e was to be a great mi-careme rout
and ball at the Hotel Kirkpatrick. I did not usually go to these balls
unless commanded by my master, and he was a merciful man; but on this
night I went with him of my own free will. It was a very splendid
company, and few there were not above my quality. Madame Riano, who
had just returned from Rome, sparkled with diamonds like a walking
Golconda; but Francezka wore only a few gems, but those exquisite. She
looked very weary; the months of gaiety and dissipation she had led
were telling on her. Gaston was a noble host, attentive to all, and
not forgetting the kind and quality of respect due to each.

When the rout was at its height, and the floor of the dancing saloon
crowded, I had occasion to pass through the great suite of rooms,
which were nearly deserted for the ball room. There was a little
curtained alcove, in which either the lights had been forgotten or had
been put out, and from that place, dark and still, although the wild
racket of the ball was going on in the same building, I heard
Francezka's voice calling me. I went in and found her sitting on a
sofa.

"I am so very tired," she said. "I came here for a moment's rest, not
thinking I should be fortunate enough to have a word with my
Babache."

I sat down by her and told her the story of my beating Jacques Haret.
I could not see her face in the darkness, but she clapped her hands
joyously.

"I am afraid I want vengeance to be mine instead of the Lord's," she
cried with her old spirit. "I am like my Aunt Peggy in that. Thank you
for every blow you gave Jacques Haret. I shall tell Peter, but not
poor Lisa. That girl has the nature of a spaniel. I believe she
reproaches herself for having thrown in his face the silver snuff-box
Jacques Haret gave her."

I knew that Francezka and Gaston had been invited to visit Chambord in
the spring, and I expressed a wish that they might come.

"No," replied Francezka, relapsing into the weary tone she had first
used. "We have declined the invitation. I am so tired of balls and
hunting parties and ballets, and everything in the world, that I feel
sometimes as if I wished to be a hermit."

I listened in sorrow, but hardly in surprise. It is as true as the
forty-seventh proposition of Euclid that to give a human being all he
or she wants of anything is to cure all liking for it. Francezka's
natural taste, however, was so strongly in favor of gaiety and
splendor, and she had tasted