Unfailingly every lady who entered, in all the splendour of her ball dress, stopped a moment at the threshold of the hall of the Palace Hotel, to give a glance at the hall, which is divided into two or three parts, curiously divided and united, where the fortunate inhabitants of this Olympus of the Engadine were standing, sitting, or walking about in pairs or groups. And by the lady's rapid and indicative glance, which embraced the spectacle, she was at once recognised as initiated or profane. The initiated was the lady of other hotels of the Bad or Dorf who, by her rank and habits, was constantly in touch with the Olympus of the "Palace," who often came there to dinner and took part in all the balls; she was the great lady living in a sumptuous private villa with her family, retinue, and carriages, and hence she was not only initiated, but was a goddess of an Olympus more Olympian than the "Palace," if it is possible to imagine it. The initiated halted a moment to look, at the threshold of the hall, merely to search with her eye for an especial friend; and she, if there, would come towards her with a rustling of silk, with a shining of sequins and diamonds, and would take the initiated away with her to a corner at the back to chat, as they waited for the ball. But in the glance of the profane, at the threshold of the sacred vestibule, which they had seldom crossed in the daytime or never, and who were certainly crossing it for the first time at night, everything was to be seen: uncertainty, curiosity, vanity, humility, embarrassment, fastidiousness, and perhaps even a slight feeling of pain. The more vainly audacious of the profane adored and hated the "Palace" from afar, and they were dying to go there to mix with those Olympian surroundings, yet none of them ever succeeded in being invited there; so they pretended not to mind and spoke badly of the "Palace," though they would have walked on their knees to enter and remain there on one or all of the guest nights. Other profane were anxious to gain an intimate knowledge of an atmosphere famous for its refined luxury, for its exquisite pleasures, for a sense of exclusiveness, and secretly tormented by curiosity and desires beyond their station, had eagerly waited the chance of living there for one evening only, even as intruders. Some other profane living at St. Moritz apart from great festivities, meetings, and amusements, wishing for one night to show the rich dress they had never put on, and the hair tiring they had never tried, wishing for one evening not to be bored, had firmly believed in satisfying this complex desire of theirs by passing an enchanting evening at the "Palace." And since for twenty francs one could reach this lofty, closed Olympus, since for only twenty francs one could enter this terrestrial paradise, all the profane—the vain, the covetous, the dreamers, the curious, the bored—had been preparing themselves for a week for this supreme approach, had been agitated about their dress, their hair tire, their cloak, their carriage, and their escort. In appearance they were happily agitated, but secretly they were preoccupied about cutting a poor figure in some way, and they pretended ease, distraction, simplicity, as if from time immemorial they had been frequenters of the "Palace." But the moment they penetrated the first vestibule of the temple dedicated to the god "Snob," in that temple which seemed to bear written, in its shining lights, in the superb wealth spread around, in the powerful luxury of its atmosphere and its people, the prophetic and violent motto of an ardent and feverish society: "EVVIVA LA VITA!"
When these profane, these intruders, entered there, all their emotion, all their fervour, in the long glance, changed into doubt, regret, and pain, and they would almost have turned back, as if they felt themselves profane, more than ever and eternally profane. However, hesitation, contrition, and pain were but for a moment: with the deep, civil courage of which women give a hundred proofs every day, of which no one is aware, though often it reaches to heroism; with an act of resolution and valour, with feigned indifference and ingenuousness, the profane entered and advanced, as if they were initiated. No one came forward to meet them; they knew not where to direct themselves, whether to right or left or to the rear; but followed resolutely by their husbands and brothers, they went and sat down in some place, fanning themselves or playing with their shawls, tranquil in appearance, as if they were of the house, as if they had lived for years at the "Palace."
Soon the profane were in every corner; and if their number increased, their worldly condition at that festival was not bettered. No one knew them there, they knew no one—they remained isolated. After chatting a little with a husband or brother or son who accompanied them, appearing to smile and joke, to be interested and amused, they became silent and discouraged. They watched with badly concealed anxiety the elegant crowd that surrounded them, that was seated or grouped together or divided, as it greeted each other or chatted livelily; the poor profane watched to discover a face they knew of man or woman, to exchange, if not a word, a greeting, a smile, a nod with a human being of that crowd, and, disconsolate, finding none, they lowered their eyes upon the figures of their Louis XVI fans. Still more deeply irritated were the profane who by chance knew someone at the "Palace." The loud, presumptuous, very wealthy Frau Mentzel came from the Stahlbad, and as she held a privileged court there, she had succeeded sometimes, merely by chance, in having at her luncheons, her go?ters, and her dinners some gentleman of the "Palace" itself, or some initiated of the "Badrutt," of the Grand Hotel, the Chateau, the villas, on days in which one of these gentlemen had absolutely nothing better to do; this Frau Mentzel was absolutely scandalised because among the three or four of those she knew one had greeted her, saying two words, and had turned on his heels; another had merely bowed to her without speaking; another had not seen her; and the last had openly pretended not to have seen her. Covered with jewels, in a sumptuous Parisian toilette, with an enormous feather in her hair, she did nothing but grind her teeth, chewing curses against the four lacheurs, while her husband and her two cavalieri serventi, two colourless and humble parasites, listened terrified and silent, as they bowed their heads servilely.
