We reached Madam de Bonnivet’s house, and found a long string of carriages already in the street. I was to find a great difference between the almost familiar reception of the other evening and my reception now. It seemed as if Jacques had in those few minutes tried to give a complete representation of the different phases of character of this human lighthouse. While we ascended the carved wooden staircase, with its wealth of pictures, busts, tapestry, and ancient stuffs, he whispered to me this last expression, which had nothing cunning nor dandified about it, but was simply the childish vanity of the middle-class gentleman engaged in a love affair— “You must admit that my friend is not badly housed?” I am quite sure that at that moment the carpets upon which his pumps rested warmed a secret place in his heart. I am certain that the lustre on that staircase illuminated the darkest depths of his snobbish conceit. I am sure that a conqueror’s pride swelled his chest as he said to himself in these luxurious surroundings: “I am her lover.” He had become during the last few weeks too transparent for this shade of his sensibility to escape me. Each of his words was like the striking of a clock, the works of which are in a glass case. When the sound strikes the ear one can see the little cogwheels bite the large ones and the complicated mechanism at work. The hall doors had opened, and Jacques and myself were at once separated. The spectacle, which this room, vaulted like a chapel and unknown to me, and the two drawing-rooms opening from it presented, awakened the painter in me, the man used to vibrating by a look. In a corner of the hall a little platform had been erected, which was empty just then. There were perhaps fifty women sitting with a like number of men, all in evening dress, and the women’s jewels sparkled in their blonde or dark hair and on their naked shoulders. The entire range of colours was displayed in these various toilettes, which were heightened by their contrast with the black coats and the details which had on my first visit to this house so displeased me, the too composite character of the decorations, blended and harmonized as they were in this light with the aid of the moving crowd. Fans were waving, eyes shining, faces were animated by questions and answers, and Queen Anne, towards whom I went to pay my respects, really had in her white evening dress the majestic air of a princess worshipped by her courtiers.