The clerks were fluttering still in the skies of fancy to which youth is lifted by intoxication, when their amphitryon introduced them into Florentine’s salon. There sparkled a bevy of stage princesses, who, having been informed, no doubt, of Frederic’s joke, were amusing themselves by imitating the women of good society. They were then engaged in eating ices. The wax-candles flamed in the candelabra. Tullia’s footmen and those of Madame du Val-Noble and Florine, all in full livery, where serving the dainties on silver salvers. The hangings, a marvel of Lyonnaise workmanship, fastened by gold cords, dazzled all eyes. The flowers of the carpet were like a garden. The richest “bibelots” and curiosities danced before the eyes of the new-comers. At first, and in the state to which Georges had brought them, the clerks, and more particularly Oscar, believed in the Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos. Gold glittered on four card-tables in the bed-chamber. In the salon, the women were playing at vingt-et-un, kept by Nathan, the celebrated author. After wandering, tipsy and half asleep, through the dark exterior boulevards, the clerks now felt that they had wakened in the palace of Armida. Oscar, presented to the marquise by Georges, was quite stupefied, and did not recognize the danseuse he had seen at the Gaiete, in this lady, aristocratically decolletee and swathed in laces, till she looked like the vignette of a keepsake, who received him with manners and graces the like of which was neither in the memory nor the imagination of a young clerk rigidly brought up. After admiring the splendors of the apartment and the beautiful women there displayed, who had all outdone each other in their dress for this occasion, Oscar was taken by the hand and led by Florentine to a vingt-et-un table. “Let me present you,” she said, “to the beautiful Marquise d’Anglade, one of my nearest friends.” And she took Oscar to the pretty Fanny Beaupre, who had just made herself a reputation at the Porte-Saint-Martin, in a melodrama entitled “La Famille d’Anglade.” “My dear,” said Florentine, “allow me to present to you a charming youth, whom you can take as a partner in the game.” “Ah! that will be delightful,” replied the actress, smiling, as she looked at Oscar. “I am losing. Shall we go shares, monsieur?” “Madame la marquise, I am at your orders,” said Oscar, sitting down beside her. “Put down the money; I’ll play; you shall being me luck! See, here are my last hundred francs.” And the “marquise” took out from her purse, the rings of which were adorned with diamonds, five gold pieces. Oscar pulled out his hundred in silver five-franc pieces, much ashamed at having to mingle such ignoble coins with gold. In ten throws the actress lost the two hundred francs. “Oh! how stupid!” she cried. “I’m banker now. But we’ll play together still, won’t we?”