I leaned against the wall and looked around me.
What a scene! Monkeys, goats, cabbages, pierrots, pierrettes, men in everyday clothes, girls in dominoes—and very little else—and then, boom, boom! the band broke into a waltz, and set the whole fantastic scene whirling. A girl, dressed as a bonbon, danced up to me, nearly kicked me in the face, and danced off again, seizing a carrot by the waist and whirling around with him. Too lame to join in the revelry, I watched, leaning against the wall and feeling horribly alone amidst all this gaiety.
I was standing like this when a fresh eruption of guests burst into the room—two men and three girls, all friends evidently, and linked together arm-in-arm.
It was well I had the wall behind me to lean against, for one of the girls, a lovely blonde, dressed as a shepherdess, was the Countess Feliciani!
The woman I had lost my heart to as a child, the woman I had seen touched by premature old age in the little sitting-room of the Hôtel de Mayence, the same woman rejuvenated, and turned by some magic wand into a girl of eighteen, laughing and joyous.
I gazed at this prodigy; and the prodigy, who had unlinked herself from her companions, was now whirling before me in the waltz, in the arms of a grenadier with a cock's feather stuck in his hat, and totally unconscious of the commotion she had raised in my breast.
"You aren't dancing?"
"No," I said. "I'm lame."
She looked at me to see if I were serious or not; then she made a grimace, and linked her arm in mine. It was the bonbon girl. The dance was over, and the carrot had vanished to the bar, without, it seems, offering her refreshment. She had beady, black eyes, a low forehead, and rather thick lips.
"That's bad," said she, "to be lame. Let us take a stroll." And she led me towards the bar.