Dinah was superior to the most
fascinating courtesan; she could be as amusing and as witty as Malaga;
but her extensive information, her habits of mind, her vast reading
enabled her to generalize her wit, while the Florines and the Schontzes
exerted theirs over a very narrow circle.

"There is in Dinah," said Etienne to Bixiou, "the stuff to make both a
Ninon and a De Stael."

"A woman who combines an encyclopaedia and a seraglio is very
dangerous," replied the mocking spirit.

When the expected infant became a visible fact, Madame de la Baudraye
would be seen no more; but before shutting herself up, never to go out
unless into the country, she was bent on being present at the first
performance of a play by Nathan. This literary solemnity occupied the
minds of the two thousand persons who regard themselves as constituting
"all Paris." Dinah, who had never been at a first night's performance,
was very full of natural curiosity. She had by this time arrived at such
a pitch of affection for Lousteau that she gloried in her misconduct;
she exerted a sort of savage strength to defy the world; she was
determined to look it in the face without turning her head aside.

She dressed herself to perfection, in a style suited to her delicate
looks and the sickly whiteness of her face. Her pallid complexion gave
her an expression of refinement, and her black hair in smooth bands
enhanced her pallor. Her brilliant gray eyes looked finer than ever,
set in dark rings. But a terribly distressing incident awaited her. By a
very simple chance, the box given to the journalist, on the first tier,
was next to that which Anna Grossetete had taken. The two intimate
friends did not even bow; neither chose to acknowledge the other. At
the end of the first act Lousteau left his seat, abandoning Dinah to the
fire of eyes, the glare of opera-glasses; while the Baronne de Fontaine
and the Comtesse Marie de Vandenesse, who accompanied her, received some
of the most distinguished men of fashion.

Dinah's solitude was all the more distressing because she had not
the art of putting a good face to the matter by examining the company
through her opera-glass. In vain did she try to assume a dignified and
thoughtful attitude, and fix her eyes on vacancy; she was overpoweringly
conscious of being the object of general attention; she could not
disguise her discomfort, and lapsed a little into provincialism,
displaying her handkerchief and making involunt