As for Donna Mercédès de Fuentes, profane of the profane, who looked very beautiful in a white satin dress trimmed with silver, who was always beautiful, in spite of too much rouge, bistre, and pearl powder, with which she spoiled her brown, Spanish face, she had seen three or four faces pass before her; and among them her Italian friend, Don Giorgio Galanti. Every time the perfidious Italian gave his arm to a different lady and only once had he directed at Donna Mercédès a greeting and a distinctly cold smile. And she had hoped to be led round in triumph by him through the _salons_ of the "Palace"; she had dared to hope to dance the _cotillon_ with him. Deluded and deeply snubbed, she had not even the strength to quarrel in Spanish with her poor husband; her beautiful black eyes, which were too much underlined with bistre, filled with tears.
As if they wished to show even more markedly the distance that separated them from the profane, matrons and maids and gentlemen of all ages treated each other with such domesticity, with such familiarity, that they seemed to be the closest relations, the most intimate and inseparable friends. The women particularly _tutoied_ each other; many men and women called each other by name. French diminutives and English endearments were to be heard and strange nicknames. One greeted Fanchette, another excused the absence of Bob, one gave news of Dorine, another asked after Gladys or spoke of Bibi's illness. In that society it seemed as if no one any longer had a surname or title; all seemed brothers, cousins, husbands, lovers of one race and caste, of a single country and house. Whatever did the wretched, profane intruders know about those names, endearments, and nicknames, whoever they were, wherever they came from, whatever they did; if Bibi were a man or woman, or if Gladys were young or old? However could the profane intruders understand those conversations in French, English, or German, conversations which seemed to be carried on in a special and incomprehensible, aristocratic jargon, full of sub-understandings, references to people unknown to them, allusions to events they knew nothing of; however could they understand that chaff full of completely conventional wit, whose formula escaped them? What could they see in the malicious smiles, in the little sceptical bursts of laughter? What could they grasp of the subdued, half-uttered phrases said with a sneer--a regular cryptic language, let us say? How could they imagine from a word thrown into the ear an assignment, a refusal, a consent, a warning, a malignity, a trouble, a scandal especially; words underlined by a fleeting but expressive glance, by a rapid but suggestive squeeze of the hand? Ought not the profane intruders to be astonished, stupefied, almost oppressed by all this, while the curious, alluring spectacle was augmenting their wonderment and secret pain?