sts of their wearers in that
graceful ascending motion which caused them to appear, little by
little, until they burst upon one in the full bloom of their splendor.
As the couples reached the top of the stairs they seemed to make their
entrance on the stage; and that was doubly true, for every one left on
the last step the frowns, the wrinkles of deep thought the air of
weariness and all traces of anger or depression, to display a tranquil
countenance, a smile playing over the placid features. The men
exchanged hearty grasps of the hand, warm fraternal greetings; the
women, thinking only of themselves, with little affected shrugs, with a
charming simper and abundant play of the eyes and shoulders, murmured a
few meaningless words of greeting:

"Thanks! Oh! thanks--how kind you are."

Then the couples separated, for an evening party is no longer, as it
used to be, an assemblage of congenial persons, in which the wit of the
women compelled the force of character, the superior knowledge, the
very genius of the men to bow gracefully before it, but a too numerous
mob in which the women, who alone are seated, whisper together like
captives in the harem, and have no other enjoyment than that of being
beautiful or of seeming to be. De Gery, after wandering through the
doctor's library, the conservatory and the billiard room, where there
was smoking, tired of dull, serious conversation, which seemed to him
to be out of keeping in such a festal scene and in the brief hour of
pleasure--some one had asked him carelessly and without looking at him,
what was doing at the Bourse that day--approached the door of the main
salon, which was blockaded by a dense mass of black coats, a surging
sea of heads packed closely together and gazing.

An enormous room, handsomely furnished, with the artistic taste
characteristic of the master and mistress of the house. A few old
pictures against the light background of the draperies. A monumental
chimney-piece, decorated with a fine marble group, "The Seasons" by
Sebastien Ruys, about which long green stalks, with lacelike edges, or
of the stiffness of carved bronze, bent toward the mirror as toward a
stream of limpid water. On the low chairs groups of women crowded
together, blending the vaporous hues of their dresses, forming an
immense nosegay of living flowers, above which gleamed bare white
shoulders, hair studded with diamonds, drops of water on the brunettes,
glistening reflections on the