never speaks of Count Abel Larinski, and, when you speak to her of him,
she smiles and does not reply. You claim that she has reflected; that
time and absence have wrought their effect. 'Out of sight, out of mind,'
you say. Take care! I am more mistrustful than you. Are you very sure
that Antoinette may not be a slyboots?

"What is certain is, that I received a charming epistle from her, in
which there is no more mention of M. Larinski than if Poland and the
Pole did not exist. She praises Engadine; she pretends that she would
ask for nothing better than to end her days in a pine-forest. I can read
between the lines that it would be a pine-forest after her own heart,
where there would be reunions, balls, guests to dinner, small parties,
a conservatory of music, and the opera. The last paragraph of her letter
is devoted to the insurrection in Herzegovina, and it is hardly worth
while to say that all her sympathies are with the insurgents. 'If I were
a man,' she writes, 'I would go and fight for them.' That is very well;
she always took the part of thieves against the police. I remember
long ago--she was ten years old--I told her the story of an unfortunate
traveller besieged in a forest by an army of wolves. He made a barricade
about himself, and around it he lighted great fires. The wolves fell
into the flames, where they roasted, one after the other. Antoinette
began to weep bitterly, and I imagined that she was lamenting the terror
of the unfortunate man. 'Not at all,' she cried: 'the poor beasts!' She
was made so; we cannot remake her. She will always side with the wolves,
especially with the lean ones who scarcely can make two ends meet.

"I told you that Count Larinski was a worthy man. He came to see me the
day before yesterday. We have become very good friends. I asked him if
Paris still pleased him, and he replied, with the most gracious smile,
'What I like best in Paris is Maisons Lafitte.' Thereupon he said
some exceedingly pretty things, which I will not repeat. We walked
_tete-a-tete_ around the park. Heaven be praised that I returned
heart-whole! We talked politics; he bears the reputation of being
hot-headed, but he is not wanting in good sense. I wished to know if he
was in favour of the Turks or of the Bosnians. He replied:

"'As a Christian, as a Catholic, I am interested in the Christians of
the East, and I am for the Cross against the Crescent.' He pronounced
these words, Christian, Catholic, and cro