ore. She dreaded a quarrel with her daughter, and would have
sacrificed everything to retain her cajoling ways.

She threw herself into her work with renewed vigor.

"If the Prince spends large sums," she said to herself, "I will earn
larger ones. There can be no hole dug deep enough by him that I shall
not be able, to fill up."

And she made the money come in at the door so that her son-in-law might
throw it out of the window.

One fine day these great people who visited at the mansion in the Rue
Saint-Dominique hastened away to the country. September had arrived,
bringing with it the shooting season. The Prince and Micheline settled
themselves at Cernay, not as in the first days of their marriage as
lovers who sought quietude, but as people sure of their happiness, who
wished to make a great show. They took all the carriages with them, and
there was nothing but bustle and movement. The four keepers, dressed in
the Prince's livery, came daily for orders as to shooting arrangements.
And every week shoals of visitors arrived, brought from the station in
large breaks drawn by four horses.

The princely dwelling was in its full splendor. There was a continual
going and coming of fashionable worldlings. From top to bottom of the
castle was a constant rustling of silk dresses; groups of pretty women,
coming downstairs with peals of merry laughter and singing snatches from
the last opera. In the spacious hall they played billiards and other
games, while one of the gentlemen performed on the large organ. There
was a strange mixture of freedom and strictness. The smoke of Russian
cigarettes mingled with the scent of opoponax. An elegant confusion
which ended about six o'clock in a general flight, when the sportsmen
came home, and the guests went to their rooms. An hour afterward all
these people met in the large drawing-room; the ladies in low-bodied
evening dresses; the gentlemen in dress-coats and white satin
waistcoats, with a sprig of mignonette and a white rose in their
buttonholes. After dinner, they danced in the drawing-rooms, where a mad
waltz would even restore energy to the gentlemen tired out by six hours
spent in the field.

Madame Desvarennes did not join in that wild existence. She had remained
in Paris, attentive to business. On Saturdays she came down by the five
o'clock train and regularly returned on the Monday morning. Her presence
checked their wild gayety a little. Her black dress was like a blot
am