over to the curious glances of the fashionable world. She was in a box
of the first tier, and the native grace of her attitude first riveted my
attention. The cynosure of all eyes, she bore her triumph with the ease
of a woman accustomed to admiration.

To appear unconscious she assumed with charming cleverness a pose of
artistic contemplation. One would have said that she was really absorbed
in the music, or that she was following the advice of the Tuscan poet:

"Bel ange, descendu d'un monde aerien,
Laisse-toi regarder et ne regarde rien."

From my position I could only distinguish the outline of her figure,
except by staring through my glasses, which I regard as a polite
rudeness, but she seemed to merit the homage that all eyes looked and
all voices sang.

Once she appeared in the full blaze of the gas as she leaned forward
from her box, and it seemed as if an apparition by some theatro-optical
delusion approached and dazzled me.

The rapt attention of the audience, the mellow tones of the singer, the
orchestral accompaniment full of mysterious harmony, seemed to awaken
the ineffable joy that love implants in the human heart. How much
weakness there is in the strength of man!

To travel for years over oceans, through deserts, among all varieties of
peoples and sects; shipwrecked, to cling with bleeding hands to
sea-beaten rocks; to laugh at the storm and brave the tiger in his lair;
to be bronzed in torrid climes; to subject one's digestion to the
baleful influences of the salt seas; to study wisdom before the ruins of
every portico where rhetoricians have for three thousand years
paraphrased in ten tongues the words of Solomon, "All is vanity;" to
return to one's native shores a used-up man, persuaded of the emptiness
of all things save the overhanging firmament and the never-fading stars;
to scatter the fancies of too credulous youth by a contemptuous smile,
or a lesson of bitter experience, and yet, while boasting a victory over
all human fallacies and weaknesses, to be enslaved by the melody of a
song, the smile of a woman.

Life is full of hidden mysteries. I looked upon the stranger's face with
a sense of danger, so antagonistic to my previous tranquillity that I
felt humiliated.

By the side of the beautiful unknown, I saw a large fan open and shut
with a certain affectation, but not until its tenth movement did I
glance at its possessor. She was my nearest relative, the Duchess de
Langeac.