tess, getting up; "I seemed to have turned
my foot."

"I will take you to your room," exclaimed Caesar, offering her his arm.

"No, no. Thanks very much."

"Yes. It has to be."

"Then, all right," she murmured, and added, "Now you frighten me."

"Bah, you will get over that!" and Caesar went into her room with
her....

The next day Caesar appeared in the salon looking as if he had been
buried and dug up.

"What is the matter?" Mme. Dawson and her daughters asked him.

"Nothing; only I had a headache and I took a big dose of antipyrine."

The relations of the Brenda lady and Caesar soon cooled. Their
temperaments were incompatible: there was no harmony between their
imaginations or between their skins. In reality, the Countess, with all
her romanticism, did not care for long and compromising liaisons, but
for hotel adventures, which leave neither vivid memories nor deep
imprints. Caesar noted that despite her lyricism and her sentimental
talk, there was a great deal of firmness in this plump woman, and a lack
of sensitiveness.

Moreover, this woman, so little aristocratic in intimacy, had much
vanity about stupid things and a great passion for jewelry; but what
contributed most to making Caesar feel a profound hatred for her was
his discovering what good health she enjoyed. This good health seemed
offensive to Caesar, above all when he compared it to his own, to his
weak nerves and his restless brain.

From considering her a spiritual and delicate lady he passed to
considering her a powerful mare, which deserved no more than a whip and
spurs.

The love-affair contributed to upsetting Caesar and making him more
sarcastic and biting. This spiritual ulceration of Caesar's profoundly
astonished Mlle. Cadet.

One day a Roman aristocrat, nothing less than a prince, came to call on
Mme. Dawson. He talked with her, with her daughters, and the Countess
Brenda, and held forth about whether the hotels in Rome were full or
empty, about the _pensions_, and the food in the restaurants, with a
great wealth of details; afterwards he lamented that Mme. Dawson, as a
relative of his, even though a very distant one, should have gone to a
_ricevimento_ at the French Embassy, and he boasted of belonging to the
Black party in Rome.

When he was gone, Mlle. Cadet came over to Caesar, who was sunk in an
arm-chair gazing at the ceiling, and asked him:

"What did you think of the prince?"

"What prince?"

"The gentleman who