Mr. Simpson, a little slow to take this in, replied that he would take verbena, whereupon M. de Saffré gave him the marquise: “Here is your verbena.”

The guests applauded discreetly. M. de Saffré had solved the problem quite nicely, they judged. As a cotillion leader he was “never at a loss,” as the ladies put it. Meanwhile, the orchestra had struck up the melody again with all instruments, and Mr. Simpson, after waltzing around the room with Mme d’Espanet, led her back to her place.

Renée was now able to pass. At the sight of “all this nonsense” she had bitten her lips until they bled. How stupid these men and women were with their tossing of scarves and naming themselves after flowers. There was a buzzing in her ears, and, furious with impatience, she felt like putting her head down and bulling her way through the crowd. She rapidly made her way across the drawing room, bumping into couples slow to regain their seats, and headed straight for the conservatory. Not having seen Louise or Maxime among the dancers, she told herself that they must be there, in some gap in the foliage, joined by that instinct for humor and ribaldry that led them to look for out-of-the-way places whenever they were together. But a visit to the gloomy conservatory turned up nothing. All she saw was a tall young man in the back of one of the arbors devoutly kissing the hands of little Mme Daste while whispering, “Mme de Lauwerens was right: you are an angel.”

This declaration, in her own house, her own conservatory, shocked her. Mme de Lauwerens really ought to transact her business elsewhere. Renée would have felt relieved if she could have driven all these loud people out of her house. Standing in front of the pool, she looked at the water and asked herself where Louise and Maxime might have gone to hide. The orchestra was still playing the same waltz, whose slow, swaying melody turned her stomach. It was unbearable not to be able to think in one’s own house. She couldn’t think. Forgetting that the young couple weren’t yet married, she decided that the answer really had to be quite simple: they had gone to bed. Then she thought of the dining room and ran hastily back up the stairs to the house. At the door of the large drawing room, however, her path was again blocked by yet another of the cotillion figures.

“This one is called ‘Dark Spots,’ ladies,” M. de Saffré announced in a flirtatious voice. “It’s my own invention, and you’re the first to hear of it.”

There was much laughter. The men explained the allusion to the ladies. The Emperor had just given a speech in which he had noted the presence of certain “dark spots” on the political horizon. For some reason, the phrase “dark spots” had caught on. All the wits of Paris had latched onto it, and for the past week “dark spots” had turned up everywhere. M. de Saffré placed the men at one end of the drawing room and had them turn their backs on the women at the other end. Then he ordered them to pull up their coats so as to hide the backs of their heads. Wild hilarity accompanied this maneuver. Hunchbacked, shoulders scrunched, their coattails up to their waists, the gentlemen looked truly hideous.

“Don’t laugh, ladies,” M. de Saffré shouted in a serious voice that could not have been more comical, “or I’ll make you lift your lace over your heads.”

The gaiety increased. The leader enthusiastically asserted his sovereign authority over several gentlemen who had declined to hide the backs of their necks.

“You are ‘dark spots,’ ” he said. “Cover your heads, show nothing but your backs. The ladies mustn’t see anything but black. . . . Now, move around, mix yourselves up so you can’t be recognized.”

The hilarity was at its height. The “dark spots” teetered to and fro on skinny legs like headless crows. One gentleman’s shirt showed, along with a bit of suspenders. Then the women begged for mercy: they were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe, so M. de Saffré took pity on them and ordered them each to go over and pick out a “dark spot.” They took off like a covey of young partridges, with much rustling of skirts. Then, at the end of their run, each woman grabbed the man closest to her. The chaos was indescribable. One by one, the impromptu couples split off from the group and danced around the salon as the orchestra played even louder than before.

Renée leaned against the wall. She watched, looking pale, her lips pursed. An elderly gentleman gallantly approached her and asked why she wasn’t dancing. She was obliged to smile and offer some sort of response. Then she fled into the dining room. The room looked empty, but there, among the pillaged sideboards and abandoned dishes and bottles, were Maxime and Louise, dining quietly at one end of the table, side by side, on a napkin they had spread out between them. They seemed relaxed, laughing amid the chaos of dirty glasses, greasy plates, and warm leftovers overlooked by the gluttonous guests in white gloves. The young couple had simply brushed aside the crumbs. Baptiste moved gravely down the length of the table, ignoring the room, which seemed to have been overrun by a pack of wolves. He was waiting for the servants to come tidy up the sideboards.

Maxime had nevertheless managed to put together a very adequate supper. Louise loved nougat with pistachios, a plateful of which had been left on a sideboard. In front of the pair were three partially drunk bottles of champagne.

“Papa may have left,” said the young woman.

“Let’s hope so,” answered Maxime. “I’ll see you home.”

And when she laughed, he continued: “You know, they’ve made up their minds that I am to marry you. It’s not a joke anymore, it’s serious. . . . So what will we do when we’re married?”

“We’ll do what everybody else does, of course!”

This jest had escaped her rather quickly. As if to withdraw it, she hastily added, “We’ll go to Italy. It will be good for my lungs. I’m very sick. . . . Oh, my poor Maxime, what a strange wife you’re going to have! I weigh about as much as two sous’ worth of butter.”

She smiled with a touch of sadness in her pageboy costume. A dry cough turned her cheeks a glowing red.

“It’s the nougat,” she said. “At home I’m not allowed to eat it. . . . Pass me the plate. I’m going to stick the rest of it in my pocket.”

And she was emptying the plate when Renée walked in. She went straight over to Maxime, making an extraordinary effort not to swear, not to thrash the little hunchback who was sitting there next to her lover.

“I want to speak to you,” she stammered in a hollow voice.

He hesitated, in the grip of fear, dreading being alone with her.

“To you alone, right away,” Renée repeated.

“Why don’t you go, Maxime?” said Louise with an inscrutable look. “And while you’re at it, try to find my father. I lose him at every party.”

He got up and tried to stop Renée in the middle of the dining room by asking her what she had to say to him that was so urgent. But she muttered between her teeth: “Follow me, or I’ll tell all in front of everyone.”

He turned white and followed along behind her as docilely as a beaten animal. She suspected that Baptiste was staring at them, but just then she couldn’t have cared less about the butler’s piercing eyes. At the door, the cotillion delayed her for the third time.

“Wait,” she muttered. “Will these imbeciles ever be done?”

And she took him by the hand so that he would not try to escape.

M. de Saffré placed the duc de Rozan with his back to the wall in a corner of the drawing room, next to the dining room door. Then he placed a lady in front of him and, after that, a gentleman back-to-back with the lady, followed by another lady in front of the gentleman and so on, couple by couple, in a long serpent. But the dancers went on talking, dawdling instead of taking their places, so he shouted, “Now, ladies, everyone in position for ‘The Columns.’ ”