The next act takes us into the actual events of which these are but the shadowings. It is a masked ball at the opera in Paris. There are waltzes, gallops, and polkas, with shouts of demoniac revelry; women career from end to end of the enormous salle, dancing, singing, shrieking; they are dressed in all costumes--as men, as mountebanks--but in all the unmistakable presence of wild enjoyment and a spirit of depravity, worthy of the orgies of Circe. Some gentlemen come in. Among them, M. de Chateau Renaud, whose ambition it is to be considered the greatest _roué_ in Paris; when he fails to triumph over female virtue, he withers a woman's reputation with a lie. He is accused of having boasted, without foundation, of his intimacy with Madame de Lesharre. He bets he will bring her that very night into the supper-room, where there has been prepared a symposium for the prettiest of the _debardeurs_, and wickedest of the men. Louis dei Franchi is of the party, for Madame de Lesharre has been the object of his love before her marriage, and he has heard of her reported _liaison_ with Chateau Renaud. He invites himself to the supper--is cold, abstracted, severe--and keeps his eye on the boaster's face. The ball is over; the supper-room is gorgeously lighted; the clock strikes four--the appointed hour at which Chateau Renaud had betted he would introduce Madame de Lesharre. Her he had inveigled hither, under the false pretence of restoring to her some letters which she had imprudently, but innocently, written to him before her wedding, and before she had discovered the character of her admirer. He blinds her still; and as the last sound of the clock dies upon the ear, he walks in with Madame de Lesharre upon his arm. There is a shout of derision from the women assembled; a shrug of surprise from the men; the wager is acknowledged to be lost; but Madame de Lesharre, perceiving the shameful trick that has been played, indignantly pours forth her scorn on the pitiful scoundrel who had been guilty of it; recognises her old lover, Louis dei Franchi, and throws herself on his protection. He steps forward, accepts the charge, and is challenged of course by Chateau Renaud, who is the best swordsman in France. Madame do Lesharre retires supported by Louis, and a laugh of contempt and hatred resounds through the room. We are now in the Bois de Boulogne. The scene we had seen in the first act is exactly reproduced here: Louis is lying under the tree; Chateau Renaud is wiping his sword; the seconds are in attitudes of expectation--suddenly the wood opens at the back, and we see Fabian and his mother in the old hall in Corsica, gazing with rigid eyes on the scene before them; and we have now arrived at the exact position we attained half-an-hour ago. The whole of the third act passes in a glade in the forest of Fontainbleau. Chateau Renaud, flying with his second from justice, is upset on the high-road; comes into the wood in search