She entered the room well (women will understand the meaning of that expression), bowed gracefully to the minister’s wife, with a happy mixture of deference and of self-respect, and gave no offence by a certain reliance on her own dignity; for every beautiful woman has the right to seem a queen. With the minister himself she took the pretty air of sauciness which women may properly allow themselves with men, even when they are grand dukes. She reconnoitred the field, as it were, while taking her seat, and saw that she was in the midst of one of those select parties of few persons, where the women eye and appraise each other, and every word said echoes in all ears; where every glance is a stab, and conversation a duel with witnesses; where all that is commonplace seems commoner still, and where every form of merit or distinction is silently accepted as though it were the natural level of all present. Rabourdin betook himself to the adjoining salon in which a few persons were playing cards; and there he planted himself on exhibition, as it were, which proved that he was not without social intelligence. “My dear,” said the Marquise d’Espard to the Comtesse Feraud, Louis XVIII.’s last mistress, “Paris is certainly unique. It produces--whence and how, who knows?--women like this person, who seems ready to will and to do anything.” “She really does will, and does do everything,” put in des Lupeaulx, puffed up with satisfaction. At this moment the wily Madame Rabourdin was courting the minister’s wife. Carefully coached the evening before by des Lupeaulx, who knew all the countess’s weak spots, she was flattering her without seeming to do so. Every now and then she kept silence; for des Lupeaulx, in love as he was, knew her defects, and said to her the night before, “Be careful not to talk too much,”--words which were really an immense proof of attachment. Bertrand Barrere left behind him this sublime axiom: “Never interrupt a woman when dancing to give her advice,” to which we may add (to make this chapter of the female code complete), “Never blame a woman for scattering her pearls.”