“It had been Godefroid’s privilege to run over Europe,” resumed Bixiou, “nor had he neglected his opportunities of making a thorough comparative study of European dancing.  Perhaps but for profound diligence in the pursuit of what is usually held to be useless knowledge, he would never have fallen in love with this young lady; as it was, out of the three hundred guests that crowded the handsome rooms in the Rue Saint-Lazare, he alone comprehended the unpublished romance revealed by a garrulous quadrille.  People certainly noticed Isaure d’Aldrigger’s dancing; but in this present century the cry is ‘Skim lightly over the surface, do not lean your weight on it;’ so one said (he was a notary’s clerk), ’There is a girl that dances uncommonly well;’ another (a lady in a turban), ’There is a young lady that dances enchantingly;’ and a third (a woman of thirty), ’That little thing is not dancing badly.’—­But to return to the great Marcel, let us parody his best known saying with, ’How much there is in an avant-deux.’”

“And let us get on a little faster,” said Blondet; “you are maundering.”

“Isaure,” continued Bixiou, looking askance at Blondet, “wore a simple white crepe dress with green ribbons; she had a camellia in her hair, a camellia at her waist, another camellia at her skirt-hem, and a camellia——­”

“Come, now! here comes Sancho’s three hundred goats.”

“Therein lies all literature, dear boy. Clarissa is a masterpiece, there are fourteen volumes of her, and the most wooden-headed playwright would give you the whole of Clarissa in a single act.  So long as I amuse you, what have you to complain of?  That costume was positively lovely.  Don’t you like camillias?  Would you rather have dahlias?  No?  Very good, chestnuts then, here’s for you.” (And probably Bixiou flung a chestnut across the table, for we heard something drop on a plate.)

“I was wrong, I acknowledge it.  Go on,” said Blondet.

“I resume.  ‘Pretty enough to marry, isn’t she?’ said Rastignac, coming up to Godefroid de Beaudenord, and indicating the little one with the spotless white camellias, every petal intact.

“Rastignac being an intimate friend, Godefroid answered in a low voice, ’Well, so I was thinking.  I was saying to myself that instead of enjoying my happiness with fear and trembling at every moment; instead of taking a world of trouble to whisper a word in an inattentive ear, of looking over the house at the Italiens to see if some one wears a red flower or a white in her hair, or watching along the Corso for a gloved hand on a carriage door, as we used to do at Milan; instead of snatching a mouthful of baba like a lackey finishing off a bottle behind a door, or wearing out one’s wits with giving and receiving letters like a postman—­letters that consist not of a mere couple of tender lines, but expand to five folio volumes to-day and contract to a couple of sheets to-morrow (a tiresome practice); instead of dragging along over the ruts and dodging behind hedges—­it would be better to give way to the adorable passion that Jean-Jacques Rousseau envied, to fall frankly in love with a girl like Isaure, with a view to making her my wife, if upon exchange of sentiments our hearts respond to each other; to be Werther, in short, with a happy ending.’