nobler passion. For a whole month, the whole demi-monde was
forgotten for one English virgin. Never, even in Paris, had a woman
triumphed so. When the day came for her departure, the city wore such an
air of sullen mourning as it had not worn since the Prussians marched to
its Elysee. Zuleika, quite untouched, would not linger in the conquered
city. Agents had come to her from every capital in Europe, and, for a
year, she ranged, in triumphal nomady, from one capital to another. In
Berlin, every night, the students escorted her home with torches. Prince
Vierfuenfsechs-Siebenachtneun offered her his hand, and was condemned
by the Kaiser to six months' confinement in his little castle. In Yildiz
Kiosk, the tyrant who still throve there conferred on her the Order of
Chastity, and offered her the central couch in his seraglio. She
gave her performance in the Quirinal, and, from the Vatican, the Pope
launched against her a Bull which fell utterly flat. In Petersburg, the
Grand Duke Salamander Salamandrovitch fell enamoured of her. Of every
article in the apparatus of her conjuring-tricks he caused a replica
to be made in finest gold. These treasures he presented to her in that
great malachite casket which now stood on the little table in her room;
and thenceforth it was with these that she performed her wonders.
They did not mark the limit of the Grand Duke's generosity. He was for
bestowing on Zuleika the half of his immensurable estates. The Grand
Duchess appealed to the Tzar. Zuleika was conducted across the frontier,
by an escort of love-sick Cossacks. On the Sunday before she left
Madrid, a great bull-fight was held in her honour. Fifteen bulls
received the coup-de-grace, and Alvarez, the matador of matadors, died
in the arena with her name on his lips. He had tried to kill the
last bull without taking his eyes off la divina senorita. A prettier
compliment had never been paid her, and she was immensely pleased with
it. For that matter, she was immensely pleased with everything. She
moved proudly to the incessant music of a paean, aye! of a paean that
was always crescendo.

Its echoes followed her when she crossed the Atlantic, till they were
lost in the louder, deeper, more blatant paean that rose for her from
the shores beyond. All the stops of that "mighty organ, many-piped," the
New York press, were pulled out simultaneously, as far as they could be
pulled, in Zuleika's honour. She delighted in the din. She read every