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50, anything! But it must be here—where there are crowds and light and life!"

The two Frenchmen looked at the prince, who had dropped trembling into a chair. Then they looked at each other.

Dufour shrugged his expressive shoulders and motioned to his partner.

"Very good, Monsieur le Prince."

And they bowed themselves out of his presence and set about to fulfill his wish.

But of course they talked, and Paris listened and wonderedhovel—and laughed a little.

Society, still smarting under its recent defeat, tried to attribute Prince Narodkine's choice of residence to stinginess—a report quickly given the lie when it became known that he had been the anonymous donor of a lavish contribution to Paris's pet charity. The Patrie made sinister allusions to royalist intrigues; the Vie Parisienne to a tragic love-affair back home; but nobody could explain the prince's choice.

For, as soon as the lease had been negotiated, he moved to a little house of the Cour de Rouen—the tortuous alley which branches off from the Passage du Commerce, and which, generations ago, had