She was relieved from her difficulty by the entrance of the little Abbé, who came to summon Monsieur to Madame de Connal, who did him the honour to invite him to the table. Ormond played, and fortune smiled upon him, as she usually does upon a new votary; and beauty smiled upon him perhaps on the same principle. Connal never came near him till supper was announced; then only to desire him to give his arm to a charming little Countess—la nouvelle mariée—Madame de Connal, belonging, by right of rank, to Monsieur le Comte de Belle Chasse. The supper was one of the delightful petit soupers for which Paris was famous at that day, and which she will never see again.
The moralist, who considers the essential interests of morality, more than the immediate pleasures of society, will think this rather a matter of rejoicing than regret. How far such society and correct female conduct be compatible, is a question which it might take too long a time to decide.
Therefore, be it sufficient here to say, that Ormond, without staying to examine it, was charmed with the present effect; with the gaiety, the wit, the politeness, the ease, and altogether with that indescribable thing, that untranslatable esprit de société. He could not afterwards remember any thing very striking or very solid that had been said, but all was agreeable at the moment, and there was great variety. Ormond’s self-love was, he knew not how, flattered. Without effort, it seemed to be the object of every body to make Paris agreeable to him; and they convinced him that he would find it the most charming place in the world—without any disparagement to his own country, to which all solid honours and advantages were left undisputed. The ladies, whom he had thought so little captivating at first view, at the theatre, were all charming on farther acquaintance: so full of vivacity, and something so flattering in their manner, that it put a stranger at once at his ease. Towards the end of the supper he found himself talking to two very pretty women at once, with good effect, and thinking at the same time of Dora and the Comte de Belle Chasse. Moreover, he thought he saw that Dora was doing the same between the irresistible Comte, and the Marquis, plein d’esprit, from whom, while she was listening and talking without intermission, her eyes occasionally strayed, and once or twice met those of Ormond.
“Is it indiscreet to ask you whether you passed your evening agreeably?” said M. de Connal, when the company had retired.
“Delightfully!” said Ormond: “the most agreeable evening I ever passed in my life!”
Then fearing that he had spoken with too much enthusiasm, and that the husband might observe that his eyes, as he spoke, involuntarily turned towards Madame de Connal, he moderated (he might have saved himself the trouble), he moderated his expression by adding, that as far as he could yet judge, he thought French society very agreeable.
“You have seen nothing yet—you are right not to judge hastily,” said Connal; “but so far, I am glad you are tolerably well satisfied.”
“Ah! oui, Monsieur Ormond,” cried Mademoiselle, joining them, “we shall fix you at Paris, I expect.”
“You hope, I suppose you mean, my dear aunt,” said Dora, with such flattering hope in her voice, and in the expression of her countenance, that Ormond decided that he “certainly intended to spend the winter at Paris.”
Connal, satisfied with this certainty, would have let Ormond go. But Mademoiselle had many compliments to make him and herself upon his pronunciation, and his fluency in speaking the French language—really like a Frenchman himself—the Marquis de Beaulieu had said to her: she was sure M. d’Ormond could not fail to succeed in Paris with that perfection added to all his other advantages. It was the greatest of all the advantages in the world—the greatest advantage in the universe, she was going on to say, but M. de Connal finished the flattery better.