The mood of “At the ‘Cadian Ball” is fraught and tense. The story starts with both male characters (Bobinôt and Alcée) pining after women (Calixta and Clarisse) whom they deeply love and yet have rejected their advances. Alcée is also devastated because all of his rice crops were destroyed by a cyclone. Even when the mood becomes more romantic—such as when Alcée and Calixta find themselves alone together and flirting at the ball—tension remains, as readers are aware that Clarisse and Bobinôt are each scheming to prevent the two from developing a romantic relationship.
After Clarisse effectively pulls Alcée away from Calixta and both men end up alone with the women they love, the tense mood finally shifts into a romantic and easeful place. This comes across in the following passage when Alcée accepts Clarisse’s declaration that she loves him back:
He began to wonder if this meant love. But she had to tell him so, before he believed it. And when she told him, he thought the face of the Universe was changed—just like Bobinôt. Was it last week the cyclone had well-nigh ruined him? The cyclone seemed a huge joke, now. It was he, then, who, an hour ago was kissing little Calixta’s ear and whispering nonsense into it. Calixta was like a myth, now. The one, only, great reality in the world was Clarisse standing before him, telling him that she loved him.
As the narrator states, “the cyclone seemed a huge joke, now” and “Calixta was like a myth, now.” In other words, all of the turmoil over the course of the story has come to an end. Chopin’s lofty language here also communicates the romantic and joyful energy at the end of the story, such as “he thought the face of the Universe was changed” and “the one, only, great reality in the world was Clarisse standing before him.”
