You enjoy Paris?
Greatly improved under the Emperor.

'Apropos,' Madame Gandrin receives tomorrow evening; allow me that opportunity to present you to her." Unprepared for the proffered hospitality, the Marquis had no option but to murmur his gratification and assent.
In a minute more he was in the streets.

The next evening he went to Madame Gandrin's,--a brilliant reception,--a whole moving flower-bed of "decorations" there.

Having gone through the ceremony of presentation to Madame Gandrin,--a handsome woman dressed to perfection, and conversing with the secretary to an embassy,--the young noble ensconced himself in an obscure and quiet corner, observing all and imagining that he escaped observation.

And as the young men of his own years glided by him, or as their talk reached his ears, he became aware that from top to toe, within and without, he was old-fashioned, obsolete, not of his race, not of his day.