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Updated: May 9, 2025
Commonly it was thronged with waltzers, and the scene on gala nights, when all the lamps were aflame, and the music drowned out by the thunder of the dance, was a compromise between Paradise and Pandemonium.
After supper, while the most determined of the waltzers were still spinning round to a brisk deux temps of Charles d'Albert's, Clarissa was fain to tell the last of her partners she could dance no more. "I am not tired of the ball," she said; "I like looking on, but I really can't dance another step. Do go and get some one else for this waltz; I know you are dying to dance it."
He was older and stouter than his brother-in-arms, Henri de Prerolles, and a wound he had received at Plevna slightly impeded his movements, so that he was unable to display the same activity in the dance as the other waltzers, and contented himself with moving a 'trois temps', in an evolution less in harmony with the brilliancy of the music.
What a figure he cuts there, sitting in solitary state upon his glass tripod, in the middle of a crowd of excited fellow-beings, hurried to and fro by their passions and sympathies, like an awkward country-bumpkin caught in the midst of a gay crowd of polkers and waltzers at a ball, or an oyster bedded on a rock, with silver fishes playing rapid games of hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above and beneath!
One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and that she would get through it very well. They began slowly, then went more rapidly.
Everybody came and looked, and the circle around the waltzers was three or four deep. Between the surrounding heads and shoulders, the hats of the young ladies wheeling and whirling, and the faces of the men who were wheeling and whirling them, rose and sank with the rhythm of their steps.
"True; Fire has often preceded Death as his agent," assented Sybil. "Say rather, that Death has often followed Fire as her servant." "Enough of this. We seem to be well paired, at least. Let us get up and walk." Death bowed and offered his arm, and Fire arose and took it. And they walked around the room, keeping outside the circle of the waltzers and near the seats by the walls.
Everybody came and looked, and the circle around the waltzers was three or four deep. Between the surrounding heads and shoulders, the hats of the young ladies wheeling and whirling, and the faces of the men who were wheeling and whirling them, rose and sank with the rhythm of their steps.
'He's a good speaker, says th' Iaway man. 'He is that, says Hinnissy; 'an' he was wan iv th' best waltzers that flung a foot at th' County Dimocracy picnic, he says. 'But will he make a good fight? says th' man. 'Will he? says Hinnissy. 'Will he make a good fight? he says. 'Dooley, he says, 'this here Dimmycrat wants to know if Bill 'll make a good fight.
Highmindedness, of course, told her to move away; something else held her fast, till her partner came up for her. Then she floated away into the whirlwind of waltzers. But as she moved round the room on her partners arm, her delicate half-scornful grace attracting look after look, the soul within was all aflame aflame against the serried ranks and phalanxes of this unfamiliar, hostile world!
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