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?
A curious, most curious, yet alluring spectacle! Not one of the ladies of the "Palace" or of the initiated resembled each other; not one was dressed alike; there was not one whose jewels resembled another's; not one whose beauty was equal to another's; not one whose ugliness was similar to another's ugliness. All were truly Olympian, by an almost mysterious sign that made them seem of one race and caste, of but one country and family. But beyond this indefinite sign, each preserved a personal character in face, dress, features, and gestures. And all these women seemed to be detached from a background even more phantasmagorial, of exquisite French women, who caused the flowing lines of their Parisian dresses to undulate gently from their hips, amidst light lace and soft silk, purposely brought from the great ateliers of the Rue de la Paix for balls at the "Palace"—le Palace, ma chère, vous pensez—detached from a background of Austrian ladies, with rich and graceful dresses, certainly beautiful, but rather more pleasing than beautiful; separated by a background of Egyptians, Greeks, Roumanians, Argentines, Spaniards, who owed it to their immense fortunes, their natural, humble sweetness of temperament, that they were enabled to be introduced and placed in the Olympus of the "Palace"; detached from a background of Italian women, majestic and grave, or pretty and witty—each figure, amidst those more prominent and those more in the shade, with her own character and own life forming a curious, singular, and alluring spectacle. The profane intruders, with dazzled eyes and bewildered glance, went from one to another of these feminine figures and now and then, tired of wondering, they lowered their glance, a little pale, before a world of such varied appearances, multiform and dissimilar, a world from which every moment they felt themselves separated for ever: they raised their eyes, ever less anxiously, ever more fatigued, for some new, wondrous apparition.
At last, amidst the murmurs of the whole crowd, appeared, late as usual, the famous Miss Miriam Jenkyns, a divine girl—ah, elle est vraiment divine, ma chère—with whom already ten to thirty celebrated personages were in love, and numerous unknown personages. Amongst the illustrious were an hereditary prince of a powerful empire, an Indian Maharajah, a grandee of Spain, a celebrated scientist, a renowned painter and father of sons; but Miss Jenkyns loved none of them, and instead, contented herself with her unrestrained desire of conquest, being now a Europeanised American girl, full of the deepest scepticism. Nevertheless, as she came from Pontresina she appeared one of the last, desired and invoked especially by those who had never seen her. She appeared in a wilful simplicity, dressed in a tunic of white wool, like the "Primavera" of Sandro Botticelli, adorned with a branch of flowers which crossed the skirt right to its hem, with hair knotted a little loosely as in the picture of the great Tuscan, and covered with loose flowers, with a white tulle shawl, like a cloud, on her shoulders and arms. Her natural beauty had been recomposed and transformed by her according to the purest pre-Raphaelite type, and it was very difficult to discover the subtle and minute art of the recomposition and transformation. There was another great murmuring, one of the last, when the Princess of Leiningen entered, an Armenian who, in the strangest circumstances, had married a German mediatised prince, a military prince, whose appearances were rare. Not very tall of stature, in fact rather small, but moulded to perfection, with little hands and feet, the Princess of Leiningen comprised within herself the poetic legends of Armenian beauty. Beneath a mass of black, shining hair, her forehead was white and short, her two immense black eyes were shining like jewels; she had a pure, oval face, very white, on which the long eyelashes cast a slight shadow, touched up by the inevitable but pretty maquillage of Eastern women, with rather a crimson rouge on the cheeks and the lobes of the ears, a slightly violet shade beneath the eyes, some black, the better to arch the subtle eyebrows, and a little of the rather crimson rouge on the lips. She was dressed completely in black, and since she was so white she seemed to rise from a background of shadow; an immense hat of black tulle strangely framed her white face and splendid eyes. She always wore an immense hat, black or white, even with her décolleté dresses, and she never danced. She crossed the room with her light little feet, shod in white satin, without looking at anyone—a dream creature, unreal as one of Edgar Allan Poe's characters, unreal as a vision in an hallucination. She remained at the back of the salon silent beneath the shadow of her black hat and black dress, completely white with her unreal countenance.
At this last strange appearance the profane felt their impressions to be founded and they settled themselves into two different parties. The one, proud and impertinent, like Frau Mentzel, openly hated the surroundings they had wished to penetrate and began to vent their anger and their humiliation, finding all the matrons and maids of the "Palace," who were unaware of their existence, ugly, awkward, indecent, shameless, venting their anger on their husbands and followers who, poor people, through cowardice agreed, though they were frightened at heart lest these vituperations should be heard, as they looked around them carefully in fear o............