ough to satisfy her impatience.

The party from the Villa Planat set out on foot, so as not to betray
the rank of the personages who were about to honor the ball with
their presence. They dined early. And the month of May humored this
aristocratic escapade by one of its finest evenings. Mademoiselle de
Fontaine was quite surprised to find in the rotunda some quadrilles made
up of persons who seemed to belong to the upper classes. Here and there,
indeed, were some young men who look as though they must have saved for
a month to shine for a day; and she perceived several couples whose
too hearty glee suggested nothing conjugal; still, she could only glean
instead of gathering a harvest. She was amused to see that pleasure in
a cotton dress was so very like pleasure robed in satin, and that the
girls of the middle class danced quite as well as ladies--nay, sometimes
better. Most of the women were simply and suitably dressed. Those who
in this assembly represented the ruling power, that is to say,
the country-folk, kept apart with wonderful politeness. In fact,
Mademoiselle Emilie had to study the various elements that composed the
mixture before she could find any subject for pleasantry. But she had
not time to give herself up to malicious criticism, or opportunity for
hearing many of the startling speeches which caricaturists so gladly
pick up. The haughty young lady suddenly found a flower in this wide
field--the metaphor is reasonable--whose splendor and coloring worked
on her imagination with all the fascination of novelty. It often happens
that we look at a dress, a hanging, a blank sheet of paper, with so
little heed that we do not at first detect a stain or a bright spot
which afterwards strikes the eye as though it had come there at the
very instant when we see it; and by a sort of moral phenomenon somewhat
resembling this, Mademoiselle de Fontaine discovered in a young man the
external perfection of which she had so long dreamed.

Seated on one of the clumsy chairs which marked the boundary line of the
circular floor, she had placed herself at the end of the row formed by
the family party, so as to be able to stand up or push forward as her
fancy moved her, treating the living pictures and groups in the hall as
if she were in a picture gallery; impertinently turning her eye-glass
on persons not two yards away, and making her remarks as though she
were criticising or praising a study of a head, a painting of genre.