As the door closed behind me, I stood half uncertain how to proceed.
Unhappily, I knew little of the habitudes of the great world, and every
step I took was a matter of difficulty.

"I think you will find Madame Bonaparte in that room," said a
middle-aged and handsome man, whose mild voice and gentle smile did much
to set me at my ease. "But perhaps you don't know her."

I muttered something I meant to be a negative, to which he immediately
replied,--

"Then let me present you. There is no ceremony here, and I shall be your
groom of the chambers. But here she is. Madame la Consulesse, this young
gentleman desires to make his respects."

"Ha! our friend of the Polytechnique,--Monsieur Burke, is it not?"

"Yes, Madame," said I, bowing low, and blushing deeply as I recognized,
in the splendidly-attired and beautiful person before me, the lady
who so kindly held the water to my lips the day of my accident at the
school.

"Why, they told me you were promoted,--a hussar, I think."

"Yes, Madame; but--but--"

"You are too fond of old associations to part from them easily," said
she, laughing. "Come here, Stephanie, and see a miracle of manhood, that
could resist all the _clinquant_ of a hussar for the simple costume of
the E cole Militaire. Monsieur de Custine, this is my young friend of
whom I told you the other day."

The gentleman, the same who had so kindly noticed me, bowed politely.

"And now I must leave you together, for I see they are teasing poor
Madame Lefebvre." And with a smile she passed on into a small boudoir,
from which the sounds of merry laughter were proceeding.

"You don't know any one here?" said Monsieur de Custine, as he motioned
me to a place beside him on a sofa. "Nor is there any very remarkable
person here to point out to you this evening. The First Consul's levee
absorbs all the celebrities; but by and by they will drop in to pay
their respects, and you 'll see them all. The handsome woman yonder with
her fan before her is Madame Beauharnais Lavalette, and the good-looking
young fellow in the staff uniform is Monsieur de Melcy, a stepson of
General Rapp."

"And the large handsome man with the embroidered coat who passed through
so hurriedly?"

"Yes, he is somebody,--that's Decres, the Ministre de la Marine; he is
gone to the levee. And there, next the door, with his eyes cast down and
his hands folded, that is the Abbe Maynal, one of the most 'spirituel'
men of the day. But I sup