That silk rosette looked there like a vermilion note stamped on a dark ground, and it seemed to pierce like a luminous drill into Marianne’s eyes; and with her head erect, pallid face and trembling lip she passed before the domestic who hastened to open the door and went downstairs, repeating to herself with all the distracted fury of a fixed idea: 

“To be avenged!  To be avenged!  Oh! to be avenged!”

She jumped into a cab.

“Well?”—­said the coachman, looking with blinking eyes at this pale-faced, distraught-looking woman.

She remained there as if seeking an idea, a purpose.

“Where shall we go?” repeated the driver.

Suddenly Marianne’s face trembled with a joyous expression and she abruptly said: 

“To the Prefecture of Police!”

* * * * *

The general rose, grasping his glass as if he would shiver it, and while the parfait_ overflowed on to the plates, he cried in a hoarse voice, as if he were at the head of his division:_

"I love bronze—­I love bronze—...."

[Illustration:  THE BANQUET]

VI

There was a crowd at the Mirlitons Exposition.

A file of waiting carriages lined the kerbstone the whole length of Place Vendome.  Beneath the arch and within the portal, groups of fashionable persons elbowed each other on entering or leaving, and exchanged friendly polite greetings; the women quizzing the new hats, little hoods of plush or large Rembranesque hats in which the delicate Parisian faces were lost as under the roof of a cabriolet.  The liveried lackeys perfunctorily glanced at the cards of admission that the holders hardly took the trouble to present.  One was seated at a table mechanically handing out catalogues.  Through the open door of the Club’s Theatre could be seen gold frames suspended from the walls, terra cottas and marbles on their pedestals, and around the pictures and sculptures a dense crowd, masses of black hats inclined toward the paintings, side by side with pretty feminine heads crowned with Gainsborough hats adorned with plumes.  It was impossible to see at close quarters the pieces offered for the sale that was for that day the engrossing topic of conversation of All Paris.

“A veritable salon in miniature!” said Guy aloud to an art critic who was taking notes.  “But to examine it comfortably one should be quite alone.  For an hour past I have been trying to get a look at the Meissonier, but have not been able to do so.  It is stifling here.  I will return another time.”