Like Socrates, France was preparing for death by uttering witticisms and discussing law.

  Grandsailles brought a last glass of champagne to his lips and swallowed it stoically, as though it had been hemlock, while the oratorical fervour of his guests crystallized in the great bilious eloquence of recrudescent sarcasm as coffee was about to be served. Grandsailles lent a more and more absent ear to what was being said and, drowsy from eating, let himself relax in the absorbed contemplation of the thousand movements that the light of the candles, the gesticulations of the dinner-guests and the ceremonious comings and goings of the servants communicated to the impassive impartiality of the crystals and the silverware. As if hypnotized, the Count looked at the Lilliputian images of his guests reflected in the concavities and convexities of the silver pieces. He observed with fascination the figures and faces of his friends, the most familiar ones becoming unrecognizable, while reassuming by virtue of the fortuitous metamorphoses of their rapid deformations the most unsuspected relationships and the most striking resemblances with the vanished personalities of their ancestors, mercilessly caricatured in the polychrome images that adorned the bottoms of the plates in which the dessert had just been served.

  Thus in one of these reflections, fleeting daughters of the magic of chance, it was possible to see emerging from the outline of Béatrice de Brantès, vertically draped in a Lelong dress, the corseted and strangled figure of Marie Antoinette, or the infinitely more extended one of a hunted weasel, which the Queen hid in the depth of the destiny of her decapitated royal head. And in the same way the Viscount of Angerville’s rectilinear nose which aspired to Anglo-Saxon dandyism could suddenly swell into the pear-shape of the succulently Gallic nose of his grandfather, which in turn could recede until it became like that of a marmot, covered with hair and earth, lost in the infernal subsoil of its atavistic origins.

  Exactly as in the famous series of monstrous faces drawn by Leonardo, one could here observe each of the faces of the guests caught in the ferocious meshes of anamorphosis, twisting, curling, extending, lengthening and transforming their lips into snouts, stretching their jaws, compressing their skulls and flattening their noses to the farthest heraldic and totemic vestiges of their own animality. No one could escape this subtle and cruelly revealing inquisition of optical physics, which by the imperceptible torture of its constraint was able to snatch the avowal of degrading sneers and unavowable grimaces from appearances that were the most dignified and set in nobility. As if in an instantaneous demoniac flash one saw the dazzling teeth of a jackal in the divine face of an angel, and the stupid eye of a chimpanzee would gleam savagely in the serene face of the philosopher.

  Each reflection was a divination; for even better than in a gazer’s crystal, one can discover a natural son’s uncertain origin in the suavely deformed reflection of a face on the delicately curved back of a fork-handle.

  The congested epiderms of the concluding meal empurpled the candelabra. Each candelabrum was a sanguinary genealogical tree, each knife was a mirror of infidelity and each spoon an escutcheon of infamy.

  A stark naked young Silenus, masterfully chiselled in oxidized silver, was holding down a rough branch of the candelabrum, bringing the light very close as if in calling attention to the budding curves of Solange de Cléda’s breasts exposed above her décolleté. Here her skin was so fine and white that Grandsailles, looking at her, cautiously dipped his dessert spoon into the smooth surface of his cream cheese, taking only a small piece to taste it, snapping it adroitly with the agile tip of his tongue. The slightly salt and tart taste, evoking the animal femininity of the she-goat, went straight to his heart. With a faint but delightful anguish he continued to cut into the immaculate turgescence of his Homeric dish and as he finished his cheese he decided that the familial undulations of his silverware harmonized so well with Solange’s matt and oxidized pallor that the thought of marrying her sprang into his mind for the first time. Solange happened to catch the Count off guard in this moment of his equivocal concupiscence and, also for the first time, she made him a humble, almost slavish bow, while the moist slit of her lips half opened in a feverish smile imperceptibly tinged with pain, expressing the almost sensorial emotion of a violently physical pleasure.

  Grandsailles seized the knotty trunk of a candelabrum, which he lifted without effort in spite of its heavy weight, and brought it close to light his cigar without waiting for the match which the servant was about to offer him, indicating by this impatient and energetic movement that he had just made an important decision.

  With the coffee the conversations assumed the grave note of synthesis, for the fervour of the guests had by now somewhat cooled, and they looked back a little shamefacedly at the orgiastic ideological chaos of their opinions and were anxious to reach some common ground that might seem more or less like a conclusion. The Duke of Saintonges, especially, had assumed an insistent and superior tone which while remaining quite general was unmistakably aimed at the political indifference displayed by Grandsailles, who seemed to withdraw more and more into his shell as the meal was coming to an end.

  ‘Whether we wish it or not,’ Saintonges exclaimed, addressing himself now directly to the Count with almost a note of impertinence, ‘contemporary history is so dense and dramatic that each of us in his own sphere, even the most aloof, even without knowing it, is involved in what is happening, each of us already has a decisive card to play.’

  ‘Banco!’ Grandsailles exclaimed, abruptly letting the candlestick fall back on the table. An expectant silence suddenly held all conversation in suspense, and there was only the bustle of the servants’ imperturbable movements, which heightened the tension by its subdued and respectful little sounds. Without ceasing to gaze at Solange de Cléda, Grandsailles calmly took several puffs on his cigar. Having assured himself that it was well lit he remained silent for a moment; then, in a perfectly natural tone, but measuring his words, he said, ‘Saintonges is right, and it is precisely to announce my decision to you that I am giving this dinner.’

  The moment was so dramatically charged that it was with a kind of anguish and a sharper beating of all hearts that attention gathered more closely round Grandsailles.

  ‘I have been thinking it over for three days,’ the Count finally announced, ‘and I have decided to give a grand ball.’ A murmur of enthusiastic exclamations crowned the announcement with a flurry of unanimity and sympathetic warmth and in a moment, breaking all rules of etiquette, the women gathered in a cluster round the Count, besieging him with the grace of their blandishments.

  The Duke of Saintonges, who had barely had time to regret the incident, seized Grandsailles’ hand with his two effusive ones, sincerely grateful to him for having so skilfully turned aside a polemic which because of his ineptitude had nearly become dangerously personal.

  Solange de Cléda was deeply upset by the scene. For since the moment when she had made her curtsey to the Count, the latter had not averted his eyes from her for an instant. During this whole time, with her head slightly bent back and her eyes lowered, she had pretended to be listening attentively to Dick d’Angerville’s confidences, but in reality she had only been furtively watching, through the luminous rainbows that formed in the long lashes of her half-closed lids, the parsimonious ascension and the seductive movements of the candles, with which Grandsailles chose to light his cigar.

  Unaware of the conversations that had been going on around the Count, Solange did not understand what he meant when he exclaimed, ‘Banco!’ This word indeed reached her only through the hubbub of the general conversation, as a passionate appeal addressed to her, after which an unexpected abruptness in the Count’s gestures made her tremble. Without moving her head she merely opened her eyes a little further and then clearly saw that as the candlestick was heavily put back on the tablecloth, a profusion of large drops of wax were spattered at its feet.

  After a mortal silence the sound of Grandsailles’ voice seemed to her to possess an infinitely and inexplicably sweet languor, especially when he said, ‘… it is precisely to announce my decision to you that I am giving this dinner. I have been thinking….’

  Solange, who since the enigmatic word, ‘Banco’, felt as though she were living a waking dream, was quite aware of the ridiculousness of the mortal fear that beset her: she was afraid Grandsailles was publicly going to announce their engagement, which had never been discussed between them. Nevertheless, in spite of the absurdity of this conviction, her heart beat so tumultuously that she thought she would be unable to breathe, yes, she was sure of it! Graindsailles was going to speak about the two of them.

  But now how stupid, childish and delirious this all seemed! Disconcerted, mortified, and overcome by a kind of sudden complete disenchantment, she thought for a moment that she would be unable to go on for the rest of the evening. A warm drop of perspiration formed in each of her armpits and slowly flowed down the whole length of her bare sides, and these two drops were black because each of them reflected the black velvet arms of the chair she was sitting in. But she was so supernaturally beautiful that one might rather have thought that the wings of melancholy hovering near were now folding over her, darkening and transmuting this magnetizing and desirable physical secretion of her anguished flesh into two black pearls of precious grief.

  As everyone had got up from the table the Viscount of Angerville, who was standing behind Solange waiting to pull back her chair, placed his hand on her shoulder and whispered close to her ear, ‘Bonjour, tristesse!’

  Salonge quivered, tried to get up. But feeling dizzy, she was obliged to sit down for a moment on the black velvet arm of the chair, the end of which was ornamented by a sphinx’s head of carved bronze. She bowed her head against Dick d’Angerville’s chest and shut her eyes. The sphinx’s head felt so cold through the thin fabric of her dress that she thought she had sat down on something wet.

  The ‘Grandsailles ball’ was going to be her ball? She opened her eyes again, pressed her thighs together and, leaping up unexpectedly, whirled round several times in an impassioned waltz step. And as d’Angerville remained glued to the spot, registering only a faint astonishment through his incurably blasé air, Solange said, with a final whirl, ‘Bonjour, tristesse – Bonsoir, tristesse,’ tossed back a smile and ran up the stairs to the drawing-room.

  Monsieur Edouard Cordier, who was lingering over his armagnac and had been a witness to this scene, came over to the Viscount of Angerville.

  ‘My dear Vicomte, our epoch is slipping out of our hands, it’s getting beyond our comprehension – but I am resigned to it. At one moment we think our ladies are about to die of God knows what, right in our arms, and suddenly they revive and dance away, and it’s exactly the same in politics. Just now we were on the very verge of a fight, and we thought we were hearing the first clarions of civil war…. Well, it was merely the announcement of a ball. As a matter of fact one of the most deeply rooted notions of the human spirit, the sense of the right and the left, has been completely lost and scrambled by our contemporaries.’

  He glanced down with perplexed anxiety at each of his robust hands with their fingers outspread, and continued. ‘Do we know, today, which is our right hand and which is our left? No, my dear Vicomte, we have no idea! When I was a young man it was still possible to form an opinion about great events according to the ideology of the political party to which you belonged. But that is no longer possible today. You read a piece of sensational, vital, decisive news in the paper – well, you have no way of knowing whether it is good or bad before the specialists of your political party have pondered over it and decided it for you. Otherwise we would run the risk of making fools of ourselves and reaching exactly the same opinions as the newspapers of our worst political enemies the next day.’

  The Viscount of Angerville, who, while this peroration had lasted, had gradually drawn Monsieur Cordier toward the door to the foot of the stairs, said by way of conclusion, ‘In any case, if Grandsailles goes ahead with his ball we might as well dance at it. Is there anything better for us to do while we await developments?’

  The Grandsailles balls, since the beginning of the other post-war period, had all been brilliant moments in the history of Parisian life, and this refined society which now again filled the Count’s drawing-room instinctively felt that their rôle as a ruling class gained more reality and social meaning by their continuing to maintain the prestige of French elegance and wit than by wallowing in suicides and sterile political fumblings. So it was that this rallying of forces, this revival of the consciousness of its historic rôle, which the most cleverly calculated slogans of the ideological jargon of the moment had not been able to bring about, had been achieved by Grandsailles with his slogan, ‘a ball’.

  And through this single word, which kindled the deep essence of frivolity of their common tradition into a hot flame, the Count saw re-established around him that indestructible unity of the national ‘character’ which was to be that of the whole French people on the day when the tocsin of war should sound-so true was it, according to one of Grandsailles’ theories, that wars are rather a question of character than of ideology, and that the historic constants of great invasions often only mask the geo-political frivolities of nations.

