the same.

[Sidenote: _Les Jeunes Filles_]

Of course the Baronne had arranged for the Vicomte to take me in; and
our table was pink and white carnations. Presently the whole company
had arrived, and we started--a huge train, two and two, arm-in-arm--for
the pavilion. It was pretty; all the trees hung with electric lights
and Chinese lanterns, and the pavilion itself a fairyland of flowers.
There were about twelve tables, three of different coloured carnations
for the "_jeunes filles_," and the rest with roses for the married
people. Godmamma thought it most imprudent separating them like that,
and would hardly let Victorine sit down so far away from her until she
saw the daughter of the Princesse d'Hauterine at the same table.
Victorine went in with another officer from Versailles, in the same
regiment of _Chasseurs_ as the Vicomte; he was like a small black
monkey. The Marquis sat with the Comtesse at her table, and Godmamma
and the other bores had a table with the old Baron, etc. The Baronne
had quite a young man next her. I expect she could not do with the
chaperons and the old gentlemen.

Most of the girls at our table were either ill-at-ease or excited at
the unusual pleasure of being without their mothers, and at first no
one talked much. The French country people are almost as frumpy as the
English, only in a different way, but many of the guests were very
smart, and of course had come from Paris.

The Vicomte did say such a lot of agreeable things to me, and the
others were so occupied with their one chance of talking to a young man
that they did not listen as much as usual. He said he had never spent
such an agitated night as the one at Vernon. So I said No, the fleas
were horrid. He said he had not meant _them_; he meant that the sight
of my beautiful hair hanging down had caused him "_une grande emotion_"
and "_reves delicieux_."

There was an oldish girl next to him whom he knew; she has coiffed St.
Catherine for several years now, and was put at our table, I believe,
to be a kind of chaperon. She happened to be listening just then, as
her partner would talk to Victorine's friend--the pretty one with the
dirty nails--who was at his other side. She caught the word "fleas,"
and at once asked what we were talking about. "Un sujet si
desagreable," she said. I said it was about our journey on the
_Sauterelle_, where, at Vernon, Monsieur de la Tremors had been so
badly bitten by the fleas that they had give