"His Highness the Prince de Condé, Duc de Montpensier! Mademoiselle la Marquise de Montpensier!"
At the same moment two lacqueys held aside the heavy curtains which hung on the inside of the doorway, and the latest arrivals entered.
The announcement of the once most noble names in Europe instantly hushed the hum of conversation, and all eyes were turned towards the doorway.
They saw a tall, straight, well-set-up man of about fifty, with dark moustache and imperial, and iron-grey hair still thick and strong. A single glance at his features showed that they bore the indelible stamp of the old Bourbon race. The high, somewhat narrow, forehead was continued in a straight line to the end of the long thin nose. The somewhat high cheek-bones, the delicate ears, the thin, sensitive nostrils, and the strong, slightly protruding chin, might have belonged to the Grande Monarque himself.
He was in ordinary court dress, the broad red ribbon of the Order of St Vladimir crossed his breast, the collar and jewel of the Golden Fleece hung from his neck, and the stars of half-a-dozen other Orders glittered on the left breast of his coat; but, though he bore the greatest name in France, there was not a French order among them, for Louis Xavier de Condé was a voluntary exile from the land over which his ancestors had once ruled so splendidly and so ruinously.
For three generations his branch of the great family had refused to recognise any ruler in France, from the First Consul to the President of the Third Republic. In his eyes they were one and all usurpers and plebeian upstarts, who ruled only by the suffrages of an ignorant and deluded mob. In short, his creed and the rule of his daily life were hatred and contempt of the French democracy. On this subject he was almost a fanatic, and in days soon to come this fanaticism of his was destined to influence events, of which only three people in all that crowded assembly were even dreaming.
The girl at his side—for she was not yet twenty-one—might well have been taken for a twentieth-century replica of Marie Antoinette, and to say that, is to say that among all the beautiful and stately women in that brilliant concourse, none were quite so beautiful and stately as Adelaide de Condé, Marquise de Montpensier.
Of all the hundred eyes which were turned upon this peerless daughter of the line of St Louis, the most eager were those of a splendidly-built young fellow of about twenty-eight, dressed in the blue and white uniform of the Uhlan regiment of the German army. Captain Victor Fargeau, military attaché to the German Embassy in Petersburg, was perhaps the handsomest, and, at the same time, manliest-looking man in all that company of soldiers and diplomats. At least, so certainly thought Adelaide de Condé, as she saw his dark blue eyes light up with a swift gleam of admiration, and the bronze on his cheeks grow deeper as the quick blood flushed beneath it.
It was a strange bond that united the daughter of the Bourbons with the soldier and subject of the German Kaiser, and yet it must have been a close one. For, after the first formal presentations were over, her eyes sent a quick signal to his, which brought him instantly to her side, and when their hands met the clasp was closer, and lasted just a moment longer than mere acquaintance or even friendship would have warranted.
"Can you tell me, Captain, whether the gentleman who calls himself the French Ambassador has honoured us with his presence to-night?" said the Prince, as he shook hands with the young soldier.