glances, languid, flexible, slender, and complaisant, bent their
heads as though there were royal protectors still in the market. An
English-woman seemed like a spirit of melancholy--some coy, pale,
shadowy form among Ossian's mists, or a type of remorse flying from
crime. The Parisienne was not wanting in all her beauty that consists
in an indescribable charm; armed with her irresistible weakness, vain of
her costume and her wit, pliant and hard, a heartless, passionless siren
that yet can create factitious treasures of passion and counterfeit
emotion.

Italians shone in the throng, serene and self-possessed in their bliss;
handsome Normans, with splendid figures; women of the south, with black
hair and well-shaped eyes. Lebel might have summoned together all the
fair women of Versailles, who since morning had perfected all their
wiles, and now came like a troupe of Oriental women, bidden by the slave
merchant to be ready to set out at dawn. They stood disconcerted and
confused about the table, huddled together in a murmuring group
like bees in a hive. The combination of timid embarrassment with
coquettishness and a sort of expostulation was the result either of
calculated effect or a spontaneous modesty. Perhaps a sentiment of which
women are never utterly divested prescribed to them the cloak of modesty
to heighten and enhance the charms of wantonness. So the venerable
Taillefer's designs seemed on the point of collapse, for these unbridled
natures were subdued from the very first by the majesty with which woman
is invested. There was a murmur of admiration, which vibrated like a
soft musical note. Wine had not taken love for traveling companion;
instead of a violent tumult of passions, the guests thus taken by
surprise, in a moment of weakness, gave themselves up to luxurious
raptures of delight.

Artists obeyed the voice of poetry which constrains them, and studied
with pleasure the different delicate tints of these chosen examples of
beauty. Sobered by a thought perhaps due to some emanation from a
bubble of carbonic acid in the champagne, a philosopher shuddered at the
misfortunes which had brought these women, once perhaps worthy of the
truest devotion, to this. Each one doubtless could have unfolded a cruel
tragedy. Infernal tortures followed in the train of most of them, and
they drew after them faithless men, broken vows, and pleasures atoned
for in wretchedness. Polite advances were made by the guests, and