THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 A STORY OF THE DAY. 
 
 By " quid a," 
 
 AUTHOR OP "STRATHMORE," "GRANVILLE DE VIGNE," " tINDER TWO 
 FLAGS," "IDALIA," " PUCK," ETC. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
 1896.
 
 PR 
 
 13^ 
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Floralta was once a city of great fame. It stands 
 upon an historical river. It is adorned with all that 
 the Arts can create of beauty, of grace, and of majesty. 
 Its chronicles blaze with heroical deeds and witii the 
 achievements of genius. Great men have been bred 
 within its walls, — men so great that the world has never 
 seen their like since. 
 
 rioralia, in her liberties, in her citizens, in her poets 
 and painters and sculptors, once upon a time had few 
 rivals, perhaps, indeed, no equals, upon earth. 
 
 By what strange irony of fate, by what singular cyn- 
 ical caprice of accident, has this fairest of cities, with 
 her time-honored towers lifted to her radiant skies, be- 
 come the universal hostelry of cosmopolitan fashion 
 and of fashionable idleness ? Sad vicissitudes of fallen 
 fortunes ! — to such base uses do the greatest come. 
 
 It is Belisarius turned croupier to a gaming-table; 
 it is Csesar selling cigars and newspapers ; it is Apelles 
 drawing for the "Albums pour Hire;" it is Pindar 
 rhyming the couplets for " Fleur de The ;" it is Prax- 
 iteles designing costumes for a calico ball ; it is Phid- 
 ias forming the poses of a ballet! 
 
 1* 5 
 
 1704885
 
 6 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Perha]>s the mighty gliosts of mediaeval Florah'a 
 do walk, sadly and ashamed, by midnight under the 
 shadow of its exquisite piles of marble and of stone. 
 If ihey do, nobody sees them ; the cigarette-smoke ia 
 too thick. 
 
 As for the modern rulers of Floralia, they have 
 risen elastic and elated to the height of the situation, 
 and have done their best and uttermost to degrade 
 their city into due accordance with her present circum- 
 stances, and have destroyed as much as they dared of 
 her noble picturesqueness and ancient ways, and have 
 tacked on to her venerable palaces and graceful towers, 
 stucco mansions and straight hideous streets, and staring 
 walls covered with advertisements, and barren boule- 
 vards studded with toy trees that are cropped as soon 
 as they presume to grow a leaf, and have striven all 
 they know to fit her for her fortunes, as her inn-keepers, 
 when they take an antique palace, hasten to fit up a 
 smoking-room, and, making a paradise of gas-jets and 
 liqueurs, write over it, "II Bar Americano." 
 
 It is considered very clever to adapt oneself to one's 
 fortunes; and if so, the rulers of Floralia are very clever 
 indeed ; only the stucco and the straight streets and the 
 frightful boulevards cost money, and Floralia has no 
 money, and a very heavy and terrible debt ; and whether 
 it be really worth while to deface a most beautiful and 
 artistic city, and ruin your nobles and gentry, and 
 grind down your artisans and peasants, and make your 
 whole province impoverished and ill-content, for the 
 mere sake of pleasing some strangers by the stucco and 
 the hoardings that their eyes are used to at home,^- 
 well, that perhaps may be an open question.
 
 IiX A WINTER CITY. 7 
 
 The Liuly Hilda Vorarlberg had written thus far 
 wlien she got tired, left off, and looked out of the win- 
 dow on to the mountain-born and poet-hymned river 
 of Floralia. She had an idea that she would write a 
 novel ; she was always going to do things that she 
 never did do. 
 
 After all, they w*^re not her own ideas that she had 
 written, but only those of a Floralian, the Duca della 
 Rocca, whom she had met the night before. But then 
 the ideas of everybody have been somebody else's be- 
 forehand, — Plato's, or Bion's, or Theophrastus's, or your 
 favorite newspaper's; and the Lady Hilda, although 
 she had been but two days in the Winter City, had 
 already in her first drive shuddered at the stucco and 
 the hoardings, and shivered at the boulevards and the 
 little shaven trees. For she was a person of very re- 
 fined and fastidious taste, and did really know some- 
 thing about the arts, and such persons suffer very acutely 
 from what the peculiar mind of your modern munici- 
 palities calls, in its innocence, "improvements." 
 
 The Lady Hilda had been to a reception, too, the 
 night before, and had gone with the preconceived con- 
 viction that a certain illustrious Sovereign had not been 
 far wrong when she had called Floralia the Botany Bay 
 of modern society; but then the Lady Hilda was easily 
 bored, and not easily pleased, and liked very few things, 
 almost none: slie liked her horses, she liked M. Worth, 
 she liked bric-a-brac, she liked her brother, Lord Clair- 
 vaux, and, when she came to think of it — well, that 
 was really all. 
 
 The Lady Hilda was a beautiful woman, and knew 
 it ; she was dressed in the height of fashion, — i.e., like
 
 8 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 a medisev^al saint out of a picture ; her velvet robe 
 clung close to lier, and her gold belt, with its chains and 
 pouch and fittings, would not have disgraced Cellini's 
 own working; her hair was in a cloud in front and 
 in a club behind ; her figure was perfect : M. Worth, 
 who is accustomed to furnish fio-ures as well as clotlies, 
 had a great reverence for her; in her, Nature, of whom 
 generally speaking he is disposed to think very poorly, 
 did not need his assistance; he thought it extraordinary, 
 l)ut, as he could not improve her in that respect, he had 
 to be content with draping Perfection, which he did to 
 perfection of course. 
 
