Never shall I forget the sense of relief I felt as I lay back in the carriage, and listened to the hum and din of the vast crowd growing each moment fainter. “Thank Heaven,” said I, “it's no levee!” Scarce half a dozen equipages stood around the door as we drove up, and a single dragoon was the guard of honor.
“Whom shall I announce, sir?” said a huissier in black, whose manner was as deferential as though my appearance bespoke an ambassador. I gave my name, and followed him up a wide stair, where the deep velvet carpet left no footfall audible. A large bronze candelabra, supporting a blaze of waxlights, diffused a light like day on every side. The doors opened before us as if by magic, and I found myself in an antechamber, where the huissier, repeating my name to another in waiting, retired. Passing through this, we entered a small drawing-room, in which sat two persons engaged at a chess table, but who never looked up or noticed us as we proceeded. At last the two wings of a wide folding door were thrown open, and my name was announced in a low but audible voice.
The salon into which I now entered was a large and splendidly-furnished apartment, whose light, tempered by a species of abat-jour, gave a kind of soft mysterious effect to everything about, and made even the figures, as they sat in little groups, appear something almost dramatic in their character. The conversation, too, was maintained in a half-subdued tone,—a gentle murmur of voices, that, mingling with the swell of music in another and distant apartment, and the plash of a small fountain in a vase of goldfish in the room itself, made a strange but most pleasing assemblage of sounds. Even in the momentary glance which, on entering, I threw around me, I perceived that no studied etiquette or courtly stateliness prevailed. The guests were disposed in every attitude of lounging ease and careless abandon; and it was plain to see that all or nearly all about were intimates of the place.
As the door closed behind me, I stood half uncertain how to proceed. Unhappily, I knew little of the habitudes of the great world, and every step I took was a matter of difficulty.
“I think you will find Madame Bonaparte in that room,” said a middle-aged and handsome man, whose mild voice and gentle smile did much to set me at my ease. “But perhaps you don't know her.”
I muttered something I meant to be a negative, to which he immediately replied,—
“Then let me present you. There is no ceremony here, and I shall be your groom of the chambers. But here she is. Madame la Consulesse, this young gentleman desires to make his respects.”
“Ha! our friend of the Polytechnique,—Monsieur Burke, is it not?”
“Yes, Madame,” said I, bowing low, and blushing deeply as I recognized, in the splendidly-attired and beautiful person before me, the lady who so kindly held the water to my lips the day of my accident at the school.
“Why, they told me you were promoted,—a hussar, I think.”