could hold them; for they ceased to lift
their glasses, and stood watching me, sometimes so silent that I could
hear their breathing only, sometimes making a great applause, which
passed into silence again quickly. Once, as I wheeled, I caught the
eyes of Jamond watching me closely. The Intendant never stirred from
his seat, and scarcely moved, but kept his eyes fixed on me. Nor did he
applaud. There was something painful in his immovability.

"I saw it all as in a dream, yet I did see it, and I was resolute to
triumph over the wicked designs of base and abandoned men. I feared that
my knowledge and power to hold them might stop before help came. Once,
in a slight pause, when a great noise of their hands and a rattling of
scabbards on the table gave me a short respite, some one--Captain Lancy,
I think--snatched up a glass, and called on all to drink my health.

"'Jamond! Jamond!' was the cry, and they drank; the Intendant himself
standing up, and touching the glass to his lips, then sitting down
again, silent and immovable as before. One gentleman, a nephew of the
Chevalier de la Darante, came swaying towards me with a glass of wine,
begging me in a flippant courtesy to drink; but I waved him back, and
the Intendant said most curtly, 'Monsieur de la Darante will remember my
injunction.'

"Again I danced, and I can not tell you with what anxiety and
desperation--for there must be an end to it before long, and your peril,
Robert, come again, unless these rough fellows changed their minds.
Moment after moment went, and though I had danced beyond reasonable
limits, I still seemed to get new strength, as I have heard men say, in
fighting, they 'come to their second wind.' At last, at the end of the
most famous step that Jamond had taught me, I stood still for a moment
to renewed applause; and I must have wound these men up to excitement
beyond all sense, for they would not be dissuaded, but swarmed towards
the dais where I was, and some called for me to remove my mask.

"Then the Intendant came down among them, bidding them stand back, and
himself stepped towards me. I felt affrighted, for I liked not the look
in his eyes, and so, without a word, I stepped down from the dais--I did
not dare to speak, lest they should recognize my voice--and made for the
door with as much dignity as I might. But the Intendant came to me with
a mannered courtesy, and said in my ear, 'Madame, you have won all our
hearts; I would you might a