 Her face also was left to nature, in a very blamable 
 degree for a woman of fashion. Her friends argued to 
 her that any woman, however fair a skin she might 
 have, must look washed out without enamel or rouge at 
 the least. But the Lady Hilda, conscious of her own 
 delicate bloom, was obdurate on the point. 
 
 " I would rather look washed out than caked over," 
 she would reply; which was cruel, but conclusive. So 
 she went into the world without painting, and made 
 them all look beside her as if they had come out of a 
 comic opera. 
 
 In everything else she was, however, as artificial as 
 became her sex, her station, and her century. 
 
 She was a very fortunate woman; at least society al- 
 ways said so. The Clairvaux people were very terribly 
 poor, though very noble and mighty. She had been 
 married at sixteen, immediately on her presentation, 
 to a great European capitalist of nondescript nation- 
 ality, who had made an enormous fortune upon th^ 
 stock exchanges in ways that were never inquired into,
 
 7A^ A WINTER CITV. 9 
 
 and this gentleman, whose wealth was as solid as it 
 sounded fabulous, had had the good taste to die in the 
 first months of their wedded life, leaving her fifty- 
 thousand a year, and bequeathing the rest of his money 
 to the Prince Imperial. Besides her large income, she 
 had the biggest jewels, the choicest horses, the hand- 
 somest house in London, the prettiest liotel in Paris, 
 etc., etc., etc. ; and she could very well afford to have 
 a fresh toilette a day from her friend Worth if she 
 chose. Very often she did choose. "What a lucky 
 creature !" said every other woman ; and so she was. 
 But she would have been still more so had she not been 
 quite so much bored. Boredom is the ill-natured peb- 
 ble that always will get in the golden sli})per of the 
 pilgrim of pleasure. 
 
 The liady Hilda looked out of the window and 
 found it raining heavily. When the sky of Floralia 
 does rain, it does it thoroughly, and gets the disagree- 
 able duty over, which is much more merciful to man- 
 kind than the perpetual drizzle and dripping of Scot- 
 land, Ireland, Wales, or Middlesex. It was the rain 
 that had made her almost inclined to think she would 
 write a novel ; she was so tired of reading them. 
 
 She countermanded her carriage, had some more 
 wood thrown on the fire, and felt disposed to regret 
 that she had decided to winter here. She missed all 
 her bibelots, and all the wonderful shades and graces 
 of color with which her own houses were made as rich 
 yet as subdued in tone as any old cloisonne enamel. 
 She had the finest rooms, here, in a hotel which had 
 been the old palace of Murat ; and she had sent for 
 flowers to fill every nook and corner of them, an order
 
 10 ly A wiATER cirv. 
 
 which rioralia will execute for as many francs as any 
 other city -would ask in napoleons. 
 
 But there is always a nakedness and a gaudiness in 
 the finest suites of any hotel ; and the Lady Hilda, 
 though she had educated little else, had so educated 
 her eyes and her taste that a criard bit of furniture hurt 
 her as the grating of a false quantity hurts a scholar. 
 She knew the value of grays and creams and lavenders 
 and olive greens and pale sea blues and dead gold and 
 Oriental blendings. She had to seat herself now in an 
 arm-chair that was of a brightness and newness in ma- 
 genta brocade that made her close her eyelids involun- 
 tarily to avoid the horror of it, as she took up some 
 letters from female friends and wondered why they 
 wrote them, and took up a tale of Zola's and threw it 
 aside in disgust, and began to think that she would go 
 to Algeria, since her doctors had agreed that her lungs 
 would not bear the cold of Paris this winter. 
 
 Only there was no art in Algeria, and there was. 
 plenty in Floralia, present and traditional, and, so far 
 as a woman of fashion can demean herself to think 
 seriously of anything beyond dress and rivalry, she 
 had in a way studied art of all kind, languidly indeed 
 and perhaps superficially, but still with some true 
 understanding of it ; for, although she had done her 
 best, as became a femme comme il faut, to stifle the 
 intelligence she had been created with, she yet had 
 moments in which M. Worth did not seem Jehovah, 
 and in which Society scarcely appeared the Alpha and 
 Omega of human existence, as of course they did to 
 her when she was in her right frame of mind. 
 
 " I shall go to Algeria or Rome," she said to herself:
 
 J.\ A WINTER CITV. \\ 
 
 it rained pitilessly, hiding even the bridges on the op- 
 posite side of the river ; she had a dreadful magenta- 
 colored chair, and the window-curtains were scarlet; 
 the letters were on thin foreign paper and crossed ; the 
 book was unreadable ; at luncheon they had given her 
 horrible soup and a vol-au-vent that for all flavor it 
 possessed might have been madeof acorns, ship-biscuit, 
 and shalots; and she had just heard that her cousin the 
 Countess de Caviare, whom she never approved of, and 
 who always borrowed money of her, was coming also 
 to the Hotel Murat. It was not wonderful that she 
 settled in her own mind to leave Floralia as soon as 
 she had come to it. 
 
 It was four o'clock. 
 
 She thought she would send round to the bric-ji-brac 
 dealers' and tell them to bring her what china and 
 enamels and things they had in their shops for her to 
 look at; little that is worth having ever comes into the 
 market in these days, save when private collections are 
 publicly sold ; she knew the Hotel Drouot and Christie 
 and Mansom's too well not to know that: still, it would 
 be something to do. 
 
 Her hand was on the bell when one of her servants 
 entered. He had a card on a salver. 
 
