beings, at the exploiting of their passions, in the
interests of one family.

The Grafin's smart cousin got us on to some steps and stood with us, so
that we should not be pushed off them instantly again, as we would have
been if he had left us. I think they were the steps of a statue, or
fountain, or something like that, but the whole whatever it was was so
covered with people, encrusted with them just like one of those sticky
fly-sticks is black with flies, that I don't know what it was really.
I only know that it wasn't a house, and that we were quite close to the
palace, and able to look down at the sea beneath us, the heaving,
roaring sea of distorted red faces, all with their mouths wide open,
all blistering and streaming in the sun.

The Grafin, who had recovered her calm in the presence of her inferiors
of the middle classes, put up her eyeglasses and examined them with
interest and indulgence. Helena stared. The cousin twisted his little
moustache, standing beside us protectingly, very elegant and slender
and nonchalant, and remarked at intervals, "_Fabelhafte Enthusiasmus,
was_?"

It came into my mind that Beerbohm Tree must sometimes look on like
that at a successful dress rehearsal of his well-managed stage crowds,
with the same nonchalant satisfaction at the excellent results, so well
up to time, of careful preparation.

Of course I said "_Colossal_" to the cousin, when he expressed his
satisfaction more particularly to me.

"_Dreckiges Yolk, die Russen_" he remarked, twisting his little
moustache's ends up. "_Werden lernen was es heisst, frech sein gegen
uns. Wollen sie blau und schwartz dreschen_."

You know German, so I needn't take its peculiar flavour out by
transplanting the young man's remarks.

"_Oh pardon--aber meine Gnadigste--tausendmal pardon--" he protested
the next minute in a voice of tremendous solicitude, having been pushed
rather hard and suddenly against me by a little boy who had scrambled
down off whatever it was he was hanging on to; and he turned on the
little boy, who I believe had tumbled off rather than scrambled, with
his hand flashing to his sword, ready to slash at whoever it was had
dared push against him, an officer; and seeing it was a child and
therefore not _satisfactionsfahig_ as they say, he merely called him an
_infame_ and _verfluchte Bengel_ and smacked his face so hard that he
would have been knocked down if there had been room to fall in.

As it was,