"But tell me who is this despotic little princess?"
"Who? My god-daughter, Zinka Sterzl."
Thunderbolts are out of date, no one believes in them now-a-days; nevertheless it is a fact, which Sempaly himself never contradicted, that he fell in love with Zinka at first sight. And when a few days after Zinka's irruption into the general's studio the old gentleman accepted an invitation to dine with the Baroness Sterzl at the Hotel de l'Europe, on entering the room he found, eagerly employed in looking over a quantity of photographs with the young lady--Count Sempaly.
The two gentlemen were the only guests, and yet--or perhaps in consequence--the little party was as gay and pleasant as was possible with so affected and formal a hostess as the "Baroness."
This lady, a narrow and perverse soul as ever lived, was the very essence of vanity and affectation. She imagined--Heaven alone knows on what grounds--that the general had formerly loved her hopelessly, and she always treated him accordingly with a consideration that was intolerably irritating. She had made great strides in the airs of refinement since she and the general had last met--at a time before she, or rather her children, had become rich through an advantageous sale of part of their land, and this of course added to the charms of her society. She was perpetually complaining in a tone of feeble elegance--the sleeping-carriages were intolerable, the seats were so badly stuffed, Rome was so dirty, the hotels were so bad, the conveyances so miserable; she brought in the names of all the aristocratic acquaintances they had made at Nice, at Meran, and at Biarritz, and asked--the next day being a saint's day--which church was fit to go to. The vehement old general answered hotly that "God was in them all." But Sempaly informed her with the politest gravity that Cardinal X---- read mass in the morning at St. Peter's and that the music was splendid. "I advise you to try St. Peter's."
"Indeed, is St. Peter's possible on a saint's day?" she asked. "The company is usually so mixed in those large churches."
The general fairly blushed for her follies on her children's account.
"Have you forgiven me, Zinka?" he said to change the conversation.
"As if I had time to trouble myself about your strait-laced proprieties!" exclaimed she, coloring slightly; she evidently did not like this allusion to her little indiscretion: "I have something much worse to think about."