 " Does Madame receive ?" he asked, in some trepida- 
 tion, for do what her servants might they generally din 
 wrong ; when they obeyed her she had almost invaria- 
 l>ly changed her mind before her command could be 
 executed, and when they did not obey her, then the 
 Clairvaux blood, which was crossed with French and 
 Russian, and had been Norman to begin with, made 
 itself felt in her usually tranquil veins.
 
 12 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 She glanced at the card. It might be a bric-a-brac 
 dealer's. 
 
 On it was written "Dnca della Rocca." She paused 
 doubtfully some moments. 
 
 " It is raining very hard," she thought ; then gave a 
 sign of assent. 
 
 Everybody wearied her after ten minutes ; still, when 
 it was raining so hard 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " They say," the great assassin who slays as many 
 thousands as ever did plague or cholera, drink or war- 
 fare; "they say," the thief of reputation, who steals, 
 with stealthy step and coward's mask, to filch good 
 names away in the dead dark of irresponsible calumny; 
 "they say," a giant murderer, iron-gloved to slay you, 
 a fleet, elusive, vaporous will-o'-the-wisp when you 
 would seize and choke it; "they say," mighty Thug 
 though it be which strangles from behind the purest 
 victim, had not been ever known to touch the Lady 
 Hilda. 
 
 She seemed very passionless and cold ; and no one 
 ever whispered that she was not what she seemed. 
 Possibly she enjoyed so unusual an immunity, first, 
 because she was so very rich ; secondly, because she 
 had many male relations ; thirdly, because women, 
 whilst they envied, were afraid of her. Anyway,
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 13 
 
 lier name was altogether without reproacli ; the only 
 defect to be found in her in the estimate of many of 
 her adorers. 
 
 Married without any wish of her own being con- 
 sulted, and left so soon afterwards mistress of herself 
 and of very large wealth, she had remained altogether 
 indifferent and insensible to all forms of love. Other 
 women fell in love in all sorts of ways, feebly or for- 
 cibly, according to their natures, but she never. 
 
 The passions she excited broke against her serene 
 contempt, like surf on a rocky shore. She was the 
 despair of all the "tueurs des femmes" of Europe. 
 
 " Le mieux est I'ennemi du bien," she said to her 
 brother once, when she had refused the hereditary 
 Prince of Deutschland ; " I can do exactly as I like ; 
 I have everything I want ; I can follow all my own 
 whims ; I am perfectly happy ; why ever should I 
 alter all this? What could any man ever offer me 
 that would be better?" 
 
 Lord Clairvaux was obliged to grumble that he did 
 not know what any man could. 
 
 " Unless you were to care for the man," he muttered, 
 shamefacedly. 
 
 "Oh!— h!— h!" said the Lady Hilda, with the most 
 prolonged delicate and eloquent interjection of amaze<l 
 scorn. 
 
 Lord Clairvaux felt that he had been as silly and 
 rustic as if he were a plowboy. He was an affectionate 
 creature himself, in character very like a Newfoundland 
 dog, and had none of his sister's talent and temper- 
 ament ; he loved her dearly, but he was always a little 
 afraid of her. 
 
 2
 
 14 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Hilda don't say much to you, but she just gives 
 you a look, and don't you sink into your shoes !" he 
 said once to a friend. 
 
 He stood six feet three without the shoes, to whose 
 level her single glance could so pathetically reduce him. 
 
 But, except before herself, Lord Clairvaux, in his 
 shoes or out of them, was the bravest and frankest 
 gentleman that ever walked the earth; and the uni- 
 versal recollection of him and of his unhesitating habit 
 of "setting things straight" probably kept so in awe 
 the calumny-makers that he produced the miracle of 
 a woman who actually was blameless getting the credit 
 of being so. Usually snow is deemed black, and coal 
 is called swans'-down, with that refreshing habit of 
 contrariety which alone saves society from stagnation. 
 
 It never occurred to her what a tower of strength for 
 her honor was that good-looking, good-tempered, stupid, 
 big brother of hers, who could not spell a trisyllable 
 were it ever so, and was only learned in racing-stock 
 and greyhound pedigrees ; but she was fond of him in 
 a cool and careless way, as she might have been of a 
 big dog, and was prodigal in gifts to him of great 
 winners and brood mares. 
 
 She never went to stay with him at Broomsden ; she 
 disliked his wife, her sister-in-law, and she was always 
 bored to death in English country-houses, where the 
 men were out shooting all day, and half asleep all the 
 evening. The county people, the salt of the earth in 
 their own eyes, were infinitesimal as ants in hers. She 
 detested drives in pony-carriages, humdrum chitchat, 
 and afternoon tea in the library ; she did not care in 
 the least who had bagged how many brace; the de-
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 15 
 
 tails of fast runs with hounds were as horribly tiresome 
 to her as the boys home from Eton ; and she would 
 rather have gone a pilgrimage to Lourdes than have 
 descended to the ball, where all sorts of nondescripts 
 had to be asked, and the dresses positively haunted her 
 like ghosts. 
 
 Five years before, at Broomsden, she had taken up 
 her candlestick after three nights of unutterable bore- 
 dom between her sister-in-law and a fat duchess, and 
 had mentally vowed never to return there. The vow 
 she had kept, and she had always seen Clairvaux in 
 Paris, in London, in Baden, — anywhere rather than in 
 the home of their childhood, towards which she had no 
 tenderness of sentiment, but merely recollections of the 
 fierce tyrannies of many German governesses. 
 
 She would often buy him a colt out of the Lagrange 
 or Lafitte stables, and always send half Boissier's and 
 Siraudin's shops to his children at Christmas -time. 
 That done, she considered nothing more could be ex- 
 pected of her ; it was certainly not necessary that she 
 should bore herself. 
 
