hair with a diamond in the centre, and she attracts every eye for a
whole evening; another revives the hair-net, or sticks a dagger through
the twist to suggest a garter; this one wears velvet bands round her
wrists, that one appears in lace lippets. These valiant efforts, an
Austerlitz of vanity or of love, then set the fashion for lower spheres
by the time the inventive creatress has originated something new. This
evening, which Valerie meant to be a success for her, she had placed
three patches. She had washed her hair with some lye, which changed
its hue for a few days from a gold color to a duller shade. Madame
Steinbock's was almost red, and she would be in every point unlike her.
This new effect gave her a piquant and strange appearance, which puzzled
her followers so much, that Montes asked her:

"What have you done to yourself this evening?"--Then she put on a rather
wide black velvet neck-ribbon, which showed off the whiteness of her
skin. One patch took the place of the _assassine_ of our grandmothers.
And Valerie pinned the sweetest rosebud into her bodice, just in the
middle above the stay-busk, and in the daintiest little hollow! It was
enough to make every man under thirty drop his eyelids.

"I am as sweet as a sugar-plum," said she to herself, going through her
attitudes before the glass, exactly as a dancer practises her curtesies.

Lisbeth had been to market, and the dinner was to be one of those
superfine meals which Mathurine had been wont to cook for her Bishop
when he entertained the prelate of the adjoining diocese.

Stidmann, Claude Vignon, and Count Steinbock arrived almost together,
just at six. An ordinary, or, if you will, a natural woman would have
hastened at the announcement of a name so eagerly longed for; but
Valerie, though ready since five o'clock, remained in her room, leaving
her three guests together, certain that she was the subject of their
conversation or of their secret thoughts. She herself had arranged
the drawing-room, laying out the pretty trifles produced in Paris and
nowhere else, which reveal the woman and announce her presence: albums
bound in enamel or embroidered with beads, saucers full of pretty rings,
marvels of Sevres or Dresden mounted exquisitely by Florent and Chanor,
statues, books, all the frivolities which cost insane sums, and which
passion orders of the makers in its first delirium--or to patch up its
last quarrel.

Besides, Valerie was in the state of