"You are talking about the hero of the eclectic salons, the dark-eyed Raymon, I'll be bound," said a dashing colonel of the guard. "He has a fine head to study," rejoined the younger woman. "And what pleases you even more, I dare say," said the colonel, "a wicked head." The young woman was his wife. "Why a wicked head?" queried the Sicilian. "Full of genuine Southern passions, madame, worthy of the bright sunlight of Palermo." Two or three young women put forward their flower-laden heads to hear what the colonel was saying. "He made ravages in the garrison last year, I promise you," he continued. "We fellows shall be obliged to pick a quarrel with him, in order to get rid of him." "If he's a Lovelace, so much the worse for him," said a young lady with a satirical cast of countenance; "I can't endure men whom everybody loves." The ultramontane countess waited until the colonel had walked away, when she tapped Mademoiselle de Nangy's fingers lightly with her fan and said: "Don't speak so; you don't know here what to think of a man who wants to be liked." "Do you think, pray, that all they have to do is to want it?" said the damsel with the long sardonic eyes. "Mademoiselle," said the colonel, coming up again to invite her to dance; "take care that the charming Raymon does not overhear you." Mademoiselle de Nangy laughed; but during the rest of the evening the pretty group of which she was one dared not mention Monsieur de Ramière's name again. V Monsieur de Ramière wandered amid the undulating waves of that gayly-dressed crowd without distaste and without ennui. Nevertheless, he was fighting against a feeling of chagrin. On returning to his own sphere he had a species of remorse, of shame for all the wild ideas which a misplaced attachment had suggested to him. He looked at the women so brilliantly beautiful in the bright light; he listened to their refined and clever conversation; he heard their talents highly praised; and in those marvellous specimens of their sex, those almost royal costumes, those exquisitely appropriate remarks, he found on all sides an implied reproach for having been untrue to his destiny. But, despite this species of mental bewilderment, Raymon suffered from more genuine remorse; for his intentions were always kind and considerate to the last degree, and a woman's tears broke his heart, hardened as it was.