Immediately on the Emperor's arrival, the Empress and her suite took their departure for Versailles; from whence it was understood they were not to return before the end of the month, for which time a splendid ball was announced at the Tuileries. Unwilling to detain General d'Auvergne's letter so long, and unable from the position I occupied to obtain leave of absence from Paris, I forwarded the letter to the comtesse, and abandoned the only hope of meeting her once more. The disappointment from this source; the novelty of the circumstances in which I found myself; the fascinations of a world altogether strange to me,--all conspired to confuse and excite me, and I entered into the dissipation of those around me, if not with all their zest, at least with as headlong a resolution to drown all reflection in a life of voluptuous enjoyment. The only person of my own standing among the _compagnie d'élite_ was a captain of the Chasseurs of the Guard, who, although but a few years my senior, had seen service in the Italian campaign. By family a Bour-bonist, he joined the revolutionary armies when his relatives fled from France, and slowly won his steps to his present rank. A certain _hauteur_ in his manner with men--an air of distance he always wore--had made him as little liked by them as it usually succeeds in making a man popular with women, to whom the opposite seems at once a compliment. He was a man who had seen much of the world, and in the best society; gifted with the most fascinating address, whenever he pleased to exert it, and singularly good-looking, he was the _beau idéal_ of the French officer of the highest class. The Chevalier Duchesne and myself had travelled together for some days without exchanging more than the ordinary civilities of distant acquaintance, when some accident of the road threw us more closely together, and ended by forming an intimacy which, in our Paris life, brought us every hour into each other's society. Stranger as I was in the capital, to me the acquaintance was a boon of great price. He knew it thoroughly: in the gorgeous and stately _salons_ of the Faubourg; in the _guingettes_ of the Rue St. Denis; in the costly mansion of the modern banker (the new aristocracy of the land); or in the homely _ménage_ of the shopkeeper of the Rue St. Honoré,--he was equally at home, and by some strange charm had the _entrée_ too.