These causes would have brought about a sort of semi-ostracism, had the Countess not applied herself to forming a salon of her own, the recruits for which were almost altogether foreigners.  The sight of new faces, the variety of conversation, the freedom of manner, all in that moving world, pleased the thirst for diversion which, in that puissant, spontaneous, and almost manly immoral nature, was joined with very just clear-sightedness.  If Julien paused for a moment surprised at the door of the hall, it was not, therefore, on finding it empty at the end of the season; it was on beholding there, among the inmates, Peppino Ardea, whom he had not met all winter.  Truly, it was a strange time to appear in new scenes when the hammer of the appraiser was already raised above all which had been the pride and the splendor of his name.  But the grand-nephew of Urban VII, seated between sublime Fanny Hafner, in pale blue, and pretty Alba Steno, in bright red, opposite Madame Maitland, so graceful in her mauve toilette, had in no manner the air of a man crushed by adversity.

The subdued light revealed his proud manly face, which had lost none of its gay hauteur.  His eyes, very black, very brilliant, and very unsteady, seemed almost in the same glance to scorn and to smile, while his mouth, beneath its brown moustache, wore an expression of disdain, disgust, and sensuality.  The shaven chin displayed a bluish shade, which gave to the whole face a look of strength, belied by the slender and nervous form.  The heir of the Castagnas was dressed with an affectation of the English style, peculiar to certain Italians.  He wore too many rings on his fingers, too large a bouquet in his buttonhole, and above all he made too many gestures to allow for a moment, with his dark complexion, of any doubt as to his nationality.  It was he who, of all the group, first perceived Julien, and he said to him, or rather called out familiarly: 

“Ah, Dorsenne!  I thought you had gone away.  We have not seen you at the club for fifteen days.”

“He has been working,” replied Hafner, “at some new masterpiece, at a romance which is laid in Roman society, I am sure.  Mistrust him, Prince, and you, ladies, disarm the portrayer.”

“I,” resumed Ardea, laughing pleasantly, “will give him notes upon myself, if he wants them, as long as this, and I will illustrate his romance into the bargain with photographs which I once had a rage for taking....  See, Mademoiselle,” he added, turning to Fanny, “that is how one ruins one’s self.  I had a mania for the instantaneous ones.  It was very innocent, was it not?  It cost me thirty thousand francs a year, for four years.”