 To spend money was an easy undemonstrative man- 
 ner of acknowledging the ties of nature, which pleased 
 and suited her. Perhaps she would have been capable 
 of showing her affection in nobler and more self-sacri- 
 ficing ways; but then there was nothing in her circum- 
 stances to call for that kind of thing ; no trouble ever 
 came nigh her; and the chariot of her life rolled as 
 smoothly as her own victoria d. huit ressorts. 
 
 For the ten years of her Avomanhood the Lady Hilda 
 had had the command of immense wealth. Anything 
 short of that seemed to her abject poverty. She could
 
 16 JN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 theorize about making herself into Greuze or Gains- 
 borough pictures in serge or dimity; but, in fact, she 
 could not imagine herself without all the black sables 
 and silver fox, the velvets and silks, the diamonds and 
 emeralds, the embroideries and laces, that made her a 
 thing which Titian would have worshiped. 
 
 She could not imagine herself for an instant without 
 power of limitless command, limitless caprice, ceaseless 
 indulgence, boundless patronage, and all the gratifica- 
 tions of whim and will which go with the possession 
 of a great fortune and the enjoyment of an entire irre- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 She was bored and annoyed very often indeed because 
 Pleasure is not as inventive a god as he ought to be, 
 and his catalogue is very soon run through; but it 
 never by any chance occurred to her that it might be 
 her money which bored her. 
 
 When, on a very dreary day early in November, 
 Lady Hilda, known by repute all over Europe as the 
 proudest, handsomest, coldest woman in the world, and 
 famous as an elegante in every fashionable city, arrived 
 at the Hotel Murat, in the town of Floralia, and it was 
 known that she had come to establish herself there for 
 the winter (unless, indeed, she changed her mind, which 
 was probable), the stir in the city was extraordinary. 
 She brought with her several servants, several carriage- 
 horses, immense jewel-cases, and a pug dog. She was 
 the great arrival of the season. 
 
 There was a Grand Duchess of Dresden, indeed, who 
 came at the same time, but she brought no horses ; she 
 hired her coupe from a livery-stable, and her star, not- 
 withstanding its royalty, paled in proportion. Besides,
 
 IN A WINTER CITF. 17 
 
 the Grand Duchess was a very little, shabby, insignifi- 
 cant person, who wore black stuff dresses, and a wig 
 without any art in it. She was music-mad, and Wag- 
 ner was her j)rophet. The Club took no account of 
 her. 
 
 There is a club in Floralia, nay, it is the CluD, — all 
 other clubs being for purposes gymnastic, patriotic, 
 theatric, or political, and out of societ}'' altogether. 
 
 The Club is very fond of black-balling, and gives 
 very odd reasons for doing so, instead of the simple 
 and true one, that it wants to keep itself to itself. It 
 has been known to object to one man because his hair 
 curled, and to another because he was the son of a 
 king, and to another because his boots were not made 
 in Paris. Be its reasons, however, good, bad, or indif- 
 ferent, it pleases itself; by its fiat newly-arrived women 
 are exalted to the empyrean or perish in obscurity, and 
 its members are the cream of masbuline Floralia, and 
 spend all fine afternoons on the steps and the pavement, 
 blocking up the passage-way in the chief street, and 
 criticising all equipages and their occupants. 
 
 When the Lady Hilda's victoria, with the two blacks, 
 and the white and black liveries, swept past the Club, 
 there was a great stir in these philosophers of the stones. 
 M ost knew her by sight very well ; two or three knew 
 her personally, and these fortunate few, who had the 
 privilege to raise their hats as that carriage went by, 
 rose immediately wi the esteem of their fellows. 
 
 " Je n'ai jamais rien connu de si epatante," said the 
 French Due de St. Louis, who belongs to a past genera- 
 tion, but is much more charming and witty than any- 
 thing to be found in the i)resent one. 
 
 2* B
 
 18 IN A WINTER CITV. 
 
 *' Twelve Imndred and fifty thousand francs a year," 
 murmured the Marcliese Sampicrdarcno, with a sigh. 
 He was married himself. 
 
 " Here is your ' affaire,' Paolo," said Don Carlo Ma- 
 remma to a man ne.Tt him. 
 
 The Duca della Ivocra, to Avhom he spoke, stroked 
 his moustache, and smiled a little. 
 
 " She is a very beautiful person," he answered ; " I 
 have seen her before at the Tuileries and at Trouville, 
 but I do not know her at all. I was never presented." 
 
 " That will arrange itself easily," said the Due de 
 St. Louis, who W'as one of those who had raised their 
 hats ; "Maremma is perfectly right ; it is in every way 
 the very thing for you. Moi, je m'en charge." 
 
 Tlie Duca della llocca shrugged his shoulders a very 
 little, and lighted a fresh cigar. But his face grew 
 grave, and he looked thoughtfully after the black horses 
 and the white and black liveries. 
 
 At the English reception that night, which the Lady 
 Hilda disdainfully likened in her own mind to a penal 
 settlement, M. de St. Louis, whom she knew very well, 
 begged to be permitted to present to her his friend the 
 Duca della Rocca. 
 
 She was dressed like a mediaeval saint of a morning ; 
 at night she was a mediaeval princess. 
 
