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By Root 1822 0

does not know that when a woman whom he is going to pay says to him: “Don’t let’s talk about money,” the speech must be regarded as what is called in music “a silent bar” and that if, later on, she declares: “You make me too unhappy, you’re always keeping things from me; I can’t stand it any longer,” he must interpret this as: “Someone else has been offering her more”? And yet this is only the language of the woman of easy virtue, not so far removed from society women. The ponce furnishes more striking examples. But M. de Norpois and the German prince, if ponces and their ways were unknown to them, had been accustomed to living on the same plane as nations, which are also, for all their grandeur, creatures of selfishness and cunning, which can be tamed only by force, by consideration of their material interests which may drive them to murder, a murder that is also often symbolic, since its mere hesitation or refusal to fight may spell for a nation the word “Perish.” But since all this is not set forth in the various Yellow Books or elsewhere, the people as a whole are naturally pacific; if they are warlike, it is instinctively, from hatred, from a sense of injury, not for the reasons which have made up the mind of their ruler on the advice of his Norpois.

The following winter the Prince was seriously ill. He recovered, but his heart was permanently affected.

“The devil!” he said to himself, “I can’t afford to lose any time over the Institut. If I wait too long, I may be dead before they elect me. That really would be disagreeable.”

He wrote an essay for the Revue des Deux Mondes on European politics over the past twenty years, in which he referred more than once to M. de Norpois in the most flattering terms. The latter called upon him to thank him. He added that he did not know how to express his gratitude. The Prince said to himself, like a man who has just tried to fit another key into a stubborn lock: “Still not the right one!” and, feeling somewhat out of breath as he showed M. de Norpois to the door, thought: “Damn it, these fellows will see me in my grave before letting me in. We must hurry up.”

That evening, he met M. de Norpois again at the Opéra.

“My dear Ambassador,” he said to him, “you told me this morning that you did not know how to prove your gratitude to me. It’s entirely superfluous, since you owe me none, but I am going to be so indelicate as to take you at your word.”

M. de Norpois had a no less high esteem for the Prince’s tact than the Prince had for his. He understood at once that it was not a request that Prince von Faffenheim was about to put to him, but an offer, and with a radiant affability he made ready to hear it.

“Well now, you will think me highly indiscreet. There are two people to whom I am greatly attached—in quite different ways, as you will understand in a moment—two people both of whom have recently settled in Paris, where they intend to live henceforth: my wife, and the Grand Duchess John. They are thinking of giving a few dinners, notably in honour of the King and Queen of England, and their dream would have been to be able to offer their guests the company of a person for whom, without knowing her, they both of them feel a great admiration. I confess that I did not know how I was going to gratify their wish when I learned just now, by the merest chance, that you were a friend of this person. I know that she lives a most retired life, and sees only a very few people—happy few—but if you were to give me your support, with the kindness you have always shown me, I am sure that she would allow you to present me to her so that I might convey to her the wish of the Grand Duchess and the Princess. Perhaps she would consent to come to dinner with the Queen of England, and then (who knows) if we don’t bore her too much, to spend the Easter holidays with us at Beaulieu, at the Grand Duchess John’s. This person is called the Marquise de Villeparisis. I confess that the hope of becoming an habitué of such a school of wit would console me, would make me contemplate without regret the abandoning