Marshal Prince Wissembourg and the Baron de Nucingen signed in behalf of the bride, the Comtes de Rastignac and Popinot in behalf of Steinbock.  Then, as the highest nobility among the Polish emigrants had been civil to Count Steinbock since he had become famous, the artist thought himself bound to invite them.  The State Council, and the War Office to which the Baron belonged, and the army, anxious to do honor to the Comte de Forzheim, were all represented by their magnates.  There were nearly two hundred indispensable invitations.  How natural, then, that little Madame Marneffe was bent on figuring in all her glory amid such an assembly.  The Baroness had, a month since, sold her diamonds to set up her daughter’s house, while keeping the finest for the trousseau.  The sale realized fifteen thousand francs, of which five thousand were sunk in Hortense’s clothes.  And what was ten thousand francs for the furniture of the young folks’ apartment, considering the demands of modern luxury?  However, young Monsieur and Madame Hulot, old Crevel, and the Comte de Forzheim made very handsome presents, for the old soldier had set aside a sum for the purchase of plate.  Thanks to these contributions, even an exacting Parisian would have been pleased with the rooms the young couple had taken in the Rue Saint-Dominique, near the Invalides.  Everything seemed in harmony with their love, pure, honest, and sincere.

At last the great day dawned—­for it was to be a great day not only for Wenceslas and Hortense, but for old Hulot too.  Madame Marneffe was to give a house-warming in her new apartment the day after becoming Hulot’s mistress en titre, and after the marriage of the lovers.

Who but has once in his life been a guest at a wedding-ball?  Every reader can refer to his reminiscences, and will probably smile as he calls up the images of all that company in their Sunday-best faces as well as their finest frippery.

If any social event can prove the influence of environment, is it not this?  In fact, the Sunday-best mood of some reacts so effectually on the rest that the men who are most accustomed to wearing full dress look just like those to whom the party is a high festival, unique in their life.  And think too of the serious old men to whom such things are so completely a matter of indifference, that they are wearing their everyday black coats; the long-married men, whose faces betray their sad experience of the life the young pair are but just entering on; and the lighter elements, present as carbonic-acid gas is in champagne; and the envious girls, the women absorbed in wondering if their dress is a success, the poor relations whose parsimonious “get-up” contrasts with that of the officials in uniform; and the greedy ones, thinking only of the supper; and the gamblers, thinking only of cards.

There are some of every sort, rich and poor, envious and envied, philosophers and dreamers, all grouped like the plants in a flower-bed round the rare, choice blossom, the bride.  A wedding-ball is an epitome of the world.