, light, and vain, whom adversity had not
broken, and could not sour; an Abbe, bland and double, but gentle and
kindly in his way; a soldier, volatile, hot-headed, brave as a lion,
simple as a child; an older man, sad, sneering, indifferent to this
world and the next, but with the wrecks of a noble head, and, God help
him, a noble heart.

Of the three individuals present of a different nation and creed, two
closely resembled the others with only that vague, impalpable, but
perceptible distinction of those whose rearing affords a superficial
growth which overspreads but does not annihilate the original plant. The
one was a young man, buoyant, flippant, and reckless as the French
soldier, but with a bold defiance in his tone which was all his own; the
other a young girl, coquettish and vivacious as the Marquise, but with a
deep consciousness under her feigning, an undercurrent of watchful pride
and passion, of which her model was destitute. The last of the circle
was a fair-haired, broad-shouldered lad, who stood apart from the
others, big, shy, silent:--but he was earnest amid their shallowness,
noble amid their hollowness, and devoted amid their fickleness. How he
gazed on the arch, haughty girl, with her lilies and roses, her
pencilled brows, her magnificent hair magnificently arranged, with her
rich silk and airy lace, and muslin folded and gathered and falling
into lines which were the very poetry of attire, unless where a piquant
provoking frill, band, or peak, reminded the gazer that the princess was
a woman, a mocking mischievous woman, as well as a radiant lady! How he
listened to her contradictory words, witty and liquid even in their most
worthless accents! how he drank in her songs, the notes of her harp, the
rustle of her dress, the fall of her foot! how he started if she moved!
how he saw her, though his eyes were on the ground, and though his head
was in his hands, while she marked him ceaselessly, half with cruel
triumph, half with a flutter and faintness which she angrily and
scornfully resisted and denied.

A few more gay _bons mots_ and repartees, a last epigram from the Abbe,
a court anecdote from the Marquise which might have figured in one of
those letters of Madame de Sevigne where the freshness of the haymaker
of Les Rochers survives the glare and the terrible staleness of the
Versailles of Louis XV., a blunt camp jest from the soldier, a sarcasm
from the philosopher, a joyous barcarole, strangely