Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/281

Rh The concession soothed his wounded vanity, and he started a fresh subject.

"You have no idea what the city looks like," he said. "To walk down the Rue St. Honoré or along the Champs-Elysées is as good an amusement as going to the play. All sorts of strange beings, out of all nations under heaven, are riding about. Cossacks in sheep-skin jackets, with sandy-coloured, shaggy hair and beards, long lances, and queer little whips with plaited thongs hanging on their necks; Calmuck Tartars, with flat noses and little eyes; Bashkirs and Tungusians from Siberia, carrying bows and arrows. Strangest of all and best worth seeing are the Circassian nobles, in complete hauberks of steel and bright conical helmets. Then there are countless uniforms of a kind to which we are better accustomed, and some of them very splendid,—jewelled orders glittering on the breasts of the officers. All the Allies wear sprigs of box or elm in their caps to distinguish them.—Clémence, you should come into Paris and see the show. You really must do it. I will take care of you," he added magnanimously, and not perhaps averse to the prestige it would give him amongst his school-fellows to be seen escorting his beautiful cousin.

"My dear, you must not dream of such a thing!" cried Madame de Salgues in great alarm. "A young lady to venture into the midst of a city occupied by a hostile army! Who ever heard of such a piece of insanity?"

"Grandmamma, the city is as quiet as if the allied sovereigns had only come to pay us a visit of ceremony," said Emile. "The shops are driving a splendid trade; only I am afraid our clever Parisians contrive to cheat the strangers outrageously. The Rentes have risen already since the Occupation from forty-five to seventy." (Madame de Talmont and Clémence exchanged glances of satisfaction.) "You could run no risk in Paris, Clémence, unless it should come into your head to say a word against the Emperor of Russia; and of that there is no