The day before the expected departure of the baroness, some of the neighbors were invited to dinner for her gratification, for she had but very little taste for the intimacy of family life, and was passionately fond of strangers.  For want of time to do any better, they gave her for company, the cure of Vastville, the local physician, the receiver of taxes, and recorder of deeds, all of whom were tolerably frequent guests at the chateau, and great admirers of Julia.  It was doubtless not a great deal; it was enough, however, to furnish to the baroness an occasion for wearing one of her handsome dinner-dresses.

Julia, during the dinner, seemed to make it a point to effect the conquest of the cure, a simple old man, who yielded to his fair neighbor’s fascinations with a sort of joyous stupor.  She made him eat, she made him drink, she made him laugh.

“What a little serpent she is, isn’t she, Monsieur le Cure?” said the baroness.

“She is very lovely,” said the cure.

“Enough to make one shudder,” rejoined the baroness.

In the evening, after waltzing for a little while around the room, Julia, accompanied by her husband, sang in her beautiful, grave voice, some unpublished melodies and national songs she had brought back from Italy.  One of these tunes having reminded her of a sort of tarentella she had seen danced by some women at Procida, she requested her husband to play it.  She was explaining at the same time, with much animation, how this tarentella was danced, giving a rapid outline of the steps, the gestures and the attitudes; then, suddenly carried away by the ardor of her narrative: 

“Wait a moment, Pierre,” she said, “I am going to dance it.  That will be much more simple.”

She lifted the long train of her dress, which impeded her movements, and requested her mother to loop it up with pins.  In the meantime she was right busy herself; there were on the mantel-piece, and on the consoles, vases filled with flowers and verdure; she drew freely from them with her nimble fingers, and, standing before a mirror, she fastened and twined pell-mell, in her magnificent hair, flowers, leaves, bunches, ears, anything that happened to fall under her hands.  With her head loaded with that heavy and quivering wreath, she came to place herself in the center of the parlor.

“Go on now, dear!” she said to Monsieur de Moras.  He played the tarentella, that began with a sort of slow and measured ballet-step, which Julia performed in her own masterly style, folding and unfolding in turn, like two garlands, her peri’s arms; then the rhythm becoming more and more animated, she struck the floor with her rapid and repeated steps, with the wild suppleness and the wanton smile of a young bacchante.  Suddenly she brought the performance to a close with a long slide that carried her, all panting, before Monsieur de Lucan, seated opposite to her.  There, she bent one knee, lay with rapid gesture both her hands upon her hair, and tossing about at the same time her inclined head, she shook off her crown in a shower of flowers at the feet of Lucan, saying in her sweetest voice, and in a tone of gracious homage: