of "Chaos Vanquished," with
Ursus, Homo, and Gwynplaine on the stage, Ursus, from habit, cast a
look at the audience, and felt a sensation.

The compartment for the nobility was occupied. A lady was sitting alone
in the middle of the box, on the Utrecht velvet arm-chair. She was
alone, and she filled the box. Certain beings seem to give out light.
This lady, like Dea, had a light in herself, but a light of a different
character.

Dea was pale, this lady was pink. Dea was the twilight, this lady,
Aurora. Dea was beautiful, this lady was superb. Dea was innocence,
candour, fairness, alabaster--this woman was of the purple, and one felt
that she did not fear the blush. Her irradiation overflowed the box, she
sat in the midst of it, immovable, in the spreading majesty of an idol.

Amidst the sordid crowd she shone out grandly, as with the radiance of a
carbuncle. She inundated it with so much light that she drowned it in
shadow, and all the mean faces in it underwent eclipse. Her splendour
blotted out all else.

Every eye was turned towards her.

Tom-Jim-Jack was in the crowd. He was lost like the rest in the nimbus
of this dazzling creature.

The lady at first absorbed the whole attention of the public, who had
crowded to the performance, thus somewhat diminishing the opening
effects of "Chaos Vanquished."

Whatever might be the air of dreamland about her, for those who were
near she was a woman; perchance too much a woman.

She was tall and amply formed, and showed as much as possible of her
magnificent person. She wore heavy earrings of pearls, with which were
mixed those whimsical jewels called "keys of England." Her upper dress
was of Indian muslin, embroidered all over with gold--a great luxury,
because those muslin dresses then cost six hundred crowns. A large
diamond brooch closed her chemise, the which she wore so as to display
her shoulders and bosom, in the immodest fashion of the time; the
chemisette was made of that lawn of which Anne of Austria had sheets so
fine that they could be passed through a ring. She wore what seemed like
a cuirass of rubies--some uncut, but polished, and precious stones were
sewn all over the body of her dress. Then, her eyebrows were blackened
with Indian ink; and her arms, elbows, shoulders, chin, and nostrils,
with the top of her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, the palms of her
hands, the tips of her fingers, were tinted with a glowing and
provoking touch of colour. Above