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 his repeated attempts to bring him into a suitable frame of mind.

"It is a wretched piece of business, but comical enough. Kerdrof cannot fight with this gentleman. Was he so horribly angry?" he asked, laughing. "And how do you like Claire this evening?—charming!" said he, referring to a new French actress. "One can't see her too often; she is always new. Only the French can do that!"

CHAPTER VI

Princess Betsy left the theater without waiting for the end of the last act. She had scarcely had more than time enough, after reaching home, to go into her dressing-room, and scatter a little rice-powder over her long, pale face, rearrange her toilet, and order tea to be served in the large drawing-room, when the carriages began one after another to arrive at her enormous house on the Bolshaya Morskaya. The guests came up to the wide entrance, and a portly Swiss who during the morning read the newspaper for the edification of passers-by, as he sat behind the glass door, now kept noiselessly opening this great door and admitting the visitors. They came in by one door almost at the same instant that by another came the mistress of the mansion, with renewed color, and hair rearranged. The walls of the great drawing-room were hung with somber draperies, and on the floor were thick rugs. On the table, which was covered with a cloth of dazzling whiteness, shining in the light of numberless candles, stood a silver samovar and a tea-service of transparent porcelain.

The princess took her place behind the samovar and drew off her gloves. With the help of attentive servants, the guests brought up chairs and took their places, dividing into two camps, the one around the princess, the other at the opposite end of the drawing-room around the wife of a foreign ambassador, a handsome lady, dressed in black velvet, and with black, well