"I don't think Nobili cares a straw about Nera," put in the languid Franchi, drawling out his words. "I have heard quite another story about Nobili. Give Nera to Ruspoli. He seems about to take her for life. I wish him joy!" with a sneer. "Ruspoli likes English manners. Nera won't get Nobili, my word upon that—there are too many stories about her."
But these remarks at the moment passed unnoticed. No one asked what Franchi had heard, all being intent about the cotillon and the choice of partners.
"Well," burst out Orsetti, no longer able to resist the music (the waltz had been turned into a galop), "I am sure I don't care if Nobili or Ruspoli likes Nera. I shall not try to cut them out."
"No, no, not you, Orsetti! We know your taste does not lie in that quarter. Yours is the domestic style, chaste and frigid!" cried Malatesta, with a sardonic smile. There was a laugh. Malatesta was so bad, even according to the code of the "golden youths," that he compromised any lady by his attentions. Orsetti blushed crimson.
"Pardon me," he replied, much confused, "I must go; my partner is looking daggers at me. Call up old Trenta and tell him what he has to do." Orsetti rushes off to the next room, where Teresa Ottolini is waiting for him, with a look of gentle reproach in her sleepy eyes, where lies the hidden fire.
Meanwhile Cavaliere Trenta's white head, immaculate blue coat and gold buttons—to which coat were attached several orders—had been seen hovering about from chair to chair through the rooms. He attached himself specially to elderly ladies, his contemporaries. To these he repeated the identical high-flown compliments he had addressed to them thirty years before, in the court circle of the Duke of Lucca—compliments such as elderly ladies love, though conscious all the time of their absurd inappropriateness.
Like the dried-up rose-bud of one's youth, religiously preserved as a relic, there is a faint flavor of youth and pleasure about them, sweet still, as a remembrance of the past. "Always beautiful, always amiable!" murmured the cavaliere, like a rhyme, a placid smile upon his rosy face.
Summoned to the cabinet council held near the door, Trenta becomes intensely interested. He weighs each detail, he decides every point with the gravity of a judge: how the new figures are to be danced, and with whom Baldassare is to lead—no one else could do it. He himself would marshal the dances.
The double orchestra now play as if they were trying to drown each other. Half a dozen rooms are full of dancers. The matrons, and older men, have subsided into whist up-stairs. All the ladies have found partners; there is not a single wall-flower.
Nothing could exceed the stately propriety of the ball. It was a grand and stately gathering. Nobody but Nera Boccarini was natural. "To save appearances" is the social law. "Do what you like, but save appearances." A dignified hypocrisy none disobey. These men and women, with the historic names, dare not show each other what they are. There was no flirting, no romping, no loud laughter; not a loud word—no telltale glances, no sitting in corners. It was a pose throughout. Men bowed ceremoniously, and addressed as strangers ladies with whom they spent every evening. Husbands devoted themselves to wives whom they never saw but in public. Innocence may betray itself, seems to betray itself—guilt never. Guilt is cautious.