madame——”

In vain did Belcour seek to resist; Madame Volenville would not let him go, but dragged him toward the dance, paying no heed to his excuses. Seeing that a longer discussion would intensify the absurdity of his position, he yielded at last and returned to the quadrille. The crowd of curious onlookers hastily stood aside to make room for the couple upon whom all eyes were fixed.

The signal was given and everyone started off, the men to the right, then the ladies, Madame Volenville among the first. With what ardor she ran to the other men and swung them round as on a pivot! The perspiration rolled down her cheeks, and streaked her rouge; two of her mouches fell from her temple to a spot below the ear; her curls became loosened, her wreath of roses was detached and took the place of a collar; but none of those things was capable of stopping her: in an instant she had made the circuit of the quadrille and had returned to her place. Belcour was no longer there. He had taken advantage of the confusion occasioned by the figure, to steal away. But Madame Volenville must have a partner, and she took the first one who came to hand; it was an old attorney in a hammer wig, who happened to be standing opposite her. The excellent man had joined the crowd, impelled by curiosity; he had forced his way to the front and was gazing enviously at a pretty little breast of twenty years, as white and fresh and solid as a rock, that belonged to a pretty dancer. The old attorney remarked, with the lecherous gaze of a connoisseur, that the exertion of dancing scarcely shook the two lovely globes; he was amazed thereat, because it was a long while since he had seen anything of the sort at a ball, whether fancy dress, public, in fashionable or middle-class society, or even at open air fêtes. Overjoyed by his discovery, and to manifest his satisfaction to the pretty dancer, he displayed the tip of his tongue and smiled pleasantly; a method adopted by old rakes to declare their passion without words.

But the pretty dancer paid no heed to the attorney and his grimaces, and he, tired of showing his tongue without obtaining a glance, was deliberating whether, during a moment of crowding and confusion, he might venture to take her hand, when Madame Volenville, with the rapidity of a bomb, arrived between him and the young lady he was admiring, and began to execute her English steps, accompanied by an alluring simper.

The old libertine gazed with a bewildered air at the flushed, disfigured face, the disordered headdress and the limp form of Madame Volenville; he tried to retreat; but she took both his hands, whirled him about and made him jump into the air.

“Madame, I don’t know this!” cried the attorney, struggling to free himself.

“Come on, all the same, monsieur! I must have a partner!”

“Stop this, madame; I never waltzed in my life!”

“This isn’t a waltz, monsieur; it’s a jig.”

“Stop, madame, I beg! I am dizzy; I shall fall!”

“You dance like an angel!”

Madame Volenville was a very devil; she considered herself still as fascinating as at twenty; she was persuaded that her steps, her graces, her vivacity and her little mincing ways were calculated to fascinate everybody; she did not realize that years entirely change the aspect of things. That which is charming at twenty becomes affectation at forty; the frivolity natural to youth seems folly in maturer years, and the little simpering expressions which we forgive on a childish face, later are mere absurdities and sometimes downright grimaces.

It is possible, nevertheless, for a woman of mature years to please; but she does not succeed in so doing by aping the manners of youth. Nothing can be more agreeable to the eye, more calculated to attract favorable notice, than a mother dancing without any affectation of youthful graces, opposite her daughter; nothing more absurd than an old coquette, with her hair dressed as if she were sixteen, trying to rival girls of that age in agility.

Madame Volenville was, as you see, an indefatigable dancer; she strove to infect her partner with the ardor that animated her; but the old attorney, red as a cherry, rolled his eyes wildly, unable to distinguish objects; everything about him was going round and round; the jig, the heat and his wrath combined to make him helplessly dizzy. He held his face as far from his partner’s as possible; but, to put the finishing touch to his discomfiture, his wig came off, fell to the floor, where it was trampled under foot by the dancers, and the attorney’s head was revealed to the eyes of the guests, as bare as one’s hand.

This last mishap, adding tenfold to the old fellow’s rage, gave him the strength to break loose from his partner; he pushed her away with great force. Madame Volenville fell into the lap of a stout clerk, who was sitting peacefully on a bench at the end of the room, running over in his mind with keen enjoyment the names of all the dishes he had eaten at dinner.

The corpulent party uttered a sharp exclamation when Madame Volenville landed on him; he swore that he was being suffocated; but she did not stir, because no woman in good society ought to fall upon anyone without swooning. Monsieur Tourte—that was the clerk’s name—called for help, while Monsieur Robineau—our attorney—loudly demanded his wig, which he sought in vain in every corner of the room, but could not find, because the young notary’s clerk had obtained possession of it first and had thrown it out of the window onto the boulevard, where it fell on the nose of a cab-driver, who was looking at the sky to see if it was likely to rain the next day.

Meanwhile Edouard and Madame Germeuil strove to restore tranquillity and to bring order out of chaos. Adeline, for her part, could not help laughing, with all the other young women, at Madame Volenville’s attitude, Monsieur Tourte’s face and Monsieur Robineau’s fury.

Monsieur Volenville finally left his game of écarté, went to get a carafe of water, and approached his wife, whom he did not recognize, so great was the havoc wrought upon her dress and her face. After taking his pinch of snuff, he relieved his wife of her wreath of roses and began to slap her hands, while Madame Germeuil held a phial of salts under her nose. But nothing availed, nothing had any effect on the benumbed senses of the formidable dancer. Madame Germeuil was at her wit’s end. Monsieur Tourte swore that he would bite Madame Volenville in the arm or somewhere else, if somebody did not instantly remove the burden that was suffocating him, and the auctioneer resorted to his snuff-box in quest of ideas.

At that moment Monsieur Robineau was rushing about the ball-room in the guise of a cherub, and feeling angrily under the furniture and even under people’s feet, in search of his wig. He drew near the group surrounding the auctioneer’s unconscious wife; he spied something gray under the bench that supported his late partner and the stout clerk. Instantly he darted forward, pushed aside Monsieur Volenville, who was in front of him, threw himself on his hands and knees, and put his hand between the auctioneer’s legs to grasp the object which he believed to be his dear wig.

Monsieur Robineau’s manœuvre was executed so suddenly that Monsieur Volenville lost his balance; as he was stooping forward, he fell almost upon his wife, and the snuff-box, which he had just opened, emptied itself entirely into his loving better half’s nose and mouth.

This accident recalled Madame Volenville to life; she sneezed five times in rapid succession, rubbed her eyes, opened her mouth, swallowed a large quantity of snuff, made such horrible faces that they put to flight her husband and all the other persons who were near her, squirmed about and spat violently into the face of Monsieur Robineau, who at that moment withdrew his hand from under the bench and rose, swearing like the