 She had feuille-morte velvet slashed with the palest 
 of ambers ; a high fraise ; sleeves of the Renaissance ; 
 pointed shoes, and a great many jewels. Della Rocca 
 thought she might have ste})ped down out of a Gior- 
 gione canvas, and ventured to tell her so. He gave her 
 the carte du pays of the penal settlement around her, 
 and talked to her more seriousl ,■ for some considerable
 
 IN A WINTER crrr. 19 
 
 time. Himself and the Due de St. Louis were the 
 only people she deigned to take any notice of; and she 
 went away in an hour, or rather less^ leaving a kind of 
 flame from her many jewels behind her, and a frozen 
 sense of despair in the hearts of the women, who had 
 watched her, appalled yet fascinated. 
 
 " Mais quelle femme impossible !" said Delia Rocca, 
 as he went out into the night air. 
 
 "Impossible! mais comment done?" said the Due 
 de St. Louis, with vivacity and some anger. 
 
 The Due de St. Louis worshiped her, as every year 
 of his life he worshiped three hundred and sixty-five 
 ladies. 
 
 " Impossible !" echoed Delia Rocca, with a cigar in 
 his mouth. 
 
 Nevertheless, the next day, when the rain was fall- 
 ing in such torrents that no female creature was likely 
 to be anywhere but before her fire, he called at the 
 Hotel Murat, and inquired if Miladi were visible, and, 
 being admitted, as better than nothing, as she would 
 have admitted the bric-a-brac man, followed the servant 
 up-stairs, and walked into an atmosphere scented with 
 some three hundred pots of tea-roses, lilies of the val- 
 ley, and hothouse heliotrope. 
 
 " Ah, ah ! you have been to see her. Quite right," 
 said the Due de St. Louis, meeting him as he came 
 down the steps of the hotel in the rain, when it was 
 half-past five by the clock. " I am going also so soon 
 as I have seen Salvareo at the Club about the theatri- 
 cals ; it will not take me a moment. Get in my cab . 
 you are going there too? How is Miladi? You found 
 her charming?"
 
 20 J^ ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 "She was in a very bad humor," replied Delia Rocca, 
 closing the cab door on himself. 
 
 " The more interesting for you to put her in a good 
 one.'' 
 
 "Would either good or bad last ten minutes? — you 
 know her : I do not, but I should doubt it." 
 
 1 he Due arranged the fur collar of his coat. 
 
 "8he is a woman, and rich; too rich, if one can say 
 so. Of course she has her caprices " 
 
 Delia Rocca shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "She is very handsome. But she does not interest 
 
 me." 
 
 The Due smiled, and glanced at him. 
 
 "Then you probably interested her. It is much 
 be'ter }0u should not be interested Men who are 
 interested may blunder." 
 
 " She is vain, — she is selfish, — she is arrogant," said 
 Delia Rocca, with great decision. 
 
 " Oh ho ! — all that you find out already ? You did 
 not amuse her long ? " 
 
 " C'est une fern me exageree en tout," pursued Delia 
 Rocca, disregarding. 
 
 " No ! Exaggeration is vulgar, — is bad taste. Her 
 taste is excellent, — unexceptionable " 
 
 " Exag6ree en tout !" repeated Delia Rocca, with 
 much emphasis. " Dress, — -jewels, — habits, — temper. 
 — everything. She had three hundred pots of flowers 
 in her room !" 
 
 " Flower-pots, pooh ! that is English. It is very 
 
 odd," pursued the Due, pensively, " but they really do 
 like the smell of flowers." 
 
 "Only because they cost so much to rear in their fogs.
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 21 
 
 If they were common as with us, they would throw 
 them out of the window as we do." 
 
 "Nevertheless, send her three hundred pots more. 
 II faut comraencer la cour, mon cher." 
 
 Delia Rocca looked out into the rain. 
 
 "I have no inclination; I dislike a woman of the 
 world." 
 
 The Due chuckled a little. 
 
 "Ah, ah ! since when, caro mio?" 
 
 "There is no simplicity; there is no innocence; 
 there is no sincerity " 
 
 " Bah !" said the Due, with much disdain ; " I do 
 not know where you have got those new ideas, nor do 
 I think they are your own at all. Have you fallen in 
 love with a 'jeune Mees' with apple-red cheeks and 
 sweetmeats in her pocket? Simplicity, — innocence, — 
 sincerity. Very pretty. Our old friend of a million 
 vaudevilles, L'Ingenue. We all know her. What is 
 she in real truth ? — A swaddled bundle of Ignorance. 
 Cut the swaddling-band — ugh ! and Ignorance flies to 
 Knowledge as Eve did, only Ignorance does not want 
 to know good and evil : the evil contents her: she stops 
 short at that. Yes, yes, L'Ingenue will marry you that 
 she may read Zola and Belot ; that she may go to La 
 Biche au Bois ; that she may smoke cigars with young 
 men ; that she may have her dresses cut half-way down 
 her spine ; that she may romp like a half-drunk harlot 
 in all the cotillons of the year ! Whereas your woman 
 of the world, if well chosen " 
 
 " Will have done all these things beforehand at some 
 one else's expense, and will have tired of them, — or 
 not have tired; of the display of spine and of the co-
 
 22 ^^V A WIXTER CITY. 
 
 tillon she will certainly never have tired unless she be 
 fifty " 
 
 " That is not precisely what I mean," said the Due, 
 caressing his small white moustache. " No ; I said well 
 chosen, — well chosen. What it can matter to you 
 whether your wife smokes with young men, or reads 
 bad novels, or romps till breakfast, I do not see my- 
 self. There is a natural destiny for husbands. The 
 unwise fret over it, the wise profit by it. But, con- 
 sidering that you dislike these things in your own wife, 
 however much you like and admire them in the wives 
 of other persons, I would still say, avoid our friend of 
 a million vaudevilles, — la petite Mees de seize ans. 
 Ignorance is not innocence ; it is a great mistake to 
 suppose that it even secures it. Your Mces would seize 
 
