In the evening, everything blazed on the facade of the ministry.  The rows of gas-jets suggested that a public fete was being held in the Hotel Beauvau.  The naming capital letters R.F. were boldly outlined against the dark sky, the three colors of the flags looked bright in the ruddy light of the gas.  Carriages rolled over the sanded courtyard, giving up at the carpeted entrance to the hotel the invited guests dressed in correct style, the women wrapped in ample cloaks with gold fringe or trimmed with fur, and all poured into the antechamber, brushing against the Gardes de Paris in white breeches, with grounded arms, forming a row and standing out like Caryatides against the shining, large leaved green flowers on which their white helmets shone by the light of the lustres.  In the dressing-room, the clothing was piled up, tied together in haste; the antechamber was quickly crossed, the women in passing casting rapid glances at the immense mirrors; a servant asked the names of the guests and repeated them to an usher, whose loud voice penetrated these salons that for many years had heard so many different names, of all parties, under all regimes, and proclaimed them in the usual commonplace manner, while murdering the most celebrated of them.  Upon the threshold of the salon, filled with fashionable people and flooded with intense light, stood the minister, who had been receiving, greeting, bowing, ever since the opening of the soiree, to those who arrived, some of whom he did not know; crowding behind him, correctly dressed, stood his secretaries, the members of his cabinet appropriating their shares of the greetings extended to the Excellency, and at his side stood Madame Vaudrey, pale and smiling as the creatures of the other world; she also bowed and from time to time extended her gloved hand mechanically; pale she looked in her decollete gown of white satin, clasped at the shoulders with two pearl clasps, a bouquet of natural roses in her corsage, and standing there like a melancholy spectre on the very threshold of the festive salons.

When she perceived Guy enter, she greeted him with a sad smile, and Vaudrey eagerly offered his hand to him as if he relied greatly on him to arrange matters.

Adrienne’s repressed grief had pained Lissac.  While to the other guests she appeared to be only somewhat fatigued, to him the open wound and sorrow were visible.  He plunged into the crowd.  Beneath the streaming light the diamonds on the women’s shoulders gleamed like the lustres’ crystals.  Within a frame of gobelins and Beauvais tapestry taken from the repository, was an improvised scene that looked like a green and pink nest of camellias, dracaenas and palms.  The bright toilettes of the women already seated before this scenic effect presented a wealth of pale blue, white or pink silk, mother-of-pearl shoulders, diamonds, and bows of pink or feather headdresses.  Guy recognized Madame Marsy in the front row, robed in a very low-cut, sea-green satin robe with a bouquet of flowers at the tip of the shoulder, who while fanning herself looked with haughty impertinence at the pretty Madame Gerson, her former friend.  Madame Evan was numerously surrounded, she was the most charming of all the stylish set and the woman whom all the others tried to copy.