Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III TWO BALLS AT THE HOTEL DE VILLE. Under the Second Empire the balls at the Hotel de Ville counted amongst the bright festivities of Europe. Sovereigns, society, the many foreigners in Paris, the upper employes of the Municipality, and le haul commerce met at them ; they were admirably done; the great gallery was magnificent; everybody who possessed a uniform wore it; the show was very brilliant, and, notwithstanding the extreme variety of guests, scarcely anybody looked ugly. Nowhere could there be found a more interesting exhibition of intermingled classes, more creditable manners on the part of the unaccustomed portions of the invited, more cordial acceptance of momentary mixture on the part of the rest. Those balls supplied special occasions for contemplating groupings of very diversified socialcategories and of very various nationalities, all in their best clothes. There was no political character about them, nor did they present any popular peculiarities in the ordinary meaning of the word ; but they were as royal, aristocratic, and international as they were commercial, bureaucratic, and French. Nearly all the monarchs and princes of the time—and their wives and daughters too — showed themselves successively in that gallery, and every land was represented in it by notable men and women. The ball of 22d August 1855, at which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were present, may fairly be taken as a typical example. It was not different from the others, but it was as good as any of them, and it presented, in their fullest degree, all the special characteristics of the gatherings at the Hotel de Ville. I do not remember with any exactness what happened at it, for each fete was so like the others that they have run into a confused blend in my recollection ; but ...