Consequently, the horror of the blue-blooded, aristocratic lady was intense when the Prince, in his usual, amiable, careless manner, suggested to her to people her deer park with girls of the lower orders.

“It is a ridiculous prejudice,” the Prince said on that occasion, “which obliges us to shut ourselves off from the other ranks, and to confine ourselves altogether to our own circle, for monotony and boredom are the inevitable consequences of it.  How many honorable men of sense and education, and especially how many charming women and girls there are, who do not belong to the aristocracy, who would infuse fresh life and a new charm into our dull, listless society!  I very much wish that a lady like you would make a beginning, and would give up this exclusiveness, which cannot be maintained in these days, and would enrich our circle with the charming daughters of middle class families.”

A wish of the Prince’s was as good as a command; so the baroness made a wry face, but she accommodated herself to the circumstances, and promised to invite some of the prettiest girls of the plebs to a ball in a few days.  She really issued a number of invitations, and even condescended to drive to the house of each of them in person.  “But I must ask one thing of you,” she said to each of the pretty girls, “and that is to come dressed as simply as possible; washing muslins will be best.  The Prince dislikes all finery and ostentation and he would be very vexed with me if I were the cause of any extravagance on your part.”

The great day arrived; it was quite an event for the little town, and all classes of society were in a state of the greatest excitement.  The pretty, plebeian girls, with her whom the Prince had first noticed at their head, appeared in all their innocence, in plain, washing dresses, according to the Prince’s orders, with their hair plainly dressed, and without any ornaments, except their own fresh, buxom charms.  When they were all captives in the den of the proud, aristocratic lioness, the poor little mice were very much terrified when suddenly the aristocratic ladies came into the ball-room, rustling in whole oceans of silks and lace, with their haughty heads changed into so many hanging gardens of Semiramis, loaded with all the treasures of India, and radiant as the sun.

At first the poor girls looked down in shame and confusion, and Baroness Pompadour’s eyes glistened with all the joy of triumph, but her ill-natured pleasure did not last long, for the intrigue, on which the Prince’s ignoble passions were to make shipwreck, recoiled on the highly-born lady patroness of the deer park.

It was not the aristocratic ladies in their magnificent toilettes that threw the girls from the middle classes into the shade, but, on the contrary, those pretty girls in their washing dresses, and with the plain but splendid ornament of their abundant hair looked far more charming than they would have done in silk dresses with long trains, and with flowers in their hair, and the novelty and unwontedness of their appearance there allured not only the Prince, but all the other gentlemen and officers, so that the proud grand-daughters of the lions, griffins, and eagles, were quite neglected by the gentlemen, who danced almost exclusively with the pretty girls of the middle classes.