him that the upstart banker was not to be
recognized by any former comrade. The ball, like a brilliant rocket,
was extinguished by five o'clock in the morning. At that hour only some
forty hackney-coaches remained, out of the hundred or more which
had crowded the Rue Saint-Honore. Within, they were dancing the
_boulangere_, which has since been dethroned by the cotillon and
the English galop. Du Tillet, Roguin, Cardot junior, the Comte de
Grandville, and Jules Desmarets were playing at _bouillotte_. Du Tillet
won three thousand francs. The day began to dawn, the wax lights paled,
the players joined the dancers for a last quadrille. In such houses
the final scenes of a ball never pass off without some impropriety. The
dignified personages have departed; the intoxication of dancing, the
heat of the atmosphere, the spirits concealed in the most innocent
drinks, have mellowed the angularities of the old women, who
good-naturedly join in the last quadrille and lend themselves to the
excitement of the moment; the men are heated, their hair, lately curled,
straggles down their faces, and gives them a grotesque expression which
excites laughter; the young women grow volatile, and a few flowers
drop from their garlands. The bourgeois Momus appears, followed by his
revellers. Laughs ring loudly; all present surrender to the amusement
of the moment, knowing that on the morrow toil will resume its sway.
Matifat danced with a woman's bonnet on his head; Celestin called the
figures of the interminable country dance, and some of the women beat
their hands together excitedly at the words of command.

"How they do amuse themselves!" cried the happy Birotteau.

"I hope they won't break anything," said Constance to her uncle.

"You have given the most magnificent ball I have ever seen, and I have
seen many," said du Tillet, bowing to his old master.

Among the eight symphonies of Beethoven there is a theme, glorious as a
poem, which dominates the finale of the symphony in C minor. When,
after slow preparations by the sublime magician, so well understood by
Habeneck, the enthusiastic leader of an orchestra raises the rich veil
with a motion of his hand and calls forth the transcendent theme towards
which the powers of music have all converged, poets whose hearts have
throbbed at those sounds will understand how the ball of Cesar Birotteau
produced upon his simple being the same effect that this fecund harmony
wrought in theirs,--an effe