Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/355

Rh Salgues observed. "Still," she added, "I must own that Mademoiselle Stéphanie is not by any means improved."

"Not altogether her fault, poor child!" put in Clémence.

"Oh, you always speak for her, ma cousine, because she is like your shadow," said Emile. "Three mornings in the week, at least, Prince Ivan, she comes here. 'Papa,' she says," and the lad imitated the little girl's tones—"'papa will allow me to go to the Tuileries gardens, or the Champs Elysées, or the Louvre, if Mademoiselle Clémence will be so kind as to accompany me.' She has not even the grace to say, 'Madame la Princesse.' But now you have come, we shall have an end of all that."

"Then I am to understand," said Ivan, greatly amused, "that the deterioration in Mademoiselle Stéphanie's character is owing to her intercourse with Clémence?"

"Of course," returned Emile laughing.

"There are those about her," said Madame de Talmont more gravely, "who encourage and applaud her pert speeches; and that, to a child, is absolute cruelty."

"Who did encourage them during the Hundred Days, you mean to say," Emile resumed. "While the Emperor was in power, you were all of you glad to hear, even from the lips of a child, whom no one could punish or seriously blame, the impertinences the grown-up Legitimists were longing to utter, but dared not."

"Some of us," said Madame de Salgues with dignity, "never condescended to conceal our opinions. You will do me the justice to remember, Emile, that I gave to every one, as my chief reason for coming into Paris, my desire to show the usurper I was not afraid of him."

"As if the Emperor—" Emile began indignantly, but fortunately checked himself in time, and turned off his annoyance with a laugh. "You forget, my dear grandmother," he said, "that there was another reason yet more potent. The truth is,