urned to the salons to take their coffee. A
few hackney-coaches had already brought the first impatient dancers.
An hour later the rooms were full, and the ball took the character of a
rout. Monsieur de Lacepede and Monsieur Vauquelin went away, much to the
grief of Cesar, who followed them to the staircase, vainly entreating
them to remain. He succeeded, however, in keeping Monsieur Popinot the
judge, and Monsieur de la Billardiere. With the exception of three
women who severally represented the aristocracy, finance, and government
circles,--namely, Mademoiselle de Fontaine, Madame Jules, and Madame
Rabourdin, whose beauty, dress, and manners were sharply defined in this
assemblage,--all the other women wore heavy, over-loaded dresses, and
offered to the eye that anomalous air of richness which gives to the
bourgeois masses their vulgar aspect, made cruelly apparent on this
occasion by the airy graces of the three other women.

The bourgeoisie of the Rue Saint-Denis displayed itself majestically in
the plenitude of its native powers of jocose silliness. It was a fair
specimen of that middle class which dresses its children like lancers
or national guards, buys the "Victoires et Conquetes," the
"Soldat-laboureur," admires the "Convoi du Pauvre," delights in mounting
guard, goes on Sunday to its own country-house, is anxious to acquire
the distinguished air, and dreams of municipal honors,--that middle
class which is jealous of all and of every one, and yet is good,
obliging, devoted, feeling, compassionate, ready to subscribe for the
children of General Foy, or for the Greeks, whose piracies it knows
nothing about, or the Exiles until none remained; duped through its
virtues and scouted for its defects by a social class that is not worthy
of it, for it has a heart precisely because it is ignorant of social
conventions,--that virtuous middle-class which brings up ingenuous
daughters to an honorable toil, giving them sterling qualities which
diminish as soon as they are brought in contact with the superior world
of social life; girls without mind, among whom the worthy Chrysale would
have chosen his wife,--in short, a middle-class admirably represented by
the Matifats, druggists in the Rue des Lombards, whose firm had supplied
"The Queen of Roses" for more than sixty years.

Madame Matifat, wishing to give herself a dignified air, danced in a
turban and a heavy robe of scarlet shot with gold threads,--a toilet
which harm