esses, without
taking into account the warmth of their temperament. Among them it was
impossible not to notice the Princess Lydia, owing to her tall and
exquisite figure, the brilliancy of her dress and her wit, of her dark
eyes and fair complexion, owing in fact to the radiance of her whole
person. She had carried off the prize at the last grand international
beauty competition, and was accounted the reigning beauty of the
drawing-rooms of Babylon. What a different set of individuals from that
which the spectator formerly surveyed through his opera-glass from the
top of the galleries of the so-called Chamber of Deputies! Youth,
beauty, genius, love, infinite treasures of science and art, writers
whose pens were of pure gold, artists with marvellous technique, singers
one raved about, all that was left of refinement and culture on the
earth, was concentrated in this last knot of human beings, which
blossomed under the snow like a tuft of rhododendrons, or of Alpine
roses at the foot of some mountain summit. But what dejection had fallen
on these fair flowers! How sadly drooped these manifold graces!

At the sudden apparition of Miltiades every brow was lifted, every eye
was fastened upon him. He was tall, lean, and wizened, in spite of the
false plumpness of his thick white furs. When he threw back his big
white hood, which recalled the Dominican cowl of antiquity, they caught
sight of his huge scar athwart the icicles on his beard and eyebrows. At
the sight of it first a smile and then a shudder, which was not due to
cold alone, ran through the ranks of the women. For must we confess it,
in spite of the efforts of a rational education, the inclination to
applaud bravery and its indications could not be entirely uprooted from
their hearts. Lydia, notably, remained imbued with this sentiment of
another age, by a kind of moral ancestral reversion which served as a
pendant to her physical atavism. She concealed so little her feelings of
admiration, that Miltiades himself was struck by it. Her admiration was
combined with astonishment, for he was believed to have been dead for
years. They asked one another by what accumulation of miracles he had
been able to escape the fate of his companions. He requested leave to
speak. It was granted him. He mounted a platform, and such a profound
silence ensued, one might have heard the snow falling outside, in spite
of the thickness of the walls. But let us at this point allow an
eye-wi