On the first signal of their design to quit the supper table, the attendants, who stood round, threw open the doors of the hall, and Madame de Montpensier, taking Eugenie by the hand, led the way into another chamber, which was already brilliantly lighted, and evidently prepared for some occasion of splendour, but into which, as yet, no one had been admitted. Passing through that and several rooms beyond, they at length approached a saloon, the door of which was open, and from which proceeded the busy hum of many voices; while various figures were seen passing to and fro across the aperture of the doorway, like the painted shadows cast by a phantasmagoria. Some of those guests, however, who watch for great men's steps, and observe their looks, soon perceived the approach of the family of Guise; and the words, "The Duke, the Duke! His Highness the lieutenant-general!" pronounced by several voices within, created, for the moment a brief bustle among the guests, and then the silence of expectation, till the party entered the room. The number already assembled might amount to nearly fifty, of whom the greater proportion were officers and soldiers, either personally attendant upon the Duke of Mayenne, or eager to pay court to him whose fortunes were for the time in the ascendant. For them, governments, commands, and the many military employments which gave profuse opportunity of squeezing a divided people, formed the attractions towards one at whose disposal were placed all the good things of at least one half the empire. The rest of the party who occupied the saloon were made up of the lower classes of the French nobility, male and female, principally the _noblesse de la robe_, who, with the same views as the others, though directed in a different line, sought to be amongst the first at the Hotel de Guise. Not long after, however, another class began to arrive, who, willing to associate with Mayenne, to partake of the influence of his good fortune, to share what he chose to delegate of his power, and to obtain for their younger children the various benefices in his gift, were yet desirous of distinguishing themselves from even the democracy of their own order, by making the hour of their visit somewhat later, that they might not be confounded in the first rush of the subservient crowd. Last of all, as if in mockery of the pride of their immediate predecessors, came the fops, the coxcombs, the witlings, the debauchees of Paris, heedless of all interests but the dear first all-absorbing interests of their own vanity, and ready to laugh or sneer at everything and everybody, from the great Duke himself, down to the last new-made _procureur_, who claimed a right to bear arms and call himself _gentilhomme_.