At five o’clock in the afternoon Lucien was still sleeping, cradled in this voluptuous paradise.  He had caught glimpses of Coralie’s chamber, an exquisite creation of luxury, a world of rose-color and white.  He had admired Florine’s apartments, but this surpassed them in its dainty refinement.

Coralie had already risen; for if she was to play her part as the Andalusian, she must be at the theatre by seven o’clock.  Yet she had returned to gaze at the unconscious poet, lulled to sleep in bliss; she could not drink too deeply of this love that rose to rapture, drawing close the bond between the heart and the senses, to steep both in ecstasy.  For in that apotheosis of human passion, which of those that were twain on earth that they might know bliss to the full creates one soul to rise to love in heaven, lay Coralie’s justification.  Who, moreover, would not have found excuse in Lucien’s more than human beauty?  To the actress kneeling by the bedside, happy in love within her, it seemed that she had received love’s consecration.  Berenice broke in upon Coralie’s rapture.

“Here comes Camusot!” cried the maid.  “And he knows that you are here.”

Lucien sprang up at once.  Innate generosity suggested that he was doing Coralie an injury.  Berenice drew aside a curtain, and he fled into a dainty dressing-room, whither Coralie and the maid brought his clothes with magical speed.

Camusot appeared, and only then did Coralie’s eyes alight on Lucien’s boots, warming in the fender.  Berenice had privately varnished them, and put them before the fire to dry; and both mistress and maid alike forgot that tell-tale witness.  Berenice left the room with a scared glance at Coralie.  Coralie flung herself into the depths of a settee, and bade Camusot seat himself in the gondole, a round-backed chair that stood opposite.  But Coralie’s adorer, honest soul, dared not look his mistress in the face; he could not take his eyes off the pair of boots.

“Ought I to make a scene and leave Coralie?” he pondered.  “Is it worth while to make a fuss about a trifle?  There is a pair of boots wherever you go.  These would be more in place in a shop window or taking a walk on the boulevard on somebody’s feet; here, however, without a pair of feet in them, they tell a pretty plain tale.  I am fifty years old, and that is the truth; I ought to be as blind as Cupid himself.”

There was no excuse for this mean-spirited monologue.  The boots were not the high-lows at present in vogue, which an unobservant man may be allowed to disregard up to a certain point.  They were the unmistakable, uncompromising hessians then prescribed by fashion, a pair of extremely elegant betasseled boots, which shone in glistening contrast against tight-fitting trousers invariably of some light color, and reflected their surroundings like a mirror.  The boots stared the honest silk-mercer out of countenance, and, it must be added, they pained his heart.