Domestic Peace | Page 7

Italian suppleness and a genius for intrigue,
a drawing-room eloquence, and a knowledge of manners, which are so
good a substitute for the higher qualities of a sterling man. Through
young and eager, his face had already acquired the rigid brilliancy of
tinned iron, one of the indispensable characteristics of diplomatists,
which allows them to conceal their emotions and disguise their feelings,
unless, indeed, this impassibility indicates an absence of all emotion
and the death of every feeling. The heart of a diplomate may be
regarded as an insoluble problem, for the three most illustrious
ambassadors of the time have been distinguished by perdurable hatreds
and most romantic attachments.
Martial, however, was one of those men who are capable of reckoning
on the future in the midst of their intensest enjoyment; he had already
learned to judge the world, and hid his ambition under the fatuity of a
lady-killer, cloaking his talent under the commonplace of mediocrity as
soon as he observed the rapid advancement of those men who gave the
master little umbrage.
The two friends now had to part with a cordial grasp of hands. The
introductory tune, warning the ladies to form in squares for a fresh
quadrille, cleared the men away from the space they had filled while
talking in the middle of the large room. This hurried dialogue had taken
place during the usual interval between two dances, in front of the
fireplace of the great drawing-room of Gondreville's mansion. The
questions and answers of this very ordinary ballroom gossip had been
almost whispered by each of the speakers into his neighbor's ear. At the
same time, the chandeliers and the flambeaux on the chimney-shelf
shed such a flood of light on the two friends that their faces, strongly
illuminated, failed, in spite of their diplomatic discretion, to conceal the
faint expression of their feelings either from the keen-sighted countess

or the artless stranger. This espionage of people's thoughts is perhaps to
idle persons one of the pleasures they find in society, while numbers of
disappointed numskulls are bored there without daring to own it.

Fully to appreciate the interest of this conversation, it is necessary to
relate an incident which would presently serve as an invisible bond,
drawing together the actors in this little drama, who were at present
scattered through the rooms.
At about eleven o'clock, just as the dancers were returning to their seats,
the company had observed the entrance of the handsomest woman in
Paris, the queen of fashion, the only person wanting to the brilliant
assembly. She made it a rule never to appear till the moment when a
party had reached that pitch of excited movement which does not allow
the women to preserve much longer the freshness of their faces or of
their dress. This brief hour is, as it were, the springtime of a ball. An
hour after, when pleasure falls flat and fatigue is encroaching,
everything is spoilt. Madame de Vaudremont never committed the
blunder of remaining at a party to be seen with drooping flowers, hair
out of curl, tumbled frills, and a face like every other that sleep is
courting--not always without success. She took good care not to let her
beauty be seen drowsy, as her rivals did; she was so clever as to keep
up her reputation for smartness by always leaving a ballroom in
brilliant order, as she had entered it. Women whispered to each other
with a feeling of envy that she planned and wore as many different
dresses as the parties she went to in one evening.
On the present occasion Madame de Vaudremont was not destined to
be free to leave when she would the ballroom she had entered in
triumph. Pausing for a moment on the threshold, she shot swift but
observant glances on the women present, hastily scrutinizing their
dresses to assure herself that her own eclipsed them all.
The illustrious beauty presented herself to the admiration of the crowd
at the same moment with one of the bravest colonels of the Guards'
Artillery and the Emperor's favorite, the Comte de Soulanges. The
transient and fortuitous association of these two had about it a certain
air of mystery. On hearing the names announced of Monsieur de
Soulanges and the Comtesse de Vaudremont, a few women sitting by
the wall rose, and men, hurrying in from the side-rooms, pressed

forward to the principal doorway. One of the jesters who are always to
be found in any large assembly said, as the Countess and her escort
came in, that "women had quite as much curiosity about seeing a man
who was faithful to his passion as men had in studying a woman who
was difficult to enthrall."
Though the Comte de Soulanges, a young man of about two-and-thirty,
was