an Bacchus,
standing for sign of the beauty and vacuity of their world: and how
dismally narrow that world was, she felt with renewed astonishment at
every dive out of her gold-fish pool into the world of tides below; so
that she was ready to scorn the cultivation of the graces, and had,
when not submitting to the smell, fanciful fits of a liking for tobacco
smoke--the familiar incense of those homes where speech was wine.

At last she fell to the asking of herself whether, in the same city
with him, often among his friends, hearing his latest intimate
remarks--things homely redolent of him as hot bread of the oven--she was
ever to meet this man upon whom her thoughts were bent to the eclipse
of all others. She desired to meet him for comparison's sake, and to
criticize a popular hero. It was inconceivable that any one popular
could approach her standard, but she was curious; flame played about
him; she had some expectation of easing a spiteful sentiment created by
the recent subjection of her thoughts to the prodigious little Jew; and
some feeling of closer pity for Prince Marko she had, which urged her
to be rid of her delusion as to the existence of a wonder-working man on
our earth, that she might be sympathetically kind to the prince, perhaps
compliant, and so please her parents, be good and dull, and please
everybody, and adieu to dreams, good night, and so to sleep with the
beasts!...

Calling one afternoon on a new acquaintance of the flat table-land she
liked tripping down to from her heights, Clotilde found the lady in
supreme toilette, glowing, bubbling: 'Such a breakfast, my dear!' The
costly profusion, the anecdotes, the wit, the fun, the copious draughts
of the choicest of life--was there ever anything to match it? Never in
that lady's recollection, or her husband's either, she exclaimed. And
where was the breakfast? Why, at Alvan's, to be sure; where else could
such a breakfast be?

'And you know Alvan!' cried Clotilde, catching excitement from the
lady's flush.

'Alvan is one of my husband's closest friends'

Clotilde put on the playful frenzy; she made show of wringing her hands:
'Oh! happy you! you know Alvan? And everybody is to know him except me?
why? I proclaim it unjust. Because I am unmarried? I'll take a husband
to-morrow morning to be entitled to meet Alvan in the evening.'

The playful frenzy is accepted in its exact innocent signification of
'this is my pretty wilful will and way,' and