That individual, ordinarily the mildest and most humane of men, had nevertheless his antipathies and his spasms of comical indignation. He had recognized Michel's talent; but the young man's impatient air when he ventured to address some trivial remark to him, and the small respect he had seemed to entertain for his authority, had caused the majordomo to look upon the painter with distrust and something like aversion. According to his ideas--and he had made a special study of titles and heraldry--nobody was noble but the _nobles_, and he looked upon all other classes of society with silent but unconquerable disdain. He was shocked and offended, therefore, to see the haughty palace of his masters thrown open to what he called a mob--tradesmen, lawyers, Jewesses, suspicious travellers, students, petty officers; in a word, to anyone who chose to pay a gold-piece for the privilege of dancing in the princess's quadrille. This subscription fête was a new invention, imported from abroad, and it overturned all his notions of decorum. The retirement in which the princess had always lived had assisted this worthy majordomo to retain all his illusions and all his prejudices touching the excellence of castes. That is why he became more and more distressed, restless and morose as the night advanced. He had seen the princess promise a contra-dance to a young lawyer who had had the audacity to invite her; and when he saw Michelangelo Lavoratori gazing at her at such close quarters with enraptured eyes, he wondered if that dauber of canvas would not also enter the lists to dance with her. "The world has turned upside down in twenty years, I see," he said to himself; "if such a ball as this had been given here in Prince Dionigi's time, things would have been managed differently. Each class would have kept apart from the rest; they would have formed different groups, and no group would have mingled with its superiors or inferiors. But here all ranks are jumbled together; it's a bazar--an infernal revel!--But, by the way," it occurred to him, "what is that little painter doing here? He didn't pay any money; he has not even the right which anyone can buy to-day, alas! at the door of the noble Palmarosa palace. He is only admitted here as a workman. If he chooses to play the tambourine beside his old father, or look after the lamps, let him stand back from where he is now. I will take down his conceit a peg, and it won't do him any good to play at being a great painter. I'll send him back to his sizing. It's a little lesson that I owe him, as his old madman of a father spoils him and doesn't know how to manage him."