y are cursed stupid! I will never read another! All that stuff is
absurd! Absurd! A fine aid to digestion, truly!"

And, paying his bill, he rose to go, passing his hand over his head as if
his sword had been broken upon it and left a contusion, and glancing
timidly into the mirrors, as if he feared to discover the image of
Froloff there.

It was at this moment that he discovered Prince Zilah, and rushed up to
him with the joyful cry of a child discovering a protector.

The Prince noticed that poor Vogotzine, who sat heavily down by his side,
was not entirely sober. The enormous quantity of kummel he had absorbed,
together with the terror produced by the article he had read, had proved
too much for the good man: his face was fiery, and he constantly
moistened his dry lips.

"I suppose it astonishes you to see me here?" he said, as if he had
forgotten all that had taken place. "I--I am astonished to see myself
here! But I am so bored down there at Maisons, and I rust, rust, as
little--little--ah! Stephanie said to me once at Odessa. So I came to
breathe the air of Paris. A miserable idea! Oh, if you knew! When I think
that that might happen to me!"

"What?" asked Andras, mechanically.

"What?" gasped the General, staring at him with dilated eyes. "Why,
Froloff, of course! Froloff! The sword broken over your head! The
gallows! Ach! I am not a nihilist--heaven forbid!--but I have displeased
the Czar. And to displease the Czar--Brr! Imagine the open
square-Odessa-No, no, don't let us talk of it any more!" glancing
suddenly about him, as if he feared the platoon of Cossacks were there,
in the restaurant, come to drag him away in the name of the Emperor. "Oh!
by the way, Prince," he exclaimed abruptly--"why don't you ever come to
Maisons-Lafitte?"

He must, indeed, have been drunk to address such a question to the
Prince.

Zilah looked him full in the face; but Vogotzine's eyes blinked stupidly,
and his head fell partially forward on his breast. Satisfied that he was
not responsible for what he was saying, Andras rose to leave the
restaurant, and the General with difficulty stumbled to his feet, and
instinctively grasped Andras's arm, the latter making no resistance, the
mention of Maisons-Lafitte interesting him, even from the lips of this
intoxicated old idiot.

"Do you know," stuttered Vogotzine, "I, myself, should be glad--very
glad--if you would come there. I am bored-bored to death! Closed
shutters--not the