wed with military stiffness, and kissed with much
devotion the ladies' hands, calling them by titles, whether they had them
or not. His foreign accent made it as hard to detect his nationality as
it was to know his age. Two or three other gentlemen, not less decorated
and not less foreign, afterward came in. Colette named them in a whisper
to Jacqueline, but their names were too hard for her to pronounce, much
less to remember. One of them, a man of handsome presence, came
accompanied by a sort of female ruin, an old lady leaning on a cane,
whose head, every time she moved, glittered with jewels, placed in a very
lofty erection of curled hair.

"That gentleman's mother is awfully ugly," Jacqueline could not help
saying.

"His mother? What, the Countess? She is neither his mother nor his wife.
He is her gentleman-in-waiting-that's all. Don't you understand? Well,
imagine a man who is a sort of 'gentleman-companion'; he keeps her
accounts, he escorts her to the theatre, he gives her his arm. It is a
very satisfactory arrangement."

"The gentleman receives a salary, in such a case?" inquired Jacqueline,
much amused.

"Why, what do you find in it so extraordinary?" said Colette. "She adores
cards, and there he is, always ready to be her partner. Oh, here comes
dear Madame Saville!"

There were fresh cries of welcome, fresh exchanges of affectionate
diminutives and kisses, which seemed to make the Prince's mouth water.
Jacqueline discovered, to her great surprise, that she, too, was a dear
friend of Madame Saville's, who called her her good angel, in reference,
no doubt, to the letter she had secretly put into the post. At last she
said, trying to make her escape from the party: "But it must be nine
o'clock."

"Oh! but--you must hear Szmera."

A handsome young fellow, stoutly built, with heavy eyebrows, a hooked
nose, a quantity of hair growing low upon his forehead, and lips that
were too red, the perfect type of a Hungarian gypsy, began a piece of his
own composition, which had all the ardor of a mild 'galopade' and a
Satanic hunt, with intervals of dying sweetness, during which the painted
skeleton they called the Countess declared that she certainly heard a
nightingale warbling in the moonlight.

This charming speech was forthwith repeated by her "umbra" in all parts
of the room, which was now nearly filled with people, a mixed multitude,
some of whom were frantic about music, others frantic about Wanda
Strahl