scent of the flowers vied with the perfumes worn by the women and could not overcome them.  The crystal glasses sparkled in the light of the wax candles, the jewels, and the bright eyes round the table.  The servants poured out the noble Rhine wine, the celebrated Burgundy, the elegant Bordeaux, and the mischievous Champagne, whose colored embodiment was reflected on the white hands of the guests, and carried their imaginations away in its flight from gray reality to the immortal land of rosy dreams.

The meal lasted a long time, then a few of the guests rose; the older ones, who had principally chatted, played, and smoked before midnight, now withdrew, if they had no daughters to chaperon; the young people, however, went back to the dancing-room, the musicians fiddled anew as if they were possessed, and an hour’s cotillion was begun, the pretty quick-moving figures being led by a lieutenant of the Guards, who seemed as proud of the honor as if he were commanding on a battlefield.  Loulou, who had gone back to the dance, had begged Wilhelm in vain to take part at least in the cotillion, where he need not dance much.  She had assured him that he would be more decorated than any other man in the room, and would have more orders, ribbons, and wreaths given him than all the lieutenants put together; but even the prospect of such a triumph could not make him ambitious, and for the first time this evening the beautiful excited girl left him looking out of humor, and glanced at him in a way which was not merely sorrowful but reproachful.  Paul, on the other hand, was happy.  He kept more than ever near the pretty insignificant girl with whom he had danced so much, and the good-hearted fellow did not feel in the least jealous when, in the long pause of the cotillion, his partner went to speak to his friend who had stood lonely for so long, and had hardly enjoyed himself at all.  Paul was sufficiently decorated; he got a sufficient number of glances from girls’ bright eyes to be quite contented, he paid a sufficient number of compliments, great and small, for which he was thanked by sweet smiles, and perhaps with tiny sighs, and he had the feeling that he had lived in every fiber of his being, and that his time had been marvelously well employed.  He could have stayed for several hours longer, and was quite astonished when toward four o’clock the tireless young people’s parents put an end to the evening by their departure.

As Wilhelm came up to Loulou she had ceased to look cross.  Near her stood the hero of the cotillion, the lieutenant of the Guards, covered with the little favors the ladies had given him.  But that did not prevent her saying in quite a tender voice, “I shall see you soon again, shall I not?” and Wilhelm pressed her little hand warmly.