ficers filled the rooms, among whom I edged my way with difficulty
towards the place where Colonel Marbois was standing. He was a short,
thick-set, vulgar-looking man, of about fifty; his mustache and whiskers
meeting above the lip, and his bushy, black beard below, gave him the
air of a pioneer, which his harsh Breton accent did not derogate from.

"Ah, c'est vous!" said he, as my name was announced. "You 'll have to
learn in future, sir, that officers of your rank are not received at
the levies of their colonel. You hear me: report yourself to the _chef
d'escadron_, however, who will give you your orders. And mark me, sir,
let this be the last day you are seen in that uniform."

A short and not very gracious nod concluded the audience; and I took
my leave not the less abashed that I could mark a kind of half smile on
most of the faces about me as I withdrew from the crowd,--scarcely in
the street, however, when my heart felt light and my step elastic. I was
a sous-lieutenant of hussars; and if I did my duty, what cared I for
the smiles and frowns of my colonel? and had not the General Bonaparte
himself told me that "no grade was too high for the brave man who did
so?"

[Illustration: Monsieur Crillac's Salon 239]

I can scarcely avoid a smile even yet as I call to mind the awe I felt
on entering the splendid shop of Monsieur Crillac,--the fashionable
tailor of those days, whose plateglass windows and showy costumes formed
the standing point for many a lounger around the corner of the Rue de
richelieu and the Boulevard. His saloon, as he somewhat ostentatiously
called it, was the rendezvous for the idlers of a fashionable world, who
spent their mornings canvassing the last gossip of the city and devising
new extravagances in dress. The morning papers, caricatures, prints
of fashions, patterns of waistcoats, and new devices for buttons, were
scattered over a table, round which, in every attitude of indolence and
ease, were stretched some dozen of the exquisites of the period,
engaged in that species of half-ennui, half-conversation, that forms a
considerable part of the existence of your young men of fashion of every
age and every country. Their frock-coats of light cloth, high-collared,
and covered with buttons; their _bottes a revers_ reaching only mid-leg,
and met there by a tight _pantalon collant_; their hair studiously
brushed back off their foreheads, and worn long, though not in queue
behind,--bespoke them as