The 7Tmes' correspondent takes the trouble to telegraph three- fourths
of a column describing a ball at the Elyse°, which, how- ever, has a certain significance of its own. The invitations, though strict, were numerous, and so stern were the police regu- lations, the Government being a Marshalate, that the carriages were hours in setting down the guests, and hundreds of ladies, tired of waiting, ran in satin shoes and bare shoulders through the half-frozen slush and amid the jeers of the gamins to reach the marquee at the entrance, where their tickets were closely scrutinised, and they detained, sometimes for hours, for while only ten were allowed to pass in a minute, the rate of arrival was sixty in the same time. Many left, but it took hours to reach the carriages, and many more never entered the reception-rooms at all, while the majority pro- bably caught cold. The idea evidently Was to unite exclusiveness and military discipline, and the result was a scene which, if Paris were not in a state of siege, would fill the print-shops with ridi- cule more hard to survive than a defeat. Paris, apparently he exchange for liberty, has not yet got a satisfactory Court. Charles X.'s was exclusive, Louis Philippe's bourgeois, Napo- leon's too fast, M. Thiers' too slow, and now the Marshal's is too like a review, with ladies in full dress waiting for orders.
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