"A pretty story," I commented. "I don't believe it. Do you?"
"Oh, what does it matter what I believe? You think I'm revolution-mad. The threat of war ended the strike, the end of the strike postponed the war. Vive la bagatelle!" He gripped my arm and his voice quickened and rose till our neighbours turned round and smiled in amused surprise. "George, I wonder if it was like this in the last days of the Ancien Régime—a year before the Revolution and six before Napoleon. Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen the first couple, the Court following in beautiful brocaded dresses, with patches and powdered hair, and blue and silver and rose-red coats, and lace cuffs and silk stockings and buckled shoes. Such manners! And such corruption of soul! Peaceful, secure, unheeding. And outside the Palace a line of gilt coaches. And running under the horses' heads for a glimpse of the clothes and jewels—the tiers état." He smiled ironically and shrugged his shoulders. "'En effet, ils sont des hommes.' Was it like this?"
"It was like this again ten years after the Revolution and ten days after Waterloo—when corruption ought to have been purged out of the world."
"But will nothing make these people see the tiers état at their door?"
"I saw them myself. What is one to do?"
"Mon dieu!"
"That's no answer, Raney," I said.
"The answer was given you nearly two thousand years ago."
A moment later we were bowing over the hand of Count Ristori. Then the queue behind us pressed forward, and we were separated. Several hours elapsed before we met again, though he was rarely out of my sight. Indeed, I followed his movements rather closely and made a discovery. Sonia gave me a dance, and when it was over we sat and watched the scene from two chairs by an open window. There was a formality and decorum about the ball that evidently rather irked her: and from her tone of somewhat pert disparagement I gathered that she did not know many of the people present.