tion a duel with witnesses; where all that is
commonplace seems commoner still, and where every form of merit or
distinction is silently accepted as though it were the natural level of
all present. Rabourdin betook himself to the adjoining salon in which
a few persons were playing cards; and there he planted himself on
exhibition, as it were, which proved that he was not without social
intelligence.

"My dear," said the Marquise d'Espard to the Comtesse Feraud, Louis
XVIII.'s last mistress, "Paris is certainly unique. It produces--whence
and how, who knows?--women like this person, who seems ready to will and
to do anything."

"She really does will, and does do everything," put in des Lupeaulx,
puffed up with satisfaction.

At this moment the wily Madame Rabourdin was courting the minister's
wife. Carefully coached the evening before by des Lupeaulx, who knew all
the countess's weak spots, she was flattering her without seeming to do
so. Every now and then she kept silence; for des Lupeaulx, in love as he
was, knew her defects, and said to her the night before, "Be careful
not to talk too much,"--words which were really an immense proof of
attachment. Bertrand Barrere left behind him this sublime axiom: "Never
interrupt a woman when dancing to give her advice," to which we may add
(to make this chapter of the female code complete), "Never blame a woman
for scattering her pearls."

The conversation became general. From time to time Madame Rabourdin
joined in, just as a well-trained cat puts a velvet paw on her
mistress's laces with the claws carefully drawn in. The minister, in
matters of the heart, had few emotions. There was not another statesman
under the Restoration who had so completely done with gallantry as he;
even the opposition papers, the "Miroir," "Pandora," and "Figaro," could
not find a single throbbing artery with which to reproach him. Madame
Rabourdin knew this, but she knew also that ghosts return to old
castles, and she had taken it into her head to make the minister jealous
of the happiness which des Lupeaulx was appearing to enjoy. The latter's
throat literally gurgled with the name of his divinity. To launch his
supposed mistress successfully, he was endeavoring to persuade the
Marquise d'Espard, Madame de Nucingen, and the countess, in an eight-ear
conversation, that they had better admit Madame Rabourdin to their
coalition; and Madame de Camps was supporting him. At the end of the
hour the mi