“It is easy to see that you come from Angouleme,” said Mme. d’Espard, ironically enough, as she continued to gaze through her opera-glass.

Her remark was lost upon Lucien; the all-absorbing spectacle of the boxes prevented him from thinking of anything else.  He guessed that he himself was an object of no small curiosity.  Louise, on the other hand, was exceedingly mortified by the evident slight esteem in which the Marquise held Lucien’s beauty.

“He cannot be so handsome as I thought him,” she said to herself; and between “not so handsome” and “not so clever as I thought him” there was but one step.

The curtain fell.  Chatelet was now paying a visit to the Duchesse de Carigliano in an adjourning box; Mme. de Bargeton acknowledged his bow by a slight inclination of the head.  Nothing escapes a woman of the world; Chatelet’s air of distinction was not lost upon Mme. d’Espard.  Just at that moment four personages, four Parisian celebrities, came into the box, one after another.

The most striking feature of the first comer, M. de Marsay, famous for the passions which he had inspired, was his girlish beauty; but its softness and effeminacy were counteracted by the expression of his eyes, unflinching, steady, untamed, and hard as a tiger’s.  He was loved and he was feared.  Lucien was no less handsome; but Lucien’s expression was so gentle, his blue eyes so limpid, that he scarcely seemed to possess the strength and the power which attract women so strongly.  Nothing, moreover, so far had brought out the poet’s merits; while de Marsay, with his flow of spirits, his confidence in his power to please, and appropriate style of dress, eclipsed every rival by his presence.  Judge, therefore, the kind of figure that Lucien, stiff, starched, unbending in clothes as new and unfamiliar as his surroundings, was likely to cut in de Marsay’s vicinity.  De Marsay with his wit and charm of manner was privileged to be insolent.  From Mme. d’Espard’s reception of this personage his importance was at once evident to Mme. de Bargeton.

The second comer was a Vandenesse, the cause of the scandal in which Lady Dudley was concerned.  Felix de Vandenesse, amiable, intellectual, and modest, had none of the characteristics on which de Marsay prided himself, and owed his success to diametrically opposed qualities.  He had been warmly recommended to Mme. d’Espard by her cousin Mme. de Mortsauf.

The third was General de Montriveau, the author of the Duchesse de Langeais’ ruin.

The fourth, M. de Canalis, one of the most famous poets of the day, and as yet a newly risen celebrity, was prouder of his birth than of his genius, and dangled in Mme. d’Espard’s train by way of concealing his love for the Duchesse de Chaulieu.  In spite of his graces and the affectation that spoiled them, it was easy to discern the vast, lurking ambitions that plunged him at a later day into the storms of