"Anger! Allow me to inform you that just now this vile populace, which to-night overflows in all the streets, had the impudence to stop my carriage on the Louis XV Bridge. By God's death, I shall punish these people!"
"What did you say to the insolent creatures?"
"I was treating this fraction of the 'sovereign people' like the abject rabble that they are, when my lackey, trembling like a hare, and hoping to secure our release, conceived the infernal idea of calling out to the beggars 'Make way, there, if you please, for the carriage of Monsieur Mirabeau!' Immediately the tempest turned to a zephyr, and the stupid people made way for me, to cries of 'Long live Mirabeau!'"
"They must have taken you for your brother!"
"Death and fury! It is but too true! I shall never forgive my brother that insult!"
"Calm yourself, Viscount; but yet a few days and that filthy populace will be clouted back into the mire where it belongs."
"Her Excellency, Marchioness Aldini," loudly announced one of Plouernel's valets at that moment, swinging back both sides of the great door of the parlor, into which he introduced—Victoria Lebrenn under her borrowed name and title.
The friends of Monsieur Plouernel thus beheld Marchioness Aldini for the first time. All were struck with astonishment at her beauty, heightened as it was by the splendor of her toilet. For Victoria now wore a trailing robe of poppy-colored cloth of Tours, trimmed with black lace. The cut of her corsage left bare her arms, shoulders and the rise of her breast, which seemed sculptured in the purest marble. Her black hair was not buried, as was the custom of the time, under a layer of white powder, but, glowing with the luster of ebony, and rolled in thick and numerous ringlets around her head, majestically crowned her brow. A triple string of Venetian sequins served both as diadem and collar. Nothing can give an adequate idea of the effect of this original mode, at once elegant and severe, which was still more remarkable in that it differed completely from the pomponned attires of the period, and harmonized marvellously with Victoria's own cast of beauty.
Plouernel's friends, seized with admiration, were for a moment speechless. Every look was fastened on the foreign dame;—even Abbot Morlet experienced the fascination, and said to himself as he gazed at her:
"I can understand how the Count is mad over her. The danger is greater than I suspected. She is a very siren."