There was little room; the guests trod on one another’s feet, and jostled one another; but they danced, and that was the essential thing; what joy for the young woman who desires to display her charms, and for the woman on the decline who flatters herself that she is still very light on her feet! Those who were not attracted by the dancing and the music took their places at an écarté table; there they abandoned themselves to their passion for gambling, awaiting a favorable stroke of luck; they tried to fathom the play of their opponents, to read upon their faces what cards they had in their hands. They forgot their wives or their daughters; and very frequently those ladies in the salon forgot those who were at the écarté table. The bets opened and soon became very considerable; young men, who should have paid no heed to aught except the ladies and the dance, waited anxiously to see if their adversary would turn a king; their blood boiled; the sight of gold, the hope of winning, led them on; and more than one, who walked away from the tables with empty pockets, would refuse the next day to give money to his tailor or his bootmaker; while our economical friends of the shoes and the gaiters, who had allowed themselves to be led astray by example, observed to one another as they took off their slippers, that they would have done better to hire a cab than to bet or play écarté. Others had recourse to the sideboard for consolation and stuffed themselves with pastry and refreshments; the greatest glutton took the most delicate sweetmeats, on the pretext that he was taking them to the ladies. What horrible waste there is in such mobs! Plates overturned, one dish cast aside to take another, of which three-quarters is left; the creams that the guests snatch from one another; the bonbons that disappear before one has time to take one;--such is the ordinary course of collations at large parties; the sideboard is always being pillaged, and the young men who surround it act as if they had eaten nothing for a week. What an extraordinary way for people in good society to behave! Adeline tried to discover some acquaintance amid the crowd and the tumult; but most of the faces were unknown to her. Weary of listening to insipid or exaggerated compliments, addressed to her by men whom she did not know, and disgusted at being stared at through the eyeglasses of these men, the young woman seized a moment when everybody was busy according to his or her taste, to go to her room, to make sure that her daughter was asleep, and to enjoy, by embracing her, the only pleasure that that evening could afford her.