rief so as to
make himself poetically melancholy for a week; but a lover in the
regency was much more accommodating. Suicide was scarcely discovered,
and if by chance people fell into the water, they did not drown as long
as there was the least little straw to cling to. D'Harmental did not
affect the coxcombry of sadness. He decided, sighing, it is true, that
he would go to the opera ball; and for a lover betrayed in so unforeseen
and cruel a manner this was something; but it must be confessed, to the
shame of our poor species, that he was chiefly led to this philosophic
determination by the fact that the letter was written in a female hand.

CHAPTER IV.

A BAL-MASQUE OF THE PERIOD.--THE BAT.

The opera balls were then at their height. It was an invention of the
Chevalier de Bullon, who only obtained pardon for assuming the title of
Prince d'Auvergne, nobody exactly knew why, by rendering this service to
the dissipated society of the time. It was he who had invented the
double flooring which put the pit on a level with the stage: and the
regent, who highly appreciated all good inventions, had granted him in
recompense a pension of two thousand livres, which was four times what
the Grand Roi had given to Corneille. That beautiful room, with its rich
and grave architecture, which the Cardinal de Richelieu had inaugurated
by his "Mirame," where Sully and Quinault's pastorals had been
represented, and where Moliere had himself played his principal works,
was this evening the rendezvous of all that was noble, rich, and
elegant.

D'Harmental, from a feeling of spite, very natural in his situation, had
taken particular pains with his toilet. When he arrived, the room was
already full, and he had an instant's fear that the mask with the violet
ribbons would not find him, inasmuch as the unknown had neglected to
assign a place of meeting, and he congratulated himself on having come
unmasked. This resolution showed great confidence in the discretion of
his late adversaries, a word from whom would have sent him before the
Parliament, or at least to the Bastille. But so much confidence had the
gentlemen of that day in each other's good faith, that, after having in
the morning passed his sword through the body of one of the regent's
favorites, the chevalier came, without hesitation, to seek an adventure
at the Palais Royal. The first person he saw there was the young Duc de
Richelieu, whose name, adventures, elegance, an