Page:Maud, Renée - One year at the Russian court 1904-1905.djvu/188

162 time. The conclusion one comes to is that one may tell you a little more," he said to me mischievously. And another time when I was going to skate, and his secretary had instituted himself my professor, he said: "You are on slippery ground, very slippery, Mademoiselle." This with a glance which he launched above his eyeglass, of which he seemed to have no need, as nothing ever escaped him even without its aid.

He was a good raconteur and I enjoyed talking with him. His wife, also, was charming.

An agreeable couple were Count and Countess Ruggieri-Laderchi, the Italian Military Attaché and his wife. They often entertained and were very pleasant. She was a Russian, née Staël-Holstein. She told complacently how a fortune teller had predicted that she would be an Ambassadress. May that happen to her if it is still her wish, as then she would be quite in her rôle; but on leaving Russia she settled down in a provincial town in Italy.

The evenings at General Gelinsky's were also charming; he was a friend of my aunt's, and one met at his house many officers of the Guards and some diplomats.

During nearly the whole of that winter, the German Ambassadress used to display on her head, and nearly as big as it, planted well in the middle of her coiffure, a yellow flower resembling an immense dandelion, the flower commonly called by us in France pissenlit.