The young man had at this moment an air of absorption so profound, so complete, that he justified the laughing raillery of Corancez. If the plot of a secret marriage, mapped out in these surroundings and amid this crowd, appear strangely paradoxical, the reveries of this man whom Corancez had called his "old friend"--they had been at school together in Paris for two years--were still stranger and more paradoxical. The contrast was too strong between the crowd swarming around Pierre Hautefeuille and the hypnotism that appeared to be upon him. Evidently the two thousand people scattered through these rooms ceased to exist for him as soon as he had discovered the absence of a certain person. And who could this be if not a woman? The disappointed lover had fallen, rather than seated himself, upon the lounge in front of Corancez and his fellow-conspirators. With his elbow on the arm of the divan, he pressed his hand over his forehead, disconsolately. His slender fingers, pushing back his hair, disclosed the noble outline of his brow, revealed his profile, the slightly arched nose, the severe lips, whose proud expression would have been almost fierce were it not for the tender softness of his eyes. This look of strangely intense meditation in a face so exhausted and pale, with its small, dark mustache, gave him a resemblance to the classic portrait of Louis XIII. in his youth. His narrow shoulders, his slightly angular limbs, the evident delicacy of his whole body indicated one of those fragile organizations whose force lies wholly in the nerves, a physique with no vital power of resistance, ravaged eternally by emotions, down to the obscure and quivering centre of consciousness, and as easily exhausted by sentiment as muscular natures are by action and sensation. Although Pierre Hautefeuille was, in his dress and manner, indistinguishable from Corancez and the countless men of pleasure in the rooms, yet either his physiognomy was very deceptive or he did not belong to the same race morally as these cavaliers of the white waistcoat and the varnished pumps, who encircled the ladies dressed like _demi-mondaines_, and the _demi-mondaines_ dressed like ladies, or crowded around the tables, amid the throng of gentlemen and swindlers. The melancholy in the curve of his lips and in his tired eyelids revealed a sadness, not momentary, but habitual, an abiding gloom, and if it were true that he had come to this place in search of a woman whom he loved, this sadness was too naturally explained. He must suffer from the life that this woman was leading, from her surroundings, her pleasures, her habits, her inconsistencies--suffer even to the extent of illness, and, perhaps, without knowing why, for he had not the eyes that judge of one they love. In any case, if he was, as Corancez said, a lover, he was certainly not a successful one. His face showed neither the pride nor the bitterness of a man to whom the loved woman has given herself, and