me Taverneau has conceived a profound respect for a young man who
has correspondents in unknown lands, barely sighted in 1821 at the
Antarctic pole, and in 1819 at the Arctic pole, so she invited me to a
little soiree musicale et dansante, of which I was to be the bright
particular star. An invitation to an exclusive ball, given at an
inaccessible house, never gave a woman with a doubtful past or an
uncertain position, half the pleasure that I felt from the entangled
sentences of Madame Taverneau in which she did not dare to hope, but
would be happy if--.

Apart from the happiness of seeing Madame Louise Guerin (my charmer's
name), I looked forward to an entirely new recreation, that of studying
the manners of the middle class in their intimate relations with each
other. I have lived with the aristocracy and with the canaille; in the
highest and lowest conditions of life are found entire absence of
pretension; in the highest, because their position is assured; in the
lowest, because it is simply impossible to alter it. None but poets are
really unhappy because they cannot climb to the stars. A half-way
position is the most false.

I thought I would go early to have some talk with Louise, but the circle
was already completed when I arrived; everybody had come first.

The guests were assembled in a large, gloomy room, gloriously called a
drawing-room, where the servant never enters without first taking off
her shoes at the door, like a Turk in a mosque, and which is only opened
on the most solemn occasions. As it is doubtful whether you have ever
set foot in a like establishment, I will give you, in imitation of the
most profound of our novel-writers (which one? you will say; they are
all profound now-a-days), a detailed description of Madame Taverneau's
salon.

Two windows, hung in red calico, held up by some black ornaments, a
complication of sticks, pegs and all sorts of implements on stamped
copper, gave light to this sanctuary, which commanded through them an
animated look-out--in the language of the commonalty--upon the
scorching, noisy highway, bordered by sickly elms sprinkled with dust,
from the constant passage of vehicles which shake the house to its
centre; wagons loaded with noisy iron, and droves of hogs, squeaking
under the drover's whip.

The floor was painted red and polished painfully bright, reminding one
of a wine-merchant's sign freshly varnished; the walls were concealed
under frightful velvet