 Belot and Zola a la reveille des noces . Miladi, 
 
 yonder, for instance, when they come to her from her 
 bookseller's, throws them aside, unread " 
 
 "There was a book of Zola's on her table to- 
 day " 
 
 " I would bet ten thousand francs that she had not 
 gone beyond the title-page," interrupted the Due, with 
 petulance. " Taste, mon cher Delia E-occa, is the only 
 sure guarantee in these matters. Women, believe me, 
 never have any principle. Principle is a backbone, 
 and no woman — except bodily — ever possesses an) 
 backbone. Their priests and their teachers and their 
 mothers fill them with doctrines and conventionalities, 
 — all mere things of word and wind. No woman has 
 any settled principles ; if she have any vague ones, it 
 is the uttermost she ever reaches, and those can always 
 bt overturned by any man who has any influence over
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 23 
 
 her. But Taste Is another matter altogether. A woman 
 whose taste is excellent is preserved from all eccentrici- 
 ties and most follies. You never see a woman of good 
 sense ajicher her improprieties or advertise her liaisons 
 as women of vulgarity do. Nay, if her taste be perfect, 
 though she have weaknesses, I doubt if she will ever 
 have vices. Vice will seem to her like a gaudy color, 
 or too much gold braid, or very large plaids, or buttons 
 as big as saucers, or anything else such as vulgar women 
 like. Fastidiousness, at any rate, is very good posticlie 
 for modesty : it is always decent, it can never be coarse. 
 Good taste, inherent and ingrained, natural and culti- 
 vated, cannot alter. Principles — ouf ! — they go on and 
 off like a slipper ; but good taste is indestructible ; it is 
 a compass that never errs. If your wife have it — well, 
 it is possible she may be false to you ; slie is human, 
 she is feminine ; but she w\\\ never make you ridiculous, 
 she will never compromise you, and she will not romp 
 in a cotillon till the morning sun shows the paint on 
 her face washed away in the rain of her perspiration. 
 Virtue is, after all, as Mme. de Montespan said, une 
 chose tout purement g^ographique. It varies with the 
 hemisphere like the human skin and the human hair ; 
 what is vile in one latitude is harmless in another. No 
 philosophic person can put any trust in a thing which 
 merely depends upon climate ; but Good Taste " 
 
 The cab stopped at the Club, and the Due in his 
 disquisition. 
 
 " Va faire la cour," he said, paternally, to his com- 
 panion as they went through the doors of their Cercle. 
 " I can assure you, mon cher, that the taste of Miladi 
 is perfect."
 
 24 J^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " In dress, perhaps," assented Delia Rocca. 
 
 " In everything. Va faire la conr." 
 
 Paolo, Duca del la Kocca, was a very handsome man, 
 of the finest and the most delicate type of beauty ; he 
 was very tall, and he carried himself with state! iness and 
 grace ; his face was grave, pensive, and poetic ; in the 
 largest assembly people who were strangers to him 
 always looked at him, and asked, " Who is that ?" 
 
 He was the head of a family, very ancient and dis- 
 tinguished, but very impoverished ; in wars and civil 
 war all their possessions had drifted away from them 
 piece by piece : hence he Avas a great noble on a slender 
 pittance. It had always been said to him, and of him, 
 as a matter of course, that he would mend his position 
 by espousing a large fortune, and he had been brought 
 up to regard such a transaction in the light of a painful 
 but inevitable destiny. 
 
 But, although he was now thirty-eight years of age, 
 he had never seen, among the many young persons 
 pointed out to him as possessing millions, any one to 
 whom he could prevail upon himself to sell his old 
 name and title. 
 
 The Great Republic inspires, as it is well known, a 
 passion for social and titular distinctions in its enter- 
 prising sons and daughters, which is, to the original 
 flunkeyism of the mother country, as a Gloire de Dijon 
 to a dog-rose, as a Reine Claude to a common blue 
 plum. Nor are the pretty virgins whom the Atlantic 
 wafts across in any way afflicted with delicacy or hesi- 
 tation if they can but see their way to getting what 
 they want; and they strike the hargain, or their 
 mothers do so lor them, with a cynical candor as to
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 25 
 
 their object which would almost stagger the manager 
 of a Bureau de Mariage. 
 
 Many and various were the gold-laden damsels of 
 the West who were offered, or offered themselves, to 
 him. But he could not induce himself; his pride, or 
 his taste, or his hereditary instincts, were too strong 
 for him to be able to ally himself with rag- and bone- 
 merchants from New York, or oil-strikers from Penn- 
 sylvania, or speculators from Wall Street. 
 
 No doubt it was very weak of him ; a dozen men of 
 the great old races of Europe married thus every year ; 
 but Paolo della Rocca loved his name as a soldier does 
 his flag, and he could not brave the idea of possibly 
 transmitting to his children traits and taints of untrace- 
 able or ignoble inherited influences. 
 
 Over and over again he allowed himself to be the 
 subject of discussion among those ladies whose especial 
 pleasure it is to arrange this sort of matters ; but when 
 from discussion it had been ready to pass into action, he 
 had always murmured to his match-making friend, — 
 
 " A little more time ! — next year." 
 
