Auguste de Maulincour had the personal misfortune of running against this passion, and falling in love with the wife beyond recovery.  Nevertheless, though he carried in his heart so intense a love, he was not ridiculous; he complied with all the demands of society, and of military manners and customs.  And yet his face wore constantly, even though he might be drinking a glass of champagne, that dreamy look, that air of silently despising life, that nebulous expression which belongs, though for other reasons, to blases men,—­men dissatisfied with hollow lives.  To love without hope, to be disgusted with life, constitute, in these days, a social position.  The enterprise of winning the heart of a sovereign might give, perhaps, more hope than a love rashly conceived for a happy woman.  Therefore Maulincour had sufficient reason to be grave and gloomy.  A queen has the vanity of her power; the height of her elevation protects her.  But a pious bourgeoise is like a hedgehog, or an oyster, in its rough wrappings.

At this moment the young officer was beside his unconscious mistress, who certainly was unaware that she was doubly faithless.  Madame Jules was seated, in a naive attitude, like the least artful woman in existence, soft and gentle, full of a majestic serenity.  What an abyss is human nature!  Before beginning a conversation, the baron looked alternately at the wife and at the husband.  How many were the reflections he made!  He recomposed the “Night Thoughts” of Young in a second.  And yet the music was sounding through the salons, the light was pouring from a thousand candles.  It was a banker’s ball,—­one of those insolent festivals by means of which the world of solid gold endeavored to sneer at the gold-embossed salons where the faubourg Saint-Germain met and laughed, not foreseeing the day when the bank would invade the Luxembourg and take its seat upon the throne.  The conspirators were now dancing, indifferent to coming bankruptcies, whether of Power or of the Bank.  The gilded salons of the Baron de Nucingen were gay with that peculiar animation that the world of Paris, apparently joyous at any rate, gives to its fetes.  There, men of talent communicate their wit to fools, and fools communicate that air of enjoyment that characterizes them.  By means of this exchange all is liveliness.  But a ball in Paris always resembles fireworks to a certain extent; wit, coquetry, and pleasure sparkle and go out like rockets.  The next day all present have forgotten their wit, their coquetry, their pleasure.

“Ah!” thought Auguste, by way of conclusion, “women are what the vidame says they are.  Certainly all those dancing here are less irreproachable actually than Madame Jules appears to be, and yet Madame Jules went to the rue Soly!”

The rue Soly was like an illness to him; the very word shrivelled his heart.

“Madame, do you ever dance?” he said to her.

“This is the third time you have asked me that question this winter,” she answered, smiling.