neck bare, the striving after the coquettish effects that
properly belong to the other sex, gave him an uncertain appearance,
which was made even more ambiguous by his beardless face, marred only by
a faint suggestion of a moustache, and his sexless features to which
passion and ill-temper imparted all the evil quality of a shrewish
woman's face. But in Germinie's eyes all these airs and this Jupillon
style were of the highest distinction.

Thus constituted, with nothing lovable about him and incapable of a
genuine attachment even through his passions, Jupillon was greatly
embarrassed and bored by this adoration which became intoxicated with
itself, and waxed greater day by day. Germinie wearied him to death. She
seemed to him absurd in her humiliation, and laughable in her devotion.
He was weary, disgusted, worn out with her. He had had enough of her
love, enough of her person. And he had no hesitation about cutting loose
from her, without charity or pity. He ran away from her. He failed to
keep the appointments she made. He pretended that he was kept away by
accident, by errands to be done, by a pressure of work. At night, she
waited for him and he did not come; she supposed that he was detained by
business: in fact he was at some low billiard hall, or at some ball at
the barrier.

XVI

There was a ball at the _Boule-Noire_ one Thursday. The dancing was in
full blast.

The ball-room had the ordinary appearance of modern places of amusement
for the people. It was brilliant with false richness and tawdry
splendor. There were paintings there, and tables at which wine was sold,
gilded chandeliers and glasses that held a quartern of brandy, velvet
hangings and wooden benches, the shabbiness and rusticity of an
ale-house with the decorations of a cardboard palace.

Garnet velvet lambrequins with a fringe of gold lace hung at the windows
and were economically copied in paint beneath the mirrors, which were
lighted by three-branched candelabra. On the walls, in large white
panels, pastoral scenes by Boucher, surrounded with painted frames,
alternated with Prud'hon's _Seasons_, which were much astonished to find
themselves in such a place; and above the windows and doors dropsical
Loves gamboled among five roses protruding from a pomade jar of the sort
used by suburban hair-dressers. Square pillars, embellished with meagre
arabesques, supported the ceiling in the centre of the hall, where
there was a small octag