at pretty ascending
movement which brought them into view, little by little, till the
complete flower of their splendour was reached. The couples as they
gained the top seemed to be making an entry on the stage of a theatre;
and that was twice true, since each person left on the last step the
contracted eyebrows, the lines that marked preoccupation, the wearied
air, his vexations, his sorrows, to display instead a contented face, a
gay smile over the reposeful harmony of the features. The men exchanged
honest shakes of the hand, exhibitions of fraternal good-feeling;
the women, preoccupied with themselves, as they stood making little
caracoling movements, with trembling graces, play of eyes and shoulders,
murmured, without meaning anything, a few words of greeting:

"Thank you--oh, thank you! How kind you are!"

Then the couples would separate, for evening parties are no longer the
gatherings of charming wits, in which feminine delicacy was wont to
compel the character, the lofty knowledge, the genius, even, of men
to bow graciously before it; but these overcrowded routs, in which the
women, who alone are seated, chattering together like slaves in a harem,
have no longer aught save the pleasure of being beautiful or appearing
so. De Gery, after having wandered through the doctor's library, the
conservatory, the billiard-room, where men were smoking, weary of
serious and dry conversation which seemed to him out of place amid
surroundings so decorated and in the brief hour of pleasure--some one
had asked him carelessly, without looking at him, what the Bourse
was doing that day--made his way again towards the door of the large
drawing-room, which was barricaded by a wedged crowd of dress-coats, a
sea of heads bent sideways and peering past each other, watching.

This salon was a spacious apartment richly furnished with the artistic
taste which distinguished the host and hostess. There were a few
old pictures on the light background of the hangings. A monumental
chimneypiece, adorned by a handsome group in marble--"The Seasons," by
Sebastien Ruys--around which long green stems cut in lacework or of a
goffered bronze-like rigidity curved back towards the mirror as towards
the limpidity of a clear lake. On the low seats, women in close groups,
so close as almost to blend the delicate colours of their toilettes,
forming an immense basket of living flowers, above which there floated
the gleam of bare shoulders, of hair sown