She made one amusing break. Mrs. Wertzelmann came in to see if all was going well with the chaperones, and exclaimed when she saw me among them. Mrs. Johnson, who evidently hates her, began to put on "side," and talked about her hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain, which she rented from the Duc de Quatre Bras, and described a ball she had given there to which all the _demi monde_ had come. Funny as this was, it was made still funnier by the fact that Mrs. Wertzelmann, who knows no more of French than Mrs. Johnson, didn't see the joke. I had by this time recovered sufficiently to go back to the ball-room, where, as it was on the stroke of midnight, the _cotillon_ was about to commence. Young Stefano came up and asked me to dance it with him. The Marquis had the grace not to put in an appearance; I believe he was playing baccarat in the card-room. The favours were very pretty and appropriate, as the Wertzelmanns did not choose them, but simply gave the Maison Bail _carte blanche_. The Duchesse de Vaudricourt was disappointed; I believe she expected to get diamonds. The Vicomte de Narjac and the Russian with an unpronounceable name and a _grande passion_ for Mrs. Wertzelmann, who, I hope, knows how to contain himself better than the Marquis, led the _cotillon_. They did it awfully well, as if they had never done anything else all their lives. They went somewhere and changed their clothes, and came back with Louis Quinze perukes, crimson satin coats, with lace fichus and black knee-breeches and stockings, and diamond buckles in their pumps. They really looked quite smart, while an Englishman would have felt self-conscious and foolish, and looked it. At two o'clock the dancing ceased, and supper was served at tête-à-tête tables on the battlements, as Mr. Wertzelmann persists in calling the _terrasse_. The supper was delicious, and there was a waiter to each chair; the Hungarian band came out and played, and paper balloons, in the shape of monsters with lights inside, were sent up in the air from the lawn.