protractedly, repeating afar the slightest complaints of the Earth and of the Air. "Oh! how they have muffled up poor Maxime!" murmured Louise. "And Madame Saccard, you would say a dead woman!" "She is covered with rice powder," said Madame Michelin. Other scarcely complimentary remarks circulated. This third _tableau_ did not meet with the same unqualified success as the two others. And yet it was this tragical ending which made Monsieur Hupel de la Noue enthusiastic about his own talent. He admired himself in it, as his Narcissus did in his strip of looking-glass. He had set a number of poetical and philosophical allusions in it. When the curtains had closed again for the last time, and the spectators had applauded like people of good breeding, he experienced mental regret at having given way to anger and not having explained the last page of his poem. He then wished to give the people around him the key to the charming, grand, or simply suggestive things which handsome Narcissus and the nymph Echo represented, and he even tried to say what Venus and Plutus were doing in the depths of the clearing; but the gentlemen and ladies, whose clear practical minds had understood the grotto of flesh and the grotto of gold, had no inclination to descend into the prefect's mythological complications. Only Mignon and Charrier, who absolutely wished to inform themselves, were good-natured enough to question him. He took possession of them, and kept them during nearly two hours, standing in the embrasure of a window, relating to them the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid. The minister now withdrew. He apologised for not being able to wait for the beautiful Madame Saccard to compliment her on the perfect gracefulness of the nymph Echo. He had just been three or four times round the drawing-room on the arm of his brother, giving a few shakes of the hand and bowing to the ladies. He had never before compromised himself so much for Saccard. He left him radiant, when, on the threshold, he said to him in a loud voice: "I shall expect you to-morrow morning. Come and breakfast with me." The ball was about to begin. The servants had ranged the ladies' arm-chairs along the walls. The large drawing-room now displayed from the little yellow room to the platform, its bare carpet the large purple flowers of which opened under the dripping light which fell from the crystal of the chandeliers. The heat was increasing; the reflection of the red hangings brightened the gilding of the furniture and the ceiling. To open the ball one waited until the ladies, the nymph Echo, Venus, Plutus, and the others, had changed their costumes. Madame d'Espanet and Madame Haffner appeared the first. They had reassumed their costumes of the second _tableau_; the first as gold, the other as silver. They were surrounded and congratulated; and they recounted their emotions.