She began to gaze at that light which was reflected in her shining eyes, and said, in a low voice, as if to herself, "Great, marvellous, beloved sun!"
Then silence followed. The calm ruddy light was falling on the faces of both. The sun was setting in genuine majesty and grandeur. Beneath it, slender clouds, recently blown asunder, took on the forms of palm lilies, and were gleaming like gold. The sea along the shore was sunk in shadow; farther out, in open spaces, lay a boundless light. In the valley, the motionless cypress-trees were outlined sharply on the lily-colored background of the sky.
CHAPTER II.
THE guests invited by Pani Elzen assembled at the Hôtel de Paris at seven o'clock. A separate room and also a smaller one adjoining, in which coffee was to be served, had been assigned for the dinner. The lady had issued invitations to a dinner "without ceremony;" but the gentlemen, knowing what to understand by this, came in dress-coats and white neckties. Pani Elzen appeared in a pale rose-colored, low-necked dress with a great fold in the back extending from the top of the bodice to the bottom of the skirt. She looked fresh and young. She had a finely cut face, and a small head, by which principally she had charmed Svirski at the beginning of their more intimate acquaintance. Her plump shoulders had, especially at the edge of the dress, the appearance and transparency of mother-of-pearl; but her arms from the elbow to the wrist were slightly reddened, seemingly rough; that, however, merely heightened the impression of their nakedness. In general, she was radiant with gladness, good-humor, and that brilliancy which women have when they are happy.
Among the invited guests, besides Svirski and De Sinten, came the old councillor, Kladzki, with his nephew Sigismund, a young man of no great social experience, but forward, whose eyes gleamed at Pani Elzen too expressively, and who did not know how to conceal what he felt; next, was Prince Valerian Porzetski, a man forty years of age, bald, with a large head coming to a point at the top like that of an Aztec; Pan Vyadrovski, rich and sarcastic, the owner of oil wells in Galicia, a lover of art and a dilettante; finally, Kresovich, a student, the temporary tutor of Romulus and Remus, a man whom Pani Elzen invited because Svirski liked his fanatical face.
The point with the lady was always, and more especially on that day, to have an "intellectual" salon, as she expressed it. She could not, however, turn the conversation at first from local gossip and the happenings of the Casino, which Vyadrovski called the "Slav world,"—more of Slav speech was heard there, he said, than any other. Vyadrovski's life in Monte Carlo was spent generally in ridiculing his fellow-countrymen and the younger Slav brothers. That was a hobby which he mounted gladly, and galloped without rest. So he began at once to relate how, two days before, there remained in the "Cercle de la Méditerranée," at six in the morning, seven persons, all of Slav blood.
"We are born thus," said he, turning to the hostess. "In other countries people count: Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, etc.; but every real Slav says, in spite of himself: Nine, ten, knave, queen, king— Yes; to the Cornice comes the cream of our society, and here they make cheese of it."
Prince Valerian, of peaked head, announced now, in the tone of a man who is discovering new truths, that every passion which exceeds the measure is ruinous, but that to the "Cercle de la Méditerranée" belonged many foreigners of distinction with whom it was useful and worth while to make acquaintance. It was possible to serve one's country everywhere. For instance, he had met there three days before an Englishman, a friend of Chamberlain, who had inquired of him touching our country; and he described on a visiting-card the economic and political condition in general, and the social aspirations in particular. Beyond doubt, the card would go, if not to Chamberlain, who is not here, to Salisbury, and that would be better. Probably, also, he would meet Salisbury at the ball which the French admiral is to give, and during which the whole "Formidable" would be illuminated à giorno by electricity.
Kresovich, who was not only a consumptive, but a man of another style of thought, a man who hated that society in which he was forced to appear as the tutor of Romulus and Remus, snorted ironically and as venomously as a hyena when he heard of this visiting-card. Pani Elzen, wishing to turn attention from him, said,—