soul; in her, in short, La Palferine awakened the one passion of
her life; while for him Claudine was only a most charming mistress. The
Devil himself, a most potent magician certainly, with all hell at his
back, could never have changed the natures of these two unequal fires. I
dare affirm that Claudine not unfrequently bored Charles Edward.

"'Stale fish and the woman you do not love are only fit to fling out of
the window after three days,' he used to say.

"In Bohemia there is little secrecy observed over these affairs. La
Palferine used to talk a good deal of Claudine; but, at the same time,
none of us saw her, nor so much as knew her name. For us Claudine
was almost a mythical personage. All of us acted in the same way,
reconciling the requirements of our common life with the rules of good
taste. Claudine, Hortense, the Baroness, the Bourgeoise, the Empress,
the Spaniard, the Lioness,--these were cryptic titles which permitted
us to pour out our joys, our cares, vexations, and hopes, and to
communicate our discoveries. Further, none of us went. It has been
shown, in Bohemia, that chance discovered the identity of the fair
unknown; and at once, as by tacit convention, not one of us spoke of
her again. This fact may show how far youth possesses a sense of true
delicacy. How admirably certain natures of a finer clay know the limit
line where jest must end, and all that host of things French covered by
the slang word _blague_, a word which will shortly be cast out of the
language (let us hope), and yet it is the only one which conveys an idea
of the spirit of Bohemia.

"So we often used to joke about Claudine and the Count--'_Toujours
Claudine?_' sung to the air of _Toujours Gessle_.--'What are you making
of Claudine?'--'How is Claudine?'

"'I wish you all such a mistress, for all the harm I wish you,' La
Palferine began one day. 'No greyhound, no basset-dog, no poodle can
match her in gentleness, submissiveness, and complete tenderness. There
are times when I reproach myself, when I take myself to task for my hard
heart. Claudine obeys with saintly sweetness. She comes to me, I tell
her to go, she goes, she does not even cry till she is out in the
courtyard. I refuse to see her for a whole week at a time. I tell her
to come at such an hour on Tuesday; and be it midnight or six o'clock in
the morning, ten o'clock, five o'clock, breakfast time, dinner time,
bed time, any particularly inconvenient hour in the day--s