"I thought you had a noble soul,"--the words still rang in his ears.
"A year ago," he said to himself, "she thought me a hero who could
fight the Russians single-handed!"
He thought of leaving the hotel Laginski, and taking service with the
spahis and getting killed in Africa, but the same great fear checked
him. "Without me," he thought, "what would become of them? they would
soon be ruined. Poor countess! what a horrible life it would be for
her if she were reduced to even thirty thousand francs a year. No,
since all is lost for me in this world,--courage! I will keep on as I
am."
Every one knows that since 1830 the carnival in Paris has undergone a
transformation which has made it European, and far more burlesque and
otherwise lively than the late Carnival of Venice. Is it that the
diminishing fortunes of the present time have led Parisians to invent
a way of amusing themselves collectively, as for instance at their
clubs, where they hold salons without hostesses and without manners,
but very cheaply? However this may be, the month of March was prodigal
of balls, at which dancing, joking, coarse fun, excitement, grotesque
figures, and the sharp satire of Parisian wit, produced extravagant
effects. These carnival follies had their special Pandemonium in the
rue Saint-Honore and their Napoleon in Musard, a small man born
expressly to lead an orchestra as noisy as the disorderly audience,
and to set the time for the galop, that witches' dance, which was one
of Auber's triumphs, for it did not really take form or poesy till the
grand galop in "Gustave" was given to the world.
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