'The table went up, up, up,' she said, 'until our hands could scarcely follow it. The candles were blown out by invisible lips, and in the darkness I saw a hand pass up and down—an immense hand—it was that of Peter the Great!'

The muscles of her face grew rigid as she spoke, and her eyes became fixed as if on a terrible apparition. Traces of that brutish and almost half-witted creature of instinct that lurks even in the most refined Russian appeared for a few seconds upon the surface. Then the Society woman suddenly remembered that she had to perform the honours of her house, and the smile came back to her lips and the gleam in her eyes grew softer. Was it that intuition peculiar to elderly women which gives them such a soothing influence over men of irritable nerves that revealed to her how solitary René felt in the midst of these crowded salons, where he knew not a soul? As soon as her story was ended she was good enough to turn to him with a smile and say: 'Do you believe in spirits, Monsieur Vincy? Of course you do—you are a poet. But we'll talk of that some other day. You must come with me now, in spite of the fact that I'm neither young nor pretty, and be presented to some of my friends, who are already passionate admirers of yours.'

She had taken the young man's arm, and, although he was above the middle height, she was taller than he by half a head. Her tragic expression was not deceptive. She had really lived through what the strange look in her eyes and the determined set of her features led one to imagine. Her husband had been murdered almost at her feet, and she herself had killed the assassin. René had heard the story from Claude, and he could see the scene before him—the Comte Komof, a distinguished diplomat, stabbed to the heart by a Nihilist in his study; the Comtesse entering at the moment and bringing down the murderer by a well-directed shot. While the young man reflected that those tapering fingers, resplendent with rings as they lay on his coat sleeve, had clutched the pistol, his partner had already commenced some fresh story with that savage energy of expression that in people of Slavonic race is not incompatible with the most refined and elegant manners.

'It was on my arrival in Paris about eight years ago, just after the war. I had not been here since the first Exhibition, in 1855. Ah! my dear sir, the Paris of those days was really charming . . . and your Emperor . . . idéal! She had a way of dwelling on her last syllables when she wished to express her enthusiasm. 'My daughter, the Princess Roudine, was with me—I don't think you know her; she lives in Florence all the year round. She was taken ill, but Doctor Louvet—you know, the little man who looks like a miniature edition of Henri III.—got her over it. I always call him Louvetsky, because he only attends Russians. I could not think of taking her away from Paris, so this house being for sale, ready furnished, I bought it. But I've turned everything upside down. Look here, this used to be the garden,' she added, showing René the larger salon, which they had just entered.

This salon was a vast apartment, whose walls were hung with canvases of all sizes and schools, picked up by the Comtesse in the course of her European rambles. Though René had been strongly impressed from the first by the general air of material well-being everywhere apparent, this feeling was intensified by the spiritual luxury, if one may use such a term, which such cosmopolitanism represents. The way in which the Comtesse had mentioned Florence, as if it were a suburb of Paris, the resources indicated by the improvements effected in the mansion, the fluency with which this grand Russian lady spoke French—how could a young man accustomed to the limited horizon of a struggling family of modest bourgeois fail to be struck with childlike wonder at the sight of a world such as these details suggested? His eyes opened wide to take in the whole of the charming scene before him. At the end of the salon heavy, dark red curtains hung across the usual entrance to the dining-room, which apartment, approached by three broad stairs, had been turned for the nonce into a stage. In the centre of the hall stood a marble column surmounted by a bust in bronze of the famous Nicolas Komof, the friend of Peter the Great—this ancestral kind of monument being surrounded by a group of gigantic palms in huge pots of Indian brass ware, whilst lines of chairs were drawn up between the column and the stage.

By this time nearly all the ladies were seated, and the lights shone down upon a living sea of snowy arms and shoulders, some too robust, others too lean, others again most exquisitely moulded; jewels sparkled in tresses fair and dark, the flutter of fans tempered the glances that shot from eloquent eyes, whilst words and laughter became blended in one loud, harmonious murmur. In the ladies' dresses, too, lay a wonderful play of colour, and one side of the salon presented a striking contrast to the other, where the men, in their swallow-tails, formed a solid mass of black. A few women, however, had found their way amongst the sterner sex, while here and there a dark patch amidst the seated fair ones betrayed the presence of a male interloper. The whole of the company, although somewhat mixed, was composed of people accustomed to meet daily, and for years, in places that serve as common ground for different sets of Society. There were blue-blooded duchesses from the Faubourg Saint-Germain, whose sporting tastes and charity errands took them to all kinds of places. There were also the wives of big financiers and politicians, representing every degree of cosmopolitan elegance, and there were even the wives of plain artists, following up their husbands' successes through a string of fashionable dinners and receptions.

But to a new-comer like René Vincy the social distinctions that broke up the salon into a series of very dissimilar groups were utterly imperceptible. The spectacle upon which he gazed surpassed, in outward magnificence, his wildest dreams. Amidst a hum of voices he allowed himself to be presented to some of the men as they passed, and to a few of the women seated on the back row of chairs, bowing and stammering out a few words in reply to the compliments with which the more amiable ones favoured him. Madame Komof, perceiving his timidity, was kind enough not to leave him, especially since Claude, a prey to some fresh fit of his amorous passion, had disappeared. He had probably gone behind the scenes, and when the signal for raising the curtain was given the poet found himself seated beside the Comtesse in the shadow of the palms that surrounded the ancestral bust, happy that he was in a place where he could escape notice.

CHAPTER IV
THE 'SIGISBÉE'

Two footmen in livery drew back the curtains from before the miniature stage. The scene being laid 'In a garden, in Venice,' nothing had been required in the way of scenery beyond a piece of cloth stretched across the back of the stage and a bank formed of plants selected from the hostess's famous conservatory. With the somewhat crude appearance of their foliage under the glare of the light these exotic shrubs made a setting very different to that which M. Perrin had arranged with so much taste at the Comédie Française. That model of a manager, if ever there was one, had hit upon the happy idea of placing before his audience one of the terraces on the lagoon that lead by a flight of marble steps down to the lapping waters, with the variegated façades of the palaces standing out against the blue sky and the black gondolas flitting round the corners of the tortuous canals. The change from the usual scenery, the diminutive stage, the limited and eminently select audience, all contributed to increase René's feeling of uneasiness, and he again felt his heart beating as wildly as on the night of the first performance at the theatre.