like one who had communicated with the past and received
a benediction. There was special provision in the way it came to me;
for man loves to believe that God watches over and mothers him.

Forgetting--if I had ever heard--how the ancients dreaded the powers
above when they had been too fortunate, I went with the marquis in high
spirits to the Rue Ste. Croix. There were pots of incense sending little
wavers of smoke through the rooms, and the people might have peopled a
dream. The men were indeed all smooth and trim; but the women had given
rein to their fancies.

Our hostess was a fair and gracious woman, of Greek ancestry, as
Bonaparte himself was, and her daughter had been married to his favorite
general, the marquis told me.

I notice only the unusual in clothing; the scantiness of ladies' apparel
that clung like the skin, and lay upon the oak floor in ridges, among
which a man must shove his way, was unusual to me.

I saw, in space kept cleared around her chair, one beauty with nothing
but sandals on her feet, though these were white as milk, silky skinned
like a hand, and ringed with jewels around the toes.

Bonaparte's youngest sister stood receiving court. She was attired like
a Bacchante, with bands of fur in her hair, topped by bunches of gold
grapes. Her robe and tunic of muslin fine as air, woven in India, had
bands of gold, clasped with cameos, under the bosom and on the arms.
Each woman seemed to have planned outdoing the others in conceits which
marked her own fairness.

I looked anxiously down the spacious room without seeing Madame de
Ferrier. The simplicity, which made for beauty of houses in France,
struck me, in the white and gold paneling, and the chimney, which lifted
its mass of design to the ceiling. I must have been staring at this and
thinking of Madame de Ferrier when my name was called in a lilting and
excited fashion:

"Lazarre!"

There was Mademoiselle de Chaumont in the midst of gallants, and better
prepared to dance a gavotte than any other charmer in the room. For her
gauze dress, fastened on the shoulders so that it fell not quite off her
bosom, reached only to the middle of the calf. This may have been for
the protection of rosebuds with which ribbons drawn lengthwise through
the skirt, were fringed; but it also showed her child-like feet and
ankles, and made her appear tiptoe like a fairy, and more remarkable
than any other figure except the barefooted dame. She held a croo