I fell into the little _cortége_ standing about the queen, and watched the interesting party dancing the head quadrille for an hour. The Duke of Orleans, who is nearly twenty, and seems a thoughtless, good-natured, immature young man, moved about very gracefully with his handsome figure, and seemed amused, and quite unconscious of the attention he drew. The princesses were _vis-a-vis_, and the second one, a dark-haired, slender, interesting girl of nineteen, had a polytechnic scholar for her partner. He was a handsome, gallant-looking fellow, who must have distinguished himself to have been invited to court, and I could not but admire the beautiful mixture of respect and self-confidence with which he demanded the hand of the princess from the lady of honor, and conversed with her during the dance. If royalty does not seal up the affections, I could scarce conceive how a being so decidedly of nature's best nobility, handsome, graceful, and confident, could come within the sphere of a sensitive-looking girl, like the princess Christine, and not leave more than a transient recollection upon her fancy. The music stopped, and I had been so occupied with my speculations upon the polytechnic boy, that I had scarcely noticed any other person in the dance. He led the princess back to her seat by the _dame d'honneur_, bowing low, colored a little, and mingled with the crowd. A few minutes after, I saw him in the gallery, quite alone, leaning over the railing, and looking down upon the scene below, having apparently abandoned the dance for the evening. From something in his face, and in the manner of resuming his sword, I was certain he had come to the palace with that single object, and would dance no more. I kept him in my eye most of the night, and am very sure he did not. If the little romance I wove out of it was not a true one, it was not because the material was improbable.