ho yielded to his fair neighbor's
fascinations with a sort of joyous stupor. She made him eat, she made him
drink, she made him laugh.

"What a little serpent she is, isn't she, Monsieur le Cure?" said the
baroness.

"She is very lovely," said the cure.

"Enough to make one shudder," rejoined the baroness.

In the evening, after waltzing for a little while around the room, Julia,
accompanied by her husband, sang in her beautiful, grave voice, some
unpublished melodies and national songs she had brought back from Italy.
One of these tunes having reminded her of a sort of tarentella she had
seen danced by some women at Procida, she requested her husband to play
it. She was explaining at the same time, with much animation, how this
tarentella was danced, giving a rapid outline of the steps, the gestures
and the attitudes; then, suddenly carried away by the ardor of her
narrative:

"Wait a moment, Pierre," she said, "I am going to dance it. That will be
much more simple."

She lifted the long train of her dress, which impeded her movements, and
requested her mother to loop it up with pins. In the meantime she was
right busy herself; there were on the mantel-piece, and on the consoles,
vases filled with flowers and verdure; she drew freely from them with her
nimble fingers, and, standing before a mirror, she fastened and twined
pell-mell, in her magnificent hair, flowers, leaves, bunches, ears,
anything that happened to fall under her hands. With her head loaded with
that heavy and quivering wreath, she came to place herself in the center
of the parlor.

"Go on now, dear!" she said to Monsieur de Moras. He played the
tarentella, that began with a sort of slow and measured ballet-step, which
Julia performed in her own masterly style, folding and unfolding in turn,
like two garlands, her peri's arms; then the rhythm becoming more and more
animated, she struck the floor with her rapid and repeated steps, with the
wild suppleness and the wanton smile of a young bacchante. Suddenly she
brought the performance to a close with a long slide that carried her, all
panting, before Monsieur de Lucan, seated opposite to her. There, she bent
one knee, lay with rapid gesture both her hands upon her hair, and tossing
about at the same time her inclined head, she shook off her crown in a
shower of flowers at the feet of Lucan, saying in her sweetest voice, and
in a tone of gracious homage:

"There! sir!"

After which, she rose, a