Tuileries garden, and when
Sunday came, with a rainy, windy, dismal evening, he went with Terrapin
and Co. to the Closerie des Lilas.

This is the great ball of the Latin Quarter. It stands near the barriers
upon the Boulevard, and is haunted with students and grisettes. Commonly
it was thronged with waltzers, and the scene on gala nights, when all
the lamps were aflame, and the music drowned out by the thunder of the
dance, was a compromise between Paradise and Pandemonium. To-night there
was a beggarly array of folk; the multitude of _garcons_ contemplated
each other's white aprons, and old Bullier, the proprietor, staggering
under his huge hat, exhibited a desire to be taken out and interred. The
wild-eyed young man with flying, carroty locks, who stood in the set
directly under the orchestra, at that part of the floor called "the
kitchen," was flinging up his legs without any perceptible enjoyment,
and the policemen in helmets, and cuirassiers, who had hard work to keep
order in general, looked like lay figures now, and strolled off into the
embowered and sloppy gardens. There were not two hundred folk under the
roofs. Ralph had come here with the unacknowledged thought of meeting
Suzette, and he walked around with his cigar, leaning upon Terrapin's
arm and making himself disagreeable.

Suddenly he came before her. She seemed to have arisen from the earth.
She looked so weak and haggard that he was impelled to speak to her; but
he was obdurate and hard-hearted. He could have filled her cup of
bitterness and watched her drink it to the dregs, and would have been
relentless if she was kneeling at his feet.

"Flare, what makes you tremble so?" said Terrapin; "are you cold?
Confound it, man, you are sick! Sit here in the draft and take some
cognac."

"No," answered Ralph, "I am all right again. You see my girl there?
(Don't look at her!) You know some of these girls, old fellow? I mean to
treat two of them to a bottle of champagne. She will see it. I mean for
her to do so. Who are these passing? Come with me."

He walked by Suzette and her friend as if they had been invisible, and
addressed those whom he pursued with such energy that they shrank back.
He made one of them take his arm, and hurried here and there, saying
honeyed words all the time, by which she was affrighted; but every
smile, false as it was, fell into Suzette's heart.

Weary, wan, wretched, she kept them ever in view, crossing his path now
and t