long ago discovered that
sacks are very apt to be empty or at best only poorly filled. Let your
goddaughter act according to her own head; if she deceives herself, it
is because she wishes to be deceived, and she knows better than you what
suits her. _Eh! bon Dieu_, what matters it if there be one more unhappy
household under the broad canopy of heaven? Besides, it is only fools
who are unhappy, and who stupidly pause before a closed portal; others
manage in some way to find a loop-hole of escape. Marriage, my dear, is
an institution worn threadbare. Ten years hence there will be only free
women and husbands on trial. Ten years hence the Countess Larinski will
be a liberated countess. Let her serve her time as a galley-slave, and
she will come out entirely cured of her follies."

Just as Princess Gulof was finishing this remarkable declaration of her
principles, the door opened and Mlle. Moriaz entered. Whatever it might
cost her to do so, the future Countess Larinski faithfully kept the
promise she had made to her father. Mme. de Lorcy was strictly on her
guard; she hastened to meet her, held out both hands, kissed her on both
cheeks, and reproached her, in the most affectionate tone in the world,
for the rarity of her visits. Then she presented her to the princess,
who said: "Come here, my beauty, that I may look at you; I have been
told that you are adorable."

When Antoinette approached, she fixed on her a keen, penetrating glance,
examined her from head to foot, passed all her perfections in review:
one might have taken her for some Normandy farmer at a cattle-fair.
The result of this investigation was satisfactory; the princess cried,
"Truly she does very well!" and proceeded to assert that Mlle. Moriaz
greatly resembled a certain person who had played a certain role in
a certain adventure that she undertook to narrate. She had scarcely
finished this recital when she entered on another. Mme. de Lorcy was on
thorns. She knew by experience that the anecdotes of Princess Gulof
were ordinarily somewhat indelicate and ill-suited to maiden ears.
She watched Antoinette anxiously, and, when she saw the approach of an
especially objectionable passage, she was suddenly seized with a fit of
coughing. The princess, comprehending the significance of that, made an
effort to gloss over, but her glossings were very transparent. Mme.
de Lorcy coughed anew, and the princess ended by losing patience, and,
brusquely interrupting her