“I was just going round to you, sir, madame gave me a line for you,” said Gentil, ignorant of Parisian forms of respect, and accustomed to homely provincial ways.  The chasseur took the poet for a servant.

Lucien tore open the note, and learned that Mme. de Bargeton had gone to spend the day with the Marquise d’Espard.  She was going to the Opera in the evening, but she told Lucien to be there to meet her.  Her cousin permitted her to give him a seat in her box.  The Marquise d’Espard was delighted to procure the young poet that pleasure.

“Then she loves me! my fears were all nonsense!” said Lucien to himself.  “She is going to present me to her cousin this very evening.”

He jumped for joy.  He would spend the day that separated him from the happy evening as joyously as might be.  He dashed out in the direction of the Tuileries, dreaming of walking there until it was time to dine at Very’s.  And now, behold Lucien frisking and skipping, light of foot because light of heart, on his way to the Terrasse des Feuillants to take a look at the people of quality on promenade there.  Pretty women walk arm-in-arm with men of fashion, their adorers, couples greet each other with a glance as they pass; how different it is from the terrace at Beaulieu!  How far finer the birds on this perch than the Angouleme species!  It is as if you beheld all the colors that glow in the plumage of the feathered tribes of India and America, instead of the sober European families.

Those were two wretched hours that Lucien spent in the Garden of the Tuileries.  A violent revulsion swept through him, and he sat in judgment upon himself.

In the first place, not a single one of these gilded youths wore a swallow-tail coat.  The few exceptions, one or two poor wretches, a clerk here and there, an annuitant from the Marais, could be ruled out on the score of age; and hard upon the discovery of a distinction between morning and evening dress, the poet’s quick sensibility and keen eyes saw likewise that his shabby old clothes were not fit to be seen; the defects in his coat branded that garment as ridiculous; the cut was old-fashioned, the color was the wrong shade of blue, the collar outrageously ungainly, the coat tails, by dint of long wear, overlapped each other, the buttons were reddened, and there were fatal white lines along the seams.  Then his waistcoat was too short, and so grotesquely provincial, that he hastily buttoned his coat over it; and, finally, no man of any pretension to fashion wore nankeen trousers.  Well-dressed men wore charming fancy materials or immaculate white, and every one had straps to his trousers, while the shrunken hems of Lucien’s nether garments manifested a violent antipathy for the heels of boots which they wedded with obvious reluctance.  Lucien wore a white cravat with embroidered ends; his sister had seen that M. du Hautoy and M. de Chandour wore such things, and hastened to make similar ones for