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“Oh, my dear, good Leon,” said she in a coaxing tone, “I could not resist the happiness of seeing you without your seeing me. My aunt took me to this ball, and I was very happy there!”

This speech disarmed the Count’s looks of their assumed severity, for he had been blaming himself while dreading his wife’s return, no doubt fully informed at the ball of an infidelity he had hoped to hide from her; and, as is the way of lovers conscious of their guilt, he tried, by being the first to find fault, to escape her just anger. Happy in seeing her husband smile, and in finding him at this hour in a room whither of late he had come more rarely, the Countess looked at him so tenderly that she blushed and cast down her eyes. Her clemency enraptured Soulanges all the more, because this scene followed on the misery he had endured at the ball. He seized his wife’s hand and kissed it gratefully. Is not gratitude often a part of love?

“Hortense, what is that on your finger that has hurt my lip so much?” asked he, laughing.

“It is my diamond which you said you had lost, and which I have found.”

General Montcornet did not marry Madame de Vaudremont, in spite of the mutual understanding in which they had lived for a few minutes, for she was one of the victims of the terrible fire which sealed the fame of the ball given by the Austrian ambassador on the occasion of Napoleon’s marriage with the daughter of the Emperor Joseph II.

JULY, 1829.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bonaparte, Napoleon
The Vendetta
The Gondreville Mystery
Colonel Chabert
The Seamy Side of History
A Woman of Thirty

Gondreville, Malin, Comte de
The Gondreville Mystery
A Start in Life
The Member for Arcis

Keller, Francois
Cesar Birotteau
Eugenie Grandet
The Government Clerks
The Member for Arcis

Keller, Madame Francois
The Member for Arcis
The Thirteen

La Roche-Hugon, Martial de
The Peasantry
A Daughter of Eve
The Member for Arcis
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty

Montcornet, Marechal, Comte de
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Peasantry
A Man of Business
Cousin Betty

Murat, Joachim, Prince
The Vendetta
The Gondreville Mystery
Colonel Chabert
The Country Doctor

Soulanges, Comte Leon de
The Peasantry

Soulanges, Comtesse Hortense de
The Thirteen
The Peasantry