not
this? In fact, the Sunday-best mood of some reacts so effectually on
the rest that the men who are most accustomed to wearing full dress look
just like those to whom the party is a high festival, unique in their
life. And think too of the serious old men to whom such things are
so completely a matter of indifference, that they are wearing their
everyday black coats; the long-married men, whose faces betray their sad
experience of the life the young pair are but just entering on; and the
lighter elements, present as carbonic-acid gas is in champagne; and
the envious girls, the women absorbed in wondering if their dress is a
success, the poor relations whose parsimonious "get-up" contrasts with
that of the officials in uniform; and the greedy ones, thinking only of
the supper; and the gamblers, thinking only of cards.

There are some of every sort, rich and poor, envious and envied,
philosophers and dreamers, all grouped like the plants in a flower-bed
round the rare, choice blossom, the bride. A wedding-ball is an epitome
of the world.

At the liveliest moment of the evening Crevel led the Baron aside, and
said in a whisper, with the most natural manner possible:

"By Jove! that's a pretty woman--the little lady in pink who has opened
a racking fire on you from her eyes."

"Which?"

"The wife of that clerk you are promoting, heaven knows how!--Madame
Marneffe."

"What do you know about it?"

"Listen, Hulot; I will try to forgive you the ill you have done me if
only you will introduce me to her--I will take you to Heloise. Everybody
is asking who is that charming creature. Are you sure that it will
strike no one how and why her husband's appointment got itself
signed?--You happy rascal, she is worth a whole office.--I would serve
in her office only too gladly.--Come, cinna, let us be friends."

"Better friends than ever," said the Baron to the perfumer, "and I
promise you I will be a good fellow. Within a month you shall dine with
that little angel.--For it is an angel this time, old boy. And I advise
you, like me, to have done with the devils."

Cousin Betty, who had moved to the Rue Vanneau, into a nice little
apartment on the third floor, left the ball at ten o'clock, but came
back to see with her own eyes the two bonds bearing twelve hundred
francs interest; one of them was the property of the Countess Steinbock,
the other was in the name of Madame Hulot.

It is thus intelligible that Monsieur Crevel