She had often heard him spoken of.  She had read of his speeches.  She had even frequently seen his photograph in the stationers’ windows.

The determined air of this young man, whom she knew to be eloquent, had pleased her.  She ought then to have recognized him.  He was exactly as his photographs represented him.

Of all the glances bestowed on the minister, Marianne’s especially attracted Sulpice.  A moment previously he had felt a singular charm at the appearance of this woman, threading her way directly between the rows of men by whom she was so crowded as to be in danger of having her garments pulled from her body.  In his love of definitions and analyses, Vaudrey had never pictured the Parisian woman otherwise, with her piquant and instantaneous seductiveness, as penetrating as a subtle essence.

Marianne, smiling restlessly, looked at him and allowed him to look at her.

Her cheeks, which were extremely pale, suddenly became flushed as if their color were heightened by some feverish attack, when, amid the stir caused by the curiosity of the guests, and a greeting manifested by the shuffling of feet and the murmuring of voices, Monsieur de Rosas appeared; his air was somewhat embarrassed, he offered his arm to Madame Marsy, who conducted him to the narrow stage as if to present him.

“At last! ah! it is he!”

“It is really the Duc de Rosas, is it not?”

“Yes, yes, it is he!”

“He is charming!”

The name of Rosas, although only repeated in an undertone by the lips of these women, rung in Marianne’s ears, sounding like a quickstep played on a clarion.  It seemed to her that a decisive moment in her life was announced fantastically in those utterances.  Even now, while burning with the very fever of her eagerness, she felt the gambler’s superstition.  As soon as she saw Jose, she said to herself at once that if he saw her and recognized her first glance, then he had not forgotten her and she could hope for everything.  Everything!  “Men happily forget less quickly than women,” she thought.  “Through egotism, or from regret, some abandon themselves to their reminiscences with complacency, like this Guy, and recognize on our countenances the lines of their own youth.  Others, perhaps, mourn over the lost opportunity, and the duke is sentimental enough to be of that class.”

She thought that Rosas must look at her, yes, at any cost; and with body inclined, her chin resting on her gloved right hand, while the other handled her fan with the skill peculiar to the Spanish women, she darted at the duke a rapid glance, a glance burning with desire and in which she expressed her whole will.  The human eye has within it all the power of attraction possessed by a magnetic needle.  As if he had experienced the actual effect of that glance fixed on his countenance, the duke raised his head after a polite but somewhat curtly elegant bow, to look at the audience of lovely women whom Sabine had gathered to greet him, and, as if only Marianne had been present, he at once saw the motionless young woman silently contemplating him.