so to do.  Somewhat forlorn of fortune, for the present, stands that Artillery-Officer; looks, with those deep earnest eyes of his, into a future as waste as the most.  Taciturn; yet with the strangest utterances in him, if you awaken him, which smite home, like light or lightning:—­on the whole, rather dangerous?  A ‘dissociable’ man?  Dissociable enough; a natural terror and horror to all Phantasms, being himself of the genus Reality!  He stands here, without work or outlook, in this forsaken manner;—­glances nevertheless, it would seem, at the kind glance of Josephine Beauharnais; and, for the rest, with severe countenance, with open eyes and closed lips, waits what will betide.

That the Balls, therefore, have a new figure this winter, we can see.  Not Carmagnoles, rude ‘whirlblasts of rags,’ as Mercier called them ‘precursors of storm and destruction:’  no, soft Ionic motions; fit for the light sandal, and antique Grecian tunic!  Efflorescence of Luxury has come out:  for men have wealth; nay new-got wealth; and under the Terror you durst not dance except in rags.  Among the innumerable kinds of Balls, let the hasty reader mark only this single one:  the kind they call Victim Balls, Bals a Victime.  The dancers, in choice costume, have all crape round the left arm:  to be admitted, it needs that you be a Victime; that you have lost a relative under the Terror.  Peace to the Dead; let us dance to their memory!  For in all ways one must dance.

It is very remarkable, according to Mercier, under what varieties of figure this great business of dancing goes on.  ‘The women,’ says he, ’are Nymphs, Sultanas; sometimes Minervas, Junos, even Dianas.  In light-unerring gyrations they swim there; with such earnestness of purpose; with perfect silence, so absorbed are they.  What is singular,’ continues he, ’the onlookers are as it were mingled with the dancers; form as it were a circumambient element round the different contre-dances, yet without deranging them.  It is rare, in fact, that a Sultana in such circumstances experience the smallest collision.  Her pretty foot darts down, an inch from mine; she is off again; she is as a flash of light:  but soon the measure recalls her to the point she set out from.  Like a glittering comet she travels her eclipse, revolving on herself, as by a double effect of gravitation and attraction.’ (Mercier, Nouveau Paris, iii. 138, 153.) Looking forward a little way, into Time, the same Mercier discerns Merveilleuses in ‘flesh-coloured drawers’ with gold circlets; mere dancing Houris of an artificial Mahomet’s-Paradise:  much too Mahometan.  Montgaillard, with his splenetic eye, notes a no less strange thing; that every fashionable Citoyenne you meet is in an interesting situation.  Good Heavens, every!  Mere pillows and stuffing! adds the acrid man;—­such, in a time of depopulation by war and guillotine, being the fashion. (Montgaillard, iv. 436-42.) No further seek its merits to disclose.