But the majority of the male guests belonged to what Louis Napoleon was afterwards to dub the “cream of fast and embarrassed Colonels,” and many of the women were of the dashing, dazzling, voluptuous type that de Musset had immortalized by a single word. The lionne of 1848 was ere long to be transformed into the cocodette of the Second Empire, and in the process was to lose the grace that is woman’s womanliest attribute, and shed the last feather of the angel’s wing.
Free from self-consciousness as he was, Dunoisse, with the taint of the blood shed upon the Boulevard des Capucines hot upon his memory, was not slow in awakening to the fact that the majority of the women present regarded him with peculiar interest; and that many of their male companions turned eyeglasses his way. Questions, answers, comments, dealing with the abhorrent subject came to his ears as he moved forwards, bruised like pelting hailstones, stabbed with hornet-stings.... Several of the ladies curtseyed ... some of the gentlemen bowed low; more than one feathered dowager styled him “Serene Highness” and “Monseigneur.”... And with a rush of angry blood to his temples and forehead, darkening still further his tawny-reddish skin, and adding to the brilliance of his black-diamond eyes, the young man realized that the fact of Paris being in the throes of Red Revolution had not deprived, in such eyes as these, the newspaper-mooted question of the Widinitz Succession of its vulgar charm. And that, on the strength of the hateful episode at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in combination with the intrigues of the Marshal, Sub-Adjutant Hector Dunoisse had become a personage to fawn upon and flatter, to invite and entertain.
The band of crape about his sleeve began to burn him. The now overcrowded drawing-rooms seemed suffocatingly hot. Madame de Roux had become the invisible, attractive nucleus of a crowd of civilian coats and blazing uniforms.... Dunoisse, alternately tempted by the thought of escape, teased by the desire to join that magic circle, was enduring the civilities of a group of ogling ladies and grinning exquisites with what outward patience he could muster, when he encountered, through a gap in the wall of heads and shoulders, the gaze of a pair of golden-bronze eagle eyes, glowing beneath a vast white forehead crowned with pale flowing locks of auburn hair.
For an instant he forgot his boredom, his desire to regain the side of Madame de Roux, or to escape from the perfumed, overheated rooms to the space and freedom of the Club, or the familiar loneliness of his rooms in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. He was grateful when a surge of the ever-thickening crowd of guests brought him within touch of the plainly-dressed, perfectly-mannered gentleman who was the elected chief and generalissimo of the Free Lances of Romance. But, as Dunoisse gained the Master’s side, the tall rounded shape of Madame de Roux swept by, leaning on the arm of a white-haired general officer in a brilliant Staff uniform ablaze with decorations. She never turned her face.... The night of her luxuriant tresses, the pale oval of her cheek, the dusky sweep of her eyelashes stamped themselves anew upon the young man’s consciousness, as her draperies, shimmering purplish gray as Oriental pearl through their veiling of black Spanish laces, swept across his feet. He felt once more that heavy knocking in the breast as though the curtain were going up upon the play.... And the scent of violets came to him with the breeze of her passing, strongly as though he stooped above the wet, dark, fragrant clusters in some woodland glade.... A knot of the purple blossoms had fallen from amongst her laces as she went by. They lay close to his foot. He stooped and picked them up with a hand that was not quite steady. And as he mechanically lifted the violets to his face, still looking after the swaying, smoothly-gliding figure, dwelling upon the beauty of a creamy nape upon which rested great coils of night-black hair, pierced with a diamond arrow, one heavy curl escaping, hiding in the delicate hollow between the rounded ivory shoulders, vanishing in the berthe of lace that framed their loveliness, he started, for Hugo spoke. The deep melodious voice said:
XXXIV
“It is the classic flower of Venus as well as the badge of Imperialism. And—he who receives it from so fair a hand and does not wear it must needs be very cold or greatly courageous.” He added, as Dunoisse’s brilliant black eyes met his own: “I wear no violets, you see. Yet had she offered them....”
He gave a whimsical, expressive shrug. Dunoisse found himself saying: