The Duke was not very learned in Parisian society; but
still, with the aid of the Duchess de Berri and the Duchess de Duras,
Leontine Fay, and Lady Stuart de Rothesay, they got on, and made out the
time until Purgatory ceased and Paradise opened.
For Paradise it was, although there were there assembled some thirty or
forty persons not less dull than the majority of our dull race, and in
those little tactics that make society less burdensome perhaps even less
accomplished. But a sunbeam will make even the cloudiest day break into
smiles; a bounding fawn will banish monotony even from a wilderness; and
a glass of claret, or perchance some stronger grape, will convert even
the platitude of a goblet of water into a pleasing beverage, and so May
Dacre moved among her guests, shedding light, life, and pleasure.
She was not one who, shrouded in herself, leaves it to chance or fate
to amuse the beings whom she has herself assembled within her halls.
Nonchalance is the _metier_ of your modern hostess; and so long as
the house be not on fire, or the furniture not kicked, you may be
even ignorant who is the priestess of the hospitable fane in which you
worship.
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