"Mlle. Jauffre came back with the Mercédès. Papa told her frigidly to return to the 'Ritz' for dinner, and go to bed.
"Laurent's is a place where you dine outside at little lamp-lit tables under the beautiful trees. The place was crowded. Papa was far more at home there than in our Volga palace. He introduced me to lots of celebrities: Bunau-Varilla, Charles Derennes, Monsieur de Bonnefon, Princess Lucien Murat, Maurice Rostand. I took a great fancy to Rostand, with his choir-boy's face and manner. We still write to each other, and he's coming to see me at Lautenburg.
"At eleven o'clock Papa took me back to the 'Ritz' and told me he had to call at the Embassy in the Rue de Grenelle. You don't suppose I felt like going to bed! Mlle. Jauffre was snoring like a Nüremberg top, and I thought I should never wake her. You should have seen her look of amazement when I told her that she must get up as Papa had arranged to meet us at midnight.
"We took a taxi in the Rue de la Paix. Grelot I told the driver. I had heard the name at Laurent's.
"Le Grelot is in the Place Blanche. I don't suppose, dear friend, that a serious student like you has ever been there. When we went in I was a little jealous of the chorus of approval that greeted Mlle. Jauffre's spangled gown. A little roué, hopelessly drunk, called out that it was Madame Fallières. Then the whole assembly rose as one man and sang the chorus of a well-known song:
'La tante Julie,
La tante Octavie,
La tante Sophie,
Le cousin Léon,
L'oncle Théodule,
L'oncle Thrasybule,
Les cousins Tibulle,
Et Timoleon.'
"I laughed as if I should never stop, and my high spirits infected everybody—they had looked bored to extinction when we first entered.
"We drank champagne—unlimited champagne. Then we danced. I just showed those Frenchmen what a Russian princess could do. The only man who could waltz properly with me was a member of the Hungarian band. We received a tremendous ovation.
"A negro in the orchestra invited Mlle. Jauffre to dance. You may find it hard to believe, but she accepted. After all that champagne she was a different woman. Two dancing girls came and sat by me. One of them, Zita, a dark girl, wore a dress of blue and silver; the other, 'The Shrimp,' was all in pink and called me 'Princess,' not knowing that I was one. They ate my food and drank my champagne. I was in the seventh heaven and murmured, rather excitedly: 'Paris is lovely, lovely!'
"I suddenly noticed that many of these poor girls had darns in the heels of their silk stockings just above their patent shoes, so I called out and threw a handful of louis into the air. They scrambled for them and found them all with the exception of five or six, on which some of the most elegant of the gentlemen had neatly put their feet.