allow
me to go and say a word to d'Arthez, whom I see over there with the
Princesse de Cadignan; it relates to some business in the Chamber
to-morrow."

This well-bred departure gave Calyste time to recover from the shock he
had just received; but he nearly lost both his strength and his senses
once more, as he inhaled the perfume, to him entrancing though venomous,
of the poem composed by Beatrix. Madame de Rochefide, now become bony
and gaunt, her complexion faded and almost discolored, her eyes hollow
with deep circles, had that evening brightened those premature ruins by
the cleverest contrivances of the _article Paris_. She had taken it into
her head, like other deserted women, to assume a virgin air, and recal