I lounged into the _salons_ where they dance; it was a very brilliant and a very beautiful assembly. There were faces and figures there that might have proved attractive to eyes more critical than my own. My sudden appearance amongst them, too, was rapturously welcomed. I was already a celebrity; and I felt that amidst the soft glances and beaming smiles around me, I had but to choose out her whom I would distinguish by my attentions. My mother and the girls came to me with pressing entreaties to take out the beautiful Countess de B., or to be presented to the charming Marchioness of N. There was a dowager archduchess who vouchsafed to know me. Miss Somebody, with I forget how many millions in the funds, told Mary Anne she might introduce me. Already the master of the ceremonies came to know if I preferred a mazurka or a waltz. The world was, so to say, at my feet; and, as is usual at such moments, I kicked it for being there. In plain English, Bob, I saw nothing in all that bright and brilliant crowd but scheming mammas and designing daughters; a universal distrust, an utter disbelief in everything and everybody, had got bold of me. Whatever I could n't explain, I discredited. The ringlets might be false; the carnation might be rouge; the gentle timidity of manner might be the cat-like slyness of the tiger; the artless gayety of heart, the practised coquetry of a flirt,--ay, the very symmetry that seemed perfection, might it not be the staymaker's! Play had utterly corrupted me, and there was not one healthy feeling, one manly thought, or one generous impulse left within me! I left the room a few minutes after I entered it. I neither danced nor got presented to any one; but after one lounging stroll through the _salons_ I quitted the place, as though there was not one to know, not one to speak to! I have more than once witnessed the performance of this polite process by another. I have watched a fellow making the tour of a company, with a glass stuck in his eye, and his hand thrust in his pocket. I have tracked him as he passed on from group to group, examining the guests with the same coolness he bestowed on the china, and smiling his little sardonic appreciation of whatever struck him as droll or ridiculous; and when he has retired, it has been all I could do not to follow him out, and kick him down the stairs at his departure. I have no doubt that my conduct on this occasion must have inspired similar sentiments; nor have I any hesitation in avowing that they were well merited. [Illustration: 388] When I reached the open air I felt a delicious sense of relief. It was so still, so calm, so tranquil! a bright starlit summer's night, with here and there a murmuring of low voices, a gentle laugh, beard amongst the trees, and the rustling sounds of silk drapery brushing through the alleys,--all those little suggestive tokens that bring up one's reminiscences of "Those odorous boon In jasmine bowers, Or under the linden tree!"