CHAPTER IV.
While the ensnared conspirators against the state were receiving sentence in one district of Paris, in another district the inhabitants were entertaining themselves.
Paris does not mourn very long.

Paris is like the earth: one half of it is always illumined by the sun.

On this fateful evening the incroyables and the merveilleuses were amusing themselves within the walls of the Palace of Narcissus.
The members of Cythera's Brigade took great pains to make outsiders believe that they never troubled themselves about that half of the world which was in shadow--that half called politics.
In the salon of the fascinating Countess Themire Dealba not a word was heard relating to affairs of state.

The beautiful women who were banded together to learn the secrets which threatened the present order of government worked in an imperceptible manner.

They did not belong to the ordinary class of spies--those who collect every ill-natured word, every trifling occurrence of the street.