“I am going to make a proposition,” said Heraclius to his cousin. “To-day is Wednesday, and there is a ball here; let us go to the gallery and look on.”
The princess agreed, and the little company mounted the steps leading to the ballroom gallery.
This was full of people. There was hardly a place to be found between the spectators who were leaning over the railing. We had to separate; the princess took her place at one end of the gallery, I was at the other. Heraclius joined me. It was like a tête-à-tête. Crowded by the people who stood beside us, he had to come so near me that his arm rested on the railing close against mine. What we said no one else could hear, for the noise of the waltz music prevented words exchanged at close quarters from carrying to any remoter place. It was to a Strauss waltz—the Morgenblätter—that the couples on the floor below were whirling. But, though I looked down, I saw little of the swarm on the floor; my ball was up above. More giddily than under the maddest galop time I felt myself whirled onward by the prince’s proximity, by his words. The atmosphere was oppressive; the chandelier near us poured out a hot and dazzling light. I kept my fan going incessantly, and with its sandalwood scent it said something to me—for scents also speak—that enravished me.
“You are a magnificent girl,” Heraclius’s flattering voice was whispering in my ear meantime. “You have all the qualities to turn the soberest heads, to set the coldest hearts to beating. I had no idea that earth contained a being who could exercise such a witchery as you—”
“Children!” exclaimed the princess, coming up to us, “it is beyond endurance here; this heat is suffocating, the light makes one’s eyes ache, the music is deafening, and there is not much to look at in the dancing of those four or five ill-gowned Homburg girls. Don’t you agree with me? Let us go!”
Well, we had to go, for it was for the princess to decide, but I assuredly did not agree with her. The heat-radiating chandelier was to me a magic sun, the noise of the wind instruments was like the music of the spheres—a more glorious festivity I had never yet experienced.
The princess and her cousin accompanied me to the door of my house. It was still open.
“A demain, chérie!” said the princess, kissing me on the forehead. “But not at the spring,” she added. “Come at two o’clock.”
My mother was still up.
“How late you are! The theater was out long ago!”