Mme. Fauvety took her to the theatre—not to first nights, this wise ex-actress preferred to wait until the players had perfected their parts, and it was not until the last performances were announced that she considered a play really worth seeing. Alexandre Dumas _fils_ was then at the height of his popularity. _La Dame aux Camélias_, _Diane de Lys_, _La Question d’Argent_, were the talk of the town. Though Juliette had ceased to write poetry, she had not ceased to associate with poets. And it was a member of the Poet’s Union who took her to her first fancy-dress ball, where her escort appeared as Vercingetorix, and she herself was disguised as the Gallic Cassandra, Vellèda. She wore a long white robe, confined by a golden girdle from which hung a gilded scythe. Her arms were bare to the shoulder, and it was for the first time in her life, she writes, “for even at dances in those days we wore sleeves.” Her light brown hair with its gleam of gold hung over her shoulders, crowned with a wreath of mistletoe. Meyerbeer, the musical idol of the early Empire, happened to be present. Vellèda made a great impression on this queer little old man. “Why! she will make me forget my Selika!” (the composition on which he was then engaged), he is said to have exclaimed. “I am too old to fall in love with a new face,” and he left the ball-room abruptly. For months afterwards every morning Juliette received a bunch of violets with the words, _Souvenir ému à Vellèda_—and one day came a ticket for a box for the first night of the _Pardon de Ploërmel_. But she never saw her aged admirer again. Some years after his death, on the occasion of the first performance of his _L’Africaine_, Juliette received a ticket for a box in a little casket with a bunch of violets, tied with a ribbon on which was written _le dernier_. “She will come to the first night of _L’Africaine_ wherever she is,” Meyerbeer had said. Already the Lamessines were in the whirl of political life. On the 14th of January, 1858, the evening of Orsini’s attempted assassination of the Emperor, while they were shopping in the Palais Royal, a Sicilian friend, who was with them, was arrested. On the next morning their flat was searched. But this time there were no compromising documents for Juliette to conceal. M. Lamessine had no difficulty in proving his friend’s innocence and obtaining his speedy release. Those were the days when the long conflict between _sermentistes_ and _abstentionistes_, which later was to rage high in Juliette’s salon, was just beginning. The _sermentistes_ were those who consented to take the oath of allegiance to the Empire, the _abstentionistes_ those who held themselves completely aloof.