A breath from my earliest youth--that was Eloise. At the Place Vendôme, the servant whom I had commissioned to find out Franzius' address handed me a paper on which he had written it. It was in the Rue Dijon, Boulevard Montparnasse. I put the paper in my pocket, ran upstairs, and, hearing voices and laughter through the partly opened door of the great salon on the first floor, I burst into the room. Great Heavens! The child who gets into a shower bath, and, not knowing, pulls the string, could not receive a greater shock than I. The room was filled with gentlemen in correct evening attire. It was, in fact, one of what my guardian was pleased to call his "political receptions." I was dressed in a morning frock-coat, the dust of Etiolles was on my boots, my hair was in disorder, my face flushed. If I had entered rolling-drunk, in evening clothes, I would not have committed so great a crime against the convenances. And it was too late to back out, simply because my impetuosity had carried me into the room too far. My guardian gazed at the spectacle before him, but not by as much as the lifting of an eyebrow did that fine old gentleman betray his discomfiture. He turned from the Spanish ambassador, to whom he was talking, came forward and took my hand; inquired, in a voice raised slightly so as to be distinct, about my _journey_; apologised for not having informed me that it was one of his political evenings, and introduced me to the Duc de Cadore. Then--and this was his punishment--he totally ignored me for the remainder of the evening. I cannot remember what the Duc de Cadore said to me, or I to him; but we talked, and I ate ices which I could not taste. I would have frankly beaten a retreat, now that I had made my entry and faced the fire, but for a young man who, engaged in a conversation with two of the attachés of the Austrian Embassy, looked in my direction every now and then. It was my evil genius, the Comte de Coigny. The same who, as a boy in the garden of the Hôtel de Moray, had told me of the ruin of the Felicianis. I had not come across him since he left the Bourdaloue College. He was now, it seems, an attaché of the Emperor's, and he was just the same as of old, though bigger. A stout young man, with a stolid, insolent face; and I guessed, by his side-glances, that his conversation with the Austrians was about me, and that I was being discussed critically and sarcastically. God! how I hated that young man at that moment; and how I longed to cross the room, and, flinging the convenances to the winds, smack him in the face! But that pleasure was to be reserved for another hand than mine. When the unhappy political reception was over, and the last of the guests departed, I sought my guardian in the smoking-room, to make my apologies.