Like most of the salons of foreigners in Paris, even of the most distinguished, that of the Lipinskis produces the impression of a social menagerie. Artists, Americans, diplomatists, stand out in strong relief against a background of old Russian acquaintances. French people are seldom met with there. Scarcely three months have passed since the Lipinskis took up their abode in Paris, and they have not yet had time to organize their circle. The agreeable atmosphere of every-day intimacy which constitutes the chief charm of every select circle is lacking. The Russians and the elderly diplomatists gather for the most part about the fireplace, where Madame Lipinski holds her little court.
She is an uncommonly distinguished, graceful old lady, who had been a celebrated beauty in the best days of the Emperor Nicholas's reign, and had played her part at court. One of the Empress's maids of honour, she had preserved in her heart an undying, unchanging love for the chivalric, maligned Emperor, so sadly tried towards the end of his life. She wears her thick white hair stroked back from her temples and adorned by a rather fantastic cap of black lace; her tiny ears, undecorated by ear-rings, are exposed,--which looks rather odd in a woman of her age. As soon as she becomes at her ease with a new acquaintance she tells him of the annoyance which these same tiny ears occasioned her at the time when she was maid of honour. The Empress condemned her to wear her hair brushed down over her cheeks, merely because the Emperor once at a ball extolled the beauty of her ears.
"She was jealous, the poor Empress," the old lady is wont to close her narrative by declaring, and then, raising her eyes to heaven, she says, with a deprecatory shrug, "Of me!" What she likes best to tell, however, is how the Emperor once, when he honoured her with a morning call, had with the greatest patience kindled her fire in the fireplace, whereupon she had exclaimed, "Ah, Sire, if Europe could behold you now!"
The artistic element collects about Natalie.
On the day when Edgar and Zino are sent to the Lipinskis' to observe Stella and Monsieur Cabouat, the artistic element is represented by a pianist of much pretension and with his fingers stuck into india-rubber thimbles, and besides by Signor della Seggiola.
Della Seggiola, without his gray velvet cap, in a black dress-coat, looks freshly washed and--immensely unhappy. His comfortable, barytone self-possession stands him in no stead in this cool atmosphere: he has no opportunity to produce the jokes and merry quips with which he is wont to enliven his scholars during his lessons. Restless and awkward, he goes from one arm-chair to another, is absorbed in admiration of a piece of Japanese lacquer, and breathes a sigh of relief when he is asked to sing something, which seems to him far easier in a drawing-room than to talk.
The pianist, on the contrary, needs a deal of urging before he consents to pound away fiercely at the Pleyel piano as though he were a personal enemy of the maker.
"I have a great liking for artists," Madame Lipinski, after watching the barytone through her eye-glass, declares to her neighbour Prince Suwarin, who is known in Parisian society by the nickname of memento mori, "but they seem to me like hounds,--delightful to behold in the open air, but mischievous in a drawing-room. One always dreads lest they should upset something. Natalie disagrees with me: she likes to have them in the house; she is exactly my opposite, my daughter."
In this Prince Capito agrees with her, and hence his regard for Natalie.
It is about half-past ten when Edgar and Zino enter the Lipinski drawing-room. After Edgar has paid his respects to both ladies of the house,--a ceremony much prolonged by Madame Lipinski,--he looks about for Stella, and perceives her directly in the centre of the room, seated on a yellow divan from which rises a tall camellia-tree with red blossoms, beside Zino. He is about to approach her, when he feels a hand upon his arm. He turns. Stasy stands beside him, affected, languishing, in a youthful white gown, a bouquet of roses on her breast, and a huge feather fan in her hand.