The people filling the room, seemed to me, in point of vulgarity, the queerest in the world; their manner of speaking was marvellous, imitating the florid style of the defunct Prudhomme, the pupil of Brard and St. Omer.  Their heads spread out over their white cravats and immense shirt collars recalled to mind certain specimens of the gourd tribe.  Some even resemble animals, the lion, the horse, the ass; these, all things considered, had a vegetable rather than an animal look.  Of the women I will say nothing, having resolved never to ridicule that charming sex.

Among these human vegetables, Louise appeared like a rose in a cabbage patch.  She wore a simple white dress fastened at the waist by a blue ribbon; her hair arranged in bandeaux encircled her pure brow and wound in massive coils about her head.  A Quakeress could have found no fault with this costume, which placed in grotesque and ridiculous contrast the hearselike trappings of the other women.  It was impossible to be dressed in better taste.  I was afraid lest my Infanta should seize this opportunity to display some marvellous toilette purchased expressly for the occasion.  That plain muslin gown which never saw India, and was probably made by herself, touched and fascinated me.  Dress has very little weight with me.  I once admired a Granada gypsy whose sole costume consisted of blue slippers and a necklace of amber beads; but nothing annoys me more than a badly made dress of an unbecoming shade.

The provincial dandies much preferring the rubicund gossips, with their short necks covered with gold chains, to Madame Taverneau’s young and slender guest, I was free to talk with her under cover of Louisa Pugett’s ballads and sonatas executed by infant phenomena upon a cracked piano hired from Rouen for the occasion.

Louisa’s wit was charming.  How mistaken it is to educate instinct out of women!  To replace nature by a school-mistress!  She committed none of those terrible mistakes which shock one; it was evident that she formed her sentences herself instead of repeating formulae committed to memory.  She had either never read a novel or had forgotten it, and unless she is a wonderful actress she remains as the great fashioner, Nature, made her—­a perfect woman.  We remained a greater part of the evening seated together in a corner like beings of another race.  Profiting by the great interest betrayed by the company in one of those soi-disant innocent games where a great deal of kissing is done, the fair girl, doubtless fearing a rude salute on her delicate cheek, led me into her room, which adjoins the parlor and opens into the garden by a glass door.

On a table in the room, feebly lighted by a lamp which Louisa modestly turned up, were scattered pell-mell, screens, boxes from Spa, alabaster paper-weights and other details of the art of illuminating, which profession my beauty practises; and which explains her occasional aristocratic airs, unbecoming an humble seamstress.  A bouquet just commenced showed talent; with some lessons from St. Jean or Diaz she would easily make a good flower painter.  I told her so.  She received my encomiums as a matter of course, evincing none of that mock-modesty which I particularly detest.