 " Bah ! ce n'est qu'une affaire de notaire," said his 
 special protectress in these matters, a still charming 
 Russian ex-ambassadress, who constantly wintered in 
 Floralia, and who, having had him as a lover when he 
 was twenty and she was thirty, felt quite a maternal 
 interest in him still as to his marriage and prospects. 
 
 Della Rocca was too much a man of the world and 
 
 of his country not to be well aware that she spoke the 
 
 truth ; it was only an affair for the notaries, like any 
 
 other barter ; still, he put it off; it would have to be 
 
 done one day, but there was no haste, — there would 
 B 3
 
 26 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 always be heiresses willing and eager to become the 
 Duchess flella Rocca, Princess of Palraarola, and Mar- 
 chioness of Tavignano, as his roll of old titles ran. 
 
 And so year by year had gone by, and he vaguely 
 imagined that he M'ould in time meet what he wanted 
 without any drawbacks : a delusion common to every 
 one, and realized by no one. 
 
 Meanwhile, the life he led, if somewhat purposeless, 
 was not disagreeable ; being an Italian, he could live 
 like a gentleman, with simplicity, and no effort to con- 
 ceal his lack of riches, and did not think his dignity 
 imperiled because he did not get into debt for the sake 
 of display; he would dine frugally without thinking 
 himself dishonored ; refuse to join in play without 
 feeling degraded ; and look the finest gentleman in 
 Europe without owing his tailor a bill. 
 
 For other matters he was somewhat desoeuvre. He 
 had fought, like most other young men of that time, 
 in the campaign of '59, but the result disappointed 
 him ; and he was at heart too honest and too disdainful 
 to find any place for himself in that struggle between 
 cunning and corruption of which the political life of 
 our regenerated Italy is at present composed. Besides, 
 he was also too indolent. So for his amusement he 
 went to the world, and chiefly to the world of great 
 ladies ; and for his duties made sufficient for himself 
 out of the various interests of the neglected old estates 
 which he had inherited ; for the rest he was a man of 
 the world ; that he had a perfect manner, all society 
 knew ; whether he had character as well, nobody cared ; 
 that he had a heart at all, was only known to himself, 
 his peasantry, and a few women.
 
 7^Y A WINTER CITi\ 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The next morning the sun shone brilliantly; the 
 sky was blue ; the wind was a very gentle breeze from 
 the sea; her breakfast chocolate was well made; the 
 tea-roses and the heliotrope almost hid the magenta 
 furniture and the gilded plaster consoles and the staring 
 mirrors. They had sent her in a new story of Octave 
 Feuillet; M. de St. Louis had forwarded her a new 
 volume of charming verse by Sully Prudhomme, only 
 sold on the Boulevards two days before, with a note of 
 such grace and wit that it ought to have been addressed 
 to Elysium for ]\Ime. de Sevigne ; the post brought her 
 only one letter, which announced that her brother, Lord 
 Clairvaux, would come thither to please her, after the 
 Newmarket Spring Meeting, or perhaps before, since 
 he had to see "Major Fridolin" in Paris. 
 
 On the whole, the next morning Lady Hilda, look- 
 ing out of the hotel window, decided to stay in Floralia. 
 
 She ordered her carriage out early, and drove hither 
 and thither to enjoy tranquilly the innumerable treas- 
 ures of all the arts in which the city of Floralia is so 
 rich. 
 
 A Monsignore whom she knew well, learned, without 
 pedantry, and who united the more vivacious accom- 
 plishments of the virtuoso to the polished softness of 
 the churchman, accompanied her. The Clairvaux 
 people from time immemorial had been good Catholics. 
 
 Lady Hilda for her part never troubled her head
 
 28 1^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 about those things, but she thought unbelief was very 
 bad form, and that to throw over your family religion 
 was an impertinence to your ancestors. Some things in 
 the ceremonials of her church grated on her sesthetio 
 and artistic ideas, but then these things she attributed 
 to the general decadence of the whole age in taste. 
 
 Her Monsignore went home to luncheon with her, 
 and made himself as agreeable as a courtly churchman 
 always is to every one ; and afterwards she studied the 
 Penal Settlement more closely by calling on those 
 leaders of it whose cards lay in a heap in her anteroom, 
 and amused herself with its mind and manners, its 
 attributes and antecedents. 
 
 "After all, the only people in any country that one 
 can trust oneself to know are the natives of it," she said 
 to herself, as she went to the weekly " day" of the in- 
 finitely charming Marchesa del Trasimene, nata Da 
 Bolsena, where she met Delia Rocca and M. de St. 
 Louis, as everybody meets everybody else, morning, 
 afternoon, and evening, fifty times in the twenty-four 
 hours in Floralia, the results being antipathy or sym- 
 pathy in a fatal degree. 
 
 In her gyrations she herself excited extreme atten- 
 tion and endless envy, especially in the breasts of those 
 unhappy outsiders whom she termed the Penal Settle- 
 ment. 
 
 There was something about her! — Worth, Pingat, 
 and La Ferriere dressed the Penal Settlement, or it said 
 they did. Carlo Maremma always swore that there 
 was a little dressmaker who lived opposite his stable 
 who could have told sad truths about many of these 
 Paris -born toilettes; but no doubt Maremma was
 
 7.V A WINTER CITF. 29 
 
 wrong, because men know nothing about these tilings, 
 and are not aware that a practiced eye can tell the 
 sweep of Worth's scissors under the shoulder-blades as 
 surely as a connoisseur recognizes the hand of Boule or 
 Vernis Martin on a cabinet or an etui. At any rate, 
 the Penal Settlement swore it was adorned by \Yorth, 
 Piugat, and La Ferriere in all the glories and eccen- 
 tricities imaginable of confections, unies and melangees, 
 Directoire and Premier Empire, Juive and Louis 
 Quinze ; and if talking about a theory could prove it, 
 certainly they proved that they bore all Paris on their 
 persons. 
 
