little mice were very much terrified when suddenly the aristocratic
ladies came into the ball-room, rustling in whole oceans of silks and
lace, with their haughty heads changed into so many hanging gardens of
Semiramis, loaded with all the treasures of India, and radiant as the
sun.

At first the poor girls looked down in shame and confusion, and Baroness
Pompadour's eyes glistened with all the joy of triumph, but her
ill-natured pleasure did not last long, for the intrigue, on which the
Prince's ignoble passions were to make shipwreck, recoiled on the
highly-born lady patroness of the deer park.

It was not the aristocratic ladies in their magnificent toilettes that
threw the girls from the middle classes into the shade, but, on the
contrary, those pretty girls in their washing dresses, and with the plain
but splendid ornament of their abundant hair looked far more charming
than they would have done in silk dresses with long trains, and with
flowers in their hair, and the novelty and unwontedness of their
appearance there allured not only the Prince, but all the other gentlemen
and officers, so that the proud grand-daughters of the lions, griffins,
and eagles, were quite neglected by the gentlemen, who danced almost
exclusively with the pretty girls of the middle classes.

The faded lips of the baronesses and countesses uttered many a "_For
Shame_!" but all in vain, neither was it any good for the Baroness to
make up her mind that she would never again put a social medley before
the Prince in her drawing-room, for he had seen through her intrigue, and
gave her up altogether. _Sic transit gloria mundi!_

She, however, consoled herself as best she could.

THE WHITE LADY

Fortuna, the goddess of chance and good luck, has always been _Cupid's_
best ally and Arnold T., who was a lieutenant in a hussar regiment, was
evidently a special favorite of both those roguish deities.

This good-looking, well-bred young officer had been an enthusiastic
admirer of the two Countesses W., mother and daughter, during a tolerably
long leave of absence, which he spent with his relations in Vienna. He
had admired them from the _Prater_, and worshiped them at the opera, but
he had never had an opportunity of making their acquaintance, and when he
was back at his dull quarters in Galicia, he liked to think about those
two aristocratic beauties. Last summer his regiment was transferred to
Bohemia, to a wildly romantic district, t