fty people. Where did all
this crowd spring from? Young girls with low necks were making a great
display of their shoulders. A woman had a golden dagger stuck in her
chignon, while a bodice thickly embroidered with jet beads clothed her
in what looked like a coat of mail. People's eyes kept following another
lady smilingly, so singularly marked were her clinging skirts. All the
luxuriant splendor of the departing winter was there--the overtolerant
world of pleasure, the scratch gathering a hostess can get together
after a first introduction, the sort of society, in fact, in which
great names and great shames jostle together in the same fierce quest of
enjoyment. The heat was increasing, and amid the overcrowded rooms the
quadrille unrolled the cadenced symmetry of its figures.

"Very smart--the countess!" La Faloise continued at the garden door.
"She's ten years younger than her daughter. By the by, Foucarmont, you
must decide on a point. Vandeuvres once bet that she had no thighs."

This affectation of cynicism bored the other gentlemen, and Foucarmont
contented himself by saying:

"Ask your cousin, dear boy. Here he is."

"Jove, it's a happy thought!" cried La Faloise. "I bet ten louis she has
thighs."

Fauchery did indeed come up. As became a constant inmate of the house,
he had gone round by the dining room in order to avoid the crowded
doors. Rose had taken him up again at the beginning of the winter, and
he was now dividing himself between the singer and the countess, but he
was extremely fatigued and did not know how to get rid of one of them.
Sabine flattered his vanity, but Rose amused him more than she. Besides,
the passion Rose felt was a real one: her tenderness for him was marked
by a conjugal fidelity which drove Mignon to despair.

"Listen, we want some information," said La Faloise as he squeezed his
cousin's arm. "You see that lady in white silk?"

Ever since his inheritance had given him a kind of insolent dash of
manner he had affected to chaff Fauchery, for he had an old grudge to
satisfy and wanted to be revenged for much bygone raillery, dating from
the days when he was just fresh from his native province.

"Yes, that lady with the lace."

The journalist stood on tiptoe, for as yet he did not understand.

"The countess?" he said at last.

"Exactly, my good friend. I've bet ten louis--now, has she thighs?"

And he fell a-laughing, for he was delighted to have succeeded in
snubbing a fe