“I never sign a paper without reading it first,” said Newman.  “Show me your document.”

“No, you must sign with your eyes shut; I will hold your hand.  Come, before you put your head into the noose.  You ought to be thankful to me for giving you a chance to do something amusing.”

“If it is so amusing,” said Newman, “it will be in even better season after I am married.”

“In other words,” cried Madame de Bellegarde, “you will not do it at all.  You will be afraid of your wife.”

“Oh, if the thing is intrinsically improper,” said Newman, “I won’t go into it.  If it is not, I will do it after my marriage.”

“You talk like a treatise on logic, and English logic into the bargain!” exclaimed Madame de Bellegarde.  “Promise, then, after you are married.  After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it.”

“Well, then, after I am married,” said Newman serenely.

The little marquise hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he wondered what was coming.  “I suppose you know what my life is,” she presently said.  “I have no pleasure, I see nothing, I do nothing.  I live in Paris as I might live at Poitiers.  My mother-in-law calls me—­what is the pretty word?—­a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places, and thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and count over my ancestors on my fingers.  But why should I bother about my ancestors?  I am sure they never bothered about me.  I don’t propose to live with a green shade on my eyes; I hold that things were made to look at.  My husband, you know, has principles, and the first on the list is that the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar.  If the Tuileries are vulgar, his principles are tiresome.  If I chose I might have principles quite as well as he.  If they grew on one’s family tree I should only have to give mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest.  At any rate, I prefer clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons.”

“Oh, I see; you want to go to court,” said Newman, vaguely conjecturing that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to smooth her way to the imperial halls.

The marquise gave a little sharp laugh.  “You are a thousand miles away.  I will take care of the Tuileries myself; the day I decide to go they will be very glad to have me.  Sooner or later I shall dance in an imperial quadrille.  I know what you are going to say:  ’How will you dare?’ But I shall dare.  I am afraid of my husband; he is soft, smooth, irreproachable; everything that you know; but I am afraid of him—­horribly afraid of him.  And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries.  But that will not be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must live.  For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it’s my dream.  I want to go to the Bal Bullier.”

“To the Bal Bullier?” repeated Newman, for whom the words at first meant nothing.

“The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their mistresses.  Don’t tell me you have not heard of it.”