 But there was something about her — it was difficult 
 to say what ; perhaps it was in the tip of her Pompa- 
 dour boot, or perhaps it hid in the back widths of her 
 skirt, or perhaps it lurked in the black sable fur of her 
 dolman, — but a something that made them feel there 
 was a gulf, never to be passed, between them and this 
 world-famed elegante. 
 
 Lady Hilda would have said her secret lay in her 
 always being just a quarter of an hour in advance of 
 the fashion. She was always the first person to be seen 
 in what six weeks afterwards was the rage ; and when 
 the rage came, then Lady Hilda had dropped the fash- 
 ion. Hence she was the perpetual despair of all her 
 sex, — a distinction which she was quite human enough 
 to enjoy in a contemptuous sort of way ; as contempt- 
 uous of herself as of others; for she had a certain 
 vague generosity and largeness of mind wdiich lifted 
 her above mean and small emotions in general. 
 
 She had been steeped in the world, as people call that 
 
 combination of ennui, cxcitemeut, selfishness, fatigue, 
 
 3*
 
 30 1^^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 and glitter, wliicli forms tlie various delights of mod- 
 ern existence, till it had penetrated her through and 
 through as a petrifying stream does the supple bough 
 put in it. But there were little corners in her mind 
 which the petrifaction had not reached. 
 
 This morning — it was half-past five o'clock in a 
 November afternoon, and pitch dark, but of course it 
 was morning still, as nobody had dined, the advent of 
 soup and sherry bringing the only meridian recognized 
 in society — the Lady Hilda refreshed with a cup of 
 tea from the samovar of her friend the Princess Olga 
 SchouvalofF, who came yearly to her palace in the his- 
 torical river-street of historical Floralia, and having 
 been assured by Princess Olga that if they kept quite 
 among themselves and never knew anybody else but 
 the Floralian Russian and German nobility, and stead- 
 fastly refused to allow anybody else to be presented to 
 them, Floralia was bearable, — nay, even really agree- 
 able, — she got into her coupe, and was driven through 
 the gloom to her hotel. 
 
 Her head servant made her two announcements: — 
 Madame de Caviare had arrived that morning, and 
 hoped to see her before dinner. 
 
 Lady Hilda's brows frowned a little. 
 
 The Duca della Rocca had sent these flowers. 
 
 Lady Hilda's eyes smiled a little. 
 
 They were only some cyclamens fresh from the coun- 
 try, in moss. She had regretted to him the day before 
 that those lovely simple wood flowers could not be 
 found in florists' shops nor in flower-women's baskets. 
 
 After all, she said to herself, it did not matter that 
 Mila had come, she was silly and not very proper,
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 31 
 
 and a nuisance altogether; but Mila was responsible 
 for her own sins, and sometimes could be amusing. 
 So the Lady Hilda, in a good-humored and serene 
 frame of mind, crossed the corridor to the apartments 
 lier cousin had taken just opposite to her own. 
 
 "He is certainly very striking-looking, — like a Van- 
 dyke picture," she thought to herself, irrelevantly, as 
 she tapped at her cousin's door ; those cyclamens had 
 pleased her ; yet she had let thousands of the loveliest 
 and costliest bouquets wither in her anteroom every 
 year of her life, without deigning to ask or heed who 
 were even the senders of them. 
 
 " Come in, if it's you, dear," said Madame Mila, un- 
 grammatically and vaguely, in answer to the tap. 
 
 The Countess de Caviare was an Englishwoman, and 
 a cousin, one of the great West country Trehillyons 
 whom everybody knows, her mother having been a 
 Clairvaux. She had been grandly married in her first 
 season to a very high and mighty and almost imperial 
 Russian, himself a most good-humored and popular 
 person, who killed all his horses with fast driving, gam- 
 bled very heavily, and never amused himself anywhere 
 so well as in the little low dancing-places round Paris. 
 
 Madame ISIila, as her friends always called her, was 
 as pretty a little woman as could be imagined, who 
 enameled herself to such perfection that she had a lace 
 of fifteen, on the most fashionable and wonderfully 
 costumed of bodies; she was very fond of her cousin 
 Hilda, because she could borrow so much money of 
 her, and she had come to Floralia this winter because 
 in Paris there was a rumor that she had cheated at 
 cards, — fidse, of course, but still odious.
 
 32 AV A WINTER CITr. 
 
 If slie had made a little pencil-mark on some of the 
 aces, where was the harm in that ? 
 
 She almost always played with the same people, and 
 they had won heaps of money of her. Whilst those 
 horrid creatures in the city and on the bourse were 
 allowed to " rig the market," and nobody thought the 
 worse of them for spreading false news to send their 
 shares up or down, wliy should not one poor little 
 woman try to help on Chance a little bit at play? 
 
 She was always in debt, though she admitted that 
 her husband alloAved her liberally. She had eighty 
 thousand francs a year by her settlements to spend on 
 herself, and he gave her another fifty thousand to do 
 as she pleased with : on the whole, about one-half what 
 he allowed to Blanche Souris, of the Chateau-Gaillard 
 theatre. 
 
 She had had six children : three were living and three 
 were dead ; she thought herself a good mother, because 
 she gave her wet-nurses ever so many silk gowns, and 
 when she wanted the children for a fancy ball or a 
 drive, always saw that they were faