“No, it is not you; it is something that I cannot explain,” she added, turning to the poet, and, as she looked at him for the first time, it seemed to strike her that he was singularly dressed.

“There is M. du Chatelet,” exclaimed Lucien at that moment, and he pointed a finger towards Mme. de Serizy’s box, which the renovated beau had just entered.

Mme. de Bargeton bit her lips with chagrin as she saw that gesture, and saw besides the Marquise’s ill-suppressed smile of contemptuous astonishment.  “Where does the young man come from?” her look said, and Louise felt humbled through her love, one of the sharpest of all pangs for a Frenchwoman, a mortification for which she cannot forgive her lover.

In these circles where trifles are of such importance, a gesture or a word at the outset is enough to ruin a newcomer.  It is the principal merit of fine manners and the highest breeding that they produce the effect of a harmonious whole, in which every element is so blended that nothing is startling or obtrusive.  Even those who break the laws of this science, either through ignorance or carried away by some impulse, must comprehend that it is with social intercourse as with music, a single discordant note is a complete negation of the art itself, for the harmony exists only when all its conditions are observed down to the least particular.

“Who is that gentleman?” asked Mme. d’Espard, looking towards Chatelet.  “And have you made Mme. de Serizy’s acquaintance already?”

“Oh! is that the famous Mme. de Serizy who has had so many adventures and yet goes everywhere?”

“An unheard-of-thing, my dear, explicable but unexplained.  The most formidable men are her friends, and why?  Nobody dares to fathom the mystery.  Then is this person the lion of Angouleme?”

“Well, M. le Baron du Chatelet has been a good deal talked about,” answered Mme. de Bargeton, moved by vanity to give her adorer the title which she herself had called in question.  “He was M. de Montriveau’s traveling companion.”

“Ah!” said the Marquise d’Espard, “I never hear that name without thinking of the Duchesse de Langeais, poor thing.  She vanished like a falling star.—­That is M. de Rastignac with Mme. de Nucingen,” she continued, indicating another box; “she is the wife of a contractor, a banker, a city man, a broker on a large scale; he forced his way into society with his money, and they say that he is not very scrupulous as to his methods of making it.  He is at endless pains to establish his credit as a staunch upholder of the Bourbons, and has tried already to gain admittance into my set.  When his wife took Mme. de Langeais’ box, she thought that she could take her charm, her wit, and her success as well.  It is the old fable of the jay in the peacock’s feathers!”

“How do M. and Mme. de Rastignac manage to keep their son in Paris, when, as we know, their income is under a thousand crowns?” asked Lucien, in his astonishment at Rastignac’s elegant and expensive dress.