“Parbleu,” said he, “but this is cruel! After having been so charmed, so enraptured, so enthralled, to find myself alone in this cursed palace.” (It was no longer a palace of fairies!) “I shall never be able to get out of it! A plague upon the infatuation which inspired me with the idea of entering this place, like Prince Fortunatus with his boots of solid gold, instead of simply getting the first lackey I came across to take me to the play at once!” The chevalier experienced this tardy feeling of repentance for his rashness at a moment when, like Piranesi, he was half-way up a staircase, on a landing between three doors. Behind the middle one, he thought he heard a murmur so sweet, so light, so voluptuous, that he could not help listening. At the very instant when he was tremblingly advancing with the indiscreet intention of eavesdropping, this door swung open. A breath of air, balmy with a thousand perfumes, a torrent of light that rendered the very mirrors of the gallery lustreless struck him so suddenly that he perforce stepped back. “Does Monsieur le Marquis wish to enter?” asked the usher who had opened the door. “I wish to go to the play,” replied the chevalier. “It is just this moment over.” At the same time, a bevy of beautiful ladies, their complexions delicately tinted with white and carmine, escorted by lords, old and young, who led them, not by the arm, nor even by the hand, but by the tips of their fingers, began filing out from the Palace Theatre, taking great care to walk sidewise, in order not to disarrange their hoops. All of these brilliant people spoke in a low voice, with an air half grave, half gay, a mixture of awe and respect. “What can this be?” said the Chevalier, not guessing that chance had luckily brought him to the little _foyer_. “The King is about to pass,” replied the usher. There is a kind of intrepidity, which hesitates at nothing; it comes but too easily, it is the courage of vulgar people. Our young provincial, although he was reasonably brave, did not possess this faculty. At the mere words, “The King is about to pass,” he stood motionless and almost terror-stricken.