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Updated: June 1, 2025
Claire ventured to say. "That is out of the question," replied the marchioness pitilessly. "The embassy would have informed us. You may be sure he is in perfect health, and that he led the cotillon all last winter in the ball-rooms of St. Petersburg."
Stately ball-rooms, where beauty once reigned, are cold and empty and mildewed, and halls, where laughter rang, are silent. Time was when every wide-throated chimney poured forth its cloud of smoke, when every andiron held a generous log, andirons which are now gone to decorate Mr. Centennial's home in New York or lie with a tag in the window of some curio shop.
I don't wonder you find it "hard to toe the mark", when books, pictures, ball-rooms, theatres, and streets offer temptations; yet you can resist, if you try.
And so the second season passed. Sir Lemuel Levison took his daughter to Scotland, and invited a large company to stay with them at Lone, thinking that, after all, more matches were made in the close daily intercourse of a country house, than in the crowded ball-rooms of a London season.
Nor are they entirely insensible to the good opinion of great people; for when they learnt that the Polka was thought vulgar at Buckingham Palace, they had serious intentions of denying it admittance into the ball-rooms of Perth; and I sincerely believe it would speedily have pined away and died, like a maiden under the breath of slander, but for a confidently entertained hope that her Majesty would never hear of the offences of the people of Perth and people will do all kinds of things when they can do them secretly.
And Hester made a little poem on it, beginning, "There was a mouse in Portman Square"; And then, after both girls had danced through one London season in different ball-rooms, Rachel's parents died, her mother first, and then by accident her father, leaving behind him an avalanche of unsuspected money difficulties, in which even his vast fortune was engulfed. Hard years followed for Rachel.
In New York, in Boston, in Philadelphia, ladies of seventy won't be old ladies any more; they're unwilling to wear their years avowedly, in quiet dignity by their firesides; they bare their bosoms and gallop egregiously to the ball-rooms of the young; and so we lose a particular graciousness that Kings Port retains, a perspective of generations.
The Cotillon is rarely seen in English ball-rooms, but on the Continent, especially in Italy, it is a great favourite. It occupies a somewhat similar position to our own Sir Roger de Coverley, being generally the concluding dance of the evening, in which every one joins. It can be prolonged at pleasure by the introduction of more figures, for it has no definite beginning or end.
Enough has been told to show the graceful, coquettish character of the dance, which adapts itself admirably to the Italian nature, and is as much beloved by them as the Valse by the Germans or the Cachucha by the dark-eyed maidens of Spain. We should rejoice to see this charming stranger naturalised in English ball-rooms.
Paris public ball-rooms, cafés, the models in the studio and the young girls painting, and Marshall, Alice, and Julien. Marshall! my thoughts pointed at him through the intervening streets and the endless procession of people coming and going. "M. Marshall, is he at home?" "M. Marshall left here some months ago." "Do you know his address?" "I'll ask my husband."
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