e distance a man who resembled Rosas was
travelling, moving away, disappearing--

"Nonsense!" the superstitious creature said to herself, "it was one or
the other! The duke or the minister! I have not made the choice."

Then looking at the confused image of herself thrown on the window of
the cab, she threw a kiss at her own pale reflection, happy with the
unbounded joy of a child, and cried aloud while laughing heartily:

"Bonjour, Vanda! I greet you, Mademoiselle Vanda."

PART SECOND

I

The Monceau plain is the quarter of changed fortunes and dice-throwing.
An entire town given over to luxury, born in a single night, suddenly
sprung into existence. The unpremeditated offspring of the aggregation
of millions. Instead of the cobbler's stall, the red-bedaubed shop of
the dealer in wines, the nakedness of an outer boulevard, here in this
spot of earth all styles flourish: the contrast of fancy, the chateau
throwing the English cottage in the shade; the Louis XIII. dwelling
hobnobbing with the Flemish house; the salamander of Francis I. hugging
the bourgeois tenement; the Gothic gateway opening for the entry of the
carriages of the courtesan. A town within a town. Something novel,
white, extravagant, overdone: the colossal in proximity to the
attractive, the vastness of a grand American hotel casting its shadow
over an Italian loggia. It partook at once of the Parisian and the
Yankee. The Chateau de Chambord sheltering a chocolate maker, and the
studio of an artist now become the salon of a rich curbstone broker.

The little Hotel de Vanda,--_one of our charming fugitives_, as those of
the chroniclers who still remember Vanda, say of her in their articles
sometimes--is an elegant establishment, severe in external appearance,
but of entirely modern interior arrangements, with a wealth of choice
knickknacks, and is regarded as one of the most attractive houses in Rue
Prony. Since the flight of the pretty courtesan, it bears the sad
notice: _Residence to let_. Its fast closed shutters give it the gloomy
appearance of a deserted boudoir. Complete silence succeeds feverish
bustle! Vanda was a boisterous, madcap spendthrift. Through the old
windows with their old-fashioned panes there often used to escape
snatches of song, airs of waltzes, fragments of quadrilles. Vanda's
horses pawed the ground spiritedly as they started at the fashionable
hour for the Bois, through the great gateway leading to the stables. An