able commission," she rejoined, "but I can
refuse you nothing; I shall go to-morrow to Maisons."

At the precise moment when this conversation was taking place, Mme.
de Lorcy, who was passing the day in Paris, entered the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts. The exhibition of the work of a celebrated painter, recently
deceased, had attracted thither a great throng of people. Mme. de Lorcy
moved to and fro, when suddenly she descried a little old woman, sixty
years of age, with a snub nose, whose little gray eyes gleamed with
malice and impertinence. Her chin in the air, holding up her eye-glasses
with her hand, she scrutinized all the pictures with a critical,
disdainful air.

"Ah! truly it is the Princess Gulof," said Mme. de Lorcy to herself,
and turned away to avoid an encounter. It was at Ostend, three years
previous, during the season of the baths, that she had made the
acquaintance of the princess; she did not care to renew it. This
haughty, capricious Russian, with whom a chance occurrence at the _table
d'hote_ had thrown her into intercourse, had not taken a place among her
pleasantest reminiscences.

Princess Gulof was the wife of a governor-general whom she had wedded in
second marriage after a long widowhood. He did not see her often, two or
three times a year, that was all. Floating about from one end of Europe
to another, they kept up a regular exchange of letters; the prince never
took any step without consulting his wife, who usually gave him sound
advice. During the first years of their marriage, he had committed the
error of being seriously in love with her: there are some species of
ugliness that inspire actually insane passions. The princess found this
in the most wretched taste, and soon brought Dimitri Paulovitch to his
senses. From that moment perfect concord reigned between this wedded
couple, who were parted by the entire continent of Europe, united by the
mail-bags. The princess did not bear a very irreproachable record. She
looked upon morality as pure matter of conventionality, and she made no
secret of her thoughts. She was always on the alert for new discoveries,
fresh experiences; she never waited to read a book to the end before
flinging it into the waste-paper basket, most frequently the first
chapter sufficed; she had met with many disappointments, she had wearied
of many caprices, and she had arrived at the conclusion that man is,
after all, of but small account. Nevertheless, there had come to her