  After this Socratic dinner, in the course of which no one had attempted to shut his eyes to the fate of his country, the plan for the great ball now began in the Count’s drawing-room to be illuminated by all the fires, the fiery crosses, the hooked crosses, the fleurs-de-lis and the hammers and sickles which had caused the Place de la Concorde to swim in blood the evening before.

  Grandsailles who, contrary to his usual habits, had announced his long-caressed plan for the ball on the spur of the moment, was surprised at his success, and immediately gave up the idea of the tête-à-tête with Solange de Cléda so carefully worked out with the aid of his notebook – that tête-à-tête which, also against his habits, he had had the indolence not to prepare, and which would have committed him to psychological ineptitudes which he would never have forgiven himself.

  He accordingly decided to exploit the opposite of that affectionate and attentive tête-à-tête which he had looked forward to for weeks, and to pretend to ignore and to neglect Solange’s presence for the rest of the evening. This distant attitude, following upon the admiring glances he had bestowed on her at the conclusion of the dinner, could not fail to create a desirable disturbance in this woman whom he had just now had the ephemeral idea of marrying.

  The almost turbulent manner in which Solange had been behaving since they had left the dinner-table gave Grandsailles additional reasons for treating her acidly as a too noisy and inexperienced child whom only her undeniable charm and the radiance of her beauty rendered indispensable for filling the gaps in the decorative atmosphere of his salon, in which if it was true that there were never lacking sensational specimens of the rarest and smartest femininity, it was also true that the prestige of birth, joined to the even more rigorous distinction of intelligence, constituted the dominant note.

  Spurred to audacity by the vague presentiment of her impending triumph in the ‘Grandsailles ball’, Solange de Cléda heroically accepted the rôle which the Count had just assigned her – accepted it with such disconcerting malice and charm that Grandsailles immediately felt his evil intentions had been unmasked. In a kind of continual dance, she progressed from one flower display to another while the guests looked on with amusement, forming adornments for her hair, each more captivating than the last, with the blossoms which she plucked, then pitilessly tore off and tossed away. According to the inspiration of the moment Solange would accompany each of her improvised effects with the pantomime and the interpretive language of the flowers she was dramatizing. Each new parody received an acclamation and Grandsailles himself, hypocritically overcoming his reticence, began to pretend to be touched by the pastoral poetry of her play.

  Now Solange gathered some long trailers of star-shaped ivy-leaves which she fastened together and draped over her head, letting them droop behind her ears down to the floor. Then she made little holes in two ivy leaves which she held over her eyes like a mask. Everyone applauded this new transformation, that would have graced the purest fairy-tale, and a fresh silence awaited the scene that Solange would enact on the theme of the ivy.

  She tripped forward quickly on tiptoe, and stood for a moment motionless, all quivering, before the Count of Grandsailles. Falling suddenly at his knees she delicately but firmly wound her arms around them, and in a suppliant and pathetic voice, with a barely perceptible barb of irony that stung the Count, she feebly declaimed, ‘I must cling, or I die!’

  There was no more talk of the ball. Bérard, the painter, his beard trimmed à la Courbet, was sitting on the floor with both his elbows resting on the Duchess of Saintonge’s knees and was making everyone turn to admire Solange, who had run to the far end of the drawing-room where Dick d’Angerville helped her remove her leaf-ornaments, by a large malachite table where the flowers she had been using for her acts lay scattered.

  Solange was immediately surrounded and the drawing-room became divided into two groups, the one gathered round Grandsailles, and the other in which Madame de Cléda reigned. Presently exclamations of astonishment and delight rose among the latter’s admirers. She had just invented a new game. With the three diamonds of her earring that were mounted on the ends of three trembling stems, she had composed a flower of surprising effect by taking a mauve-tinged lily and substituting the three diamonds for the real pistils. Immediately all the women stripped off their jewelry, strewing the table with a new disorder of precious stones which with their intact fires seemed to arouse the dulled and faded fires of the flowers.