sm to the
prettily dressed woman." As it was, the female section of M. Marrast's
guests could advance no valid plea for mercy on that score. The
daughters looked limp with their choregraphic exertions: the emblem of
innocence, "la sainte mousseline," as Ambroise Thomas called it
afterwards, hung in vague, undefined folds on angular figures, perhaps
because the starch necessary to it had been appropriated by the matrons.
The latter were rigid to a degree, and looked daggers at their spouses
and their friends at the slightest attempt to stir them to animation.
"Fais donc danser ma vieille," was the consecrated formula with which a
not very eager cavalier was dragged to the seat where said "vieille"
was reposing in all the majesty of her unaccustomed finery, considerably
impaired in the wearer's transit on foot from her domicile at Montrouge
or Menilmontant to the banks of the Seine; for the weather that year was
almost tropical, even in the autumn, and consequently the cab had been
dispensed with. It would appear, from a remark I overheard, that Jehu,
in the way of business, preferred as fares the partisans of and
adherents to the fallen regimes, even of the latest one. Said a portly
dame to her neighbour, alluding to the cabman, "Il a absolument refuse
de nous prendre. Il a dit qu'il etait dans l'opposition, et qu'il ne
voulait pas trahir ses principes a moins de dix francs. Dix francs, ma
chere, nous aurions pu souper chez nous, et sans compter les frais de
toilette et de blanchissage. Quant a l'honneur d'etre ici, ca ne compte
pas pour grand'chose, vu que tout le quartier y est; nous demeurons a
Batignolles, et il a fallu descendre en ville ce matin pour avoir une
paire de gants blancs. Chez nous, partout la meme reponse: 'Des gants
blancs, madame, nous n'en avons plus. Presque toutes les dames du
quartier vont au Palais-Bourbon ce soir, et depuis hier il nous reste
que des petites pointures (sizes), des sept et des sept et demies.'"

As for the "elu du peuple souverain," when he had failed to draw his
"vieille" into the mazy dance, and been snubbed for his pains in the
bargain, he returned to his fellow-deputies, many of whom might be
easily recognized by the golden-fringed tricolour rosette in their
buttonholes, though some had merely kept it in their pockets. The "elu
du peuple" did not dance himself. Perhaps the most curious group was
that of the young attaches and clerks of the Foreign Office who had come
to enjoy