he mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and should
have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the
laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of
injuries--and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing
one another.

Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most Holy
Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!

MARY

"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already dispatched
mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling Mademoiselle
Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural r's.
She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous, mournful, and gloomy world a
quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and self-satisfied.

"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and evidently
listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with exaggerated
grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael Ivanovich. He is in
a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."

"Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to
warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge him
and would not have others do so."

The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five minutes
late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the sitting
room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock, as the
day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played the
clavichord.

CHAPTER XXVI

The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of
the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side of the house
through the closed doors came the sound of difficult passages--twenty
times repeated--of a sonata by Dussek.

Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to the
porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little wife to
alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old Tikhon, wearing
a wig, put his head out of the door of the antechamber, reported in
a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed the door.
Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival nor any other unusual event
must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day. Prince Andrew
apparently knew this as well as Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to
ascertain whether his father's habits had changed since he was at home
last, and, having assured himself that th