out to the question.

"You know the effect of fair hair and blue eyes in the soft, voluptuous
decorous dance? Such a girl does not knock audaciously at your heart,
like the dark-haired damsels that seem to say after the fashion of
Spanish beggars, 'Your money or your life; give me five francs or take
my contempt!' These insolent and somewhat dangerous beauties may find
favor in the sight of many men, but to my thinking the blonde that has
the good fortune to look extremely tender and yielding, while foregoing
none of her rights to scold, to tease, to use unmeasured language, to
be jealous without grounds, to do anything, in short, that makes woman
adorable,--the fair-haired girl, I say, will always be more sure to
marry than the ardent brunette. Firewood is dear, you see.

"Isaure, white as an Alsacienne (she first saw the light at Strasbourg,
and spoke German with a slight and very agreeable French accent), danced
to admiration. Her feet, omitted on the passport, though they really
might have found a place there under the heading Distinguishing Signs,
were remarkable for their small size, and for that particular something
which old-fashioned dancing masters used to call flic-flac, a something
that put you in mind of Mlle. Mars' agreeable delivery, for all the
Muses are sisters, and the dancer and poet alike have their feet upon
the earth. Isaure's feet spoke lightly and swiftly with a clearness
and precision which augured well for things of the heart. '_Elle a duc
flic-flac_,' was old Marcel's highest word of praise, and old Marcel was
the dancing master that deserved the epithet of 'the Great.' People used
to say 'the Great Marcel,' as they said 'Frederick the Great,' and in
Frederick's time."

"Did Marcel compose any ballets?" inquired Finot.

"Yes, something in the style of _Les Quatre Elements_ and _L'Europe
galante_."

"What times they were, when great nobles dressed the dancers!" said
Finot.

"Improper!" said Bixiou. "Isaure did not raise herself on the tips of
her toes, she stayed on the ground, she swayed in the dance without
jerks, and neither more nor less voluptuously than a young lady ought
to do. There was a profound philosophy in Marcel's remark that every
age and condition had its dance; a married woman should not dance like
a young girl, nor a little jackanapes like a capitalist, nor a soldier
like a page; he even went so far as to say that the infantry ought not
to dance like the cavalry, and f