Bijou's arrival at the Tourville ball was a veritable triumph. In her pink crêpe dress, which matched her complexion admirably, she looked wonderfully pretty, and different from anyone else.
"Just look at the Dubuisson girl," said Louis de la Balue to M. de Juzencourt. "She has tried to get herself up like Mademoiselle de Courtaix. She has copied her dress exactly, and just see what she looks like. She might pass for her maid, and that's the most she could do. How is it, now?"
M. de Juzencourt laughed gruffly.
"Why, it's just that if the outside is the same, what's inside it isn't the same. Isn't she going to be married?"
"Yes, she's going to marry a young Huguenot, who must be somewhere about, hiding in some corner or another. Ah! No! he isn't in a corner either. There he is, like all the others, fluttering round 'The Bijou.'"
"And you? You don't flutter round her?" asked M. de Juzencourt.
"I? I'd marry her—because, sooner or later, one's got to get married, or one's parents make a fuss, because of keeping up the name, you know—but as to fluttering round—By Jove, no! that isn't in my line!" and then, in a languid way, he went off to Henry de Bracieux.
"How hot it is," he began, glancing at him dreamily, and speaking in a low voice, with an affected drawl. "You are lucky not to turn red. You've got such a complexion, though, that's true. You look like a regular Hercules, and yet, with that, your complexion is as delicate—"
As he was leaning towards him, and looking sentimental, Henry exclaimed impatiently, in his full, sonorous voice: