the
card-players at every unexpected _coup_, the jingle of gold, mingled
with music and the murmur of conversation; and to put the finishing
touch to the vertigo of that multitude, intoxicated by all the
seductions the world can offer, a perfume-laden atmosphere and general
exaltation acted upon their over-wrought imaginations. Thus, at my
right was the depressing, silent image of death; at my left the decorous
bacchanalia of life; on the one side nature, cold and gloomy, and in
mourning garb; on the other side, man on pleasure bent. And, standing
on the borderland of those two incongruous pictures, which repeated
thousands of times in diverse ways, make Paris the most entertaining and
most philosophical city in the world, I played a mental _macedoine_[*],
half jesting, half funereal. With my left foot I kept time to the music,
and the other felt as if it were in a tomb. My leg was, in fact, frozen
by one of those draughts which congeal one half of the body while the
other suffers from the intense heat of the salons--a state of things not
unusual at balls.

[*] _Macedoine_, in the sense in which it is here used, is a
game, or rather a series of games, of cards, each player,
when it is his turn to deal, selecting the game to be
played.

"Monsieur de Lanty has not owned this house very long, has he?"

"Oh, yes! It is nearly ten years since the Marechal de Carigliano sold
it to him."

"Ah!"

"These people must have an enormous fortune."

"They surely must."

"What a magnificent party! It is almost insolent in its splendor."

"Do you imagine they are as rich as Monsieur de Nucingen or Monsieur de
Gondreville?"

"Why, don't you know?"

I leaned forward and recognized the two persons who were talking
as members of that inquisitive genus which, in Paris, busies itself
exclusively with the _Whys_ and _Hows_. _Where does he come from? Who
are they? What's the matter with him? What has she done?_ They lowered
their voices and walked away in order to talk more at their ease on
some retired couch. Never was a more promising mine laid open to seekers
after mysteries. No one knew from what country the Lanty family came,
nor to what source--commerce, extortion, piracy, or inheritance--they
owed a fortune estimated at several millions. All the members of
the family spoke Italian, French, Spanish, English, and German, with
sufficient fluency to lead one to suppose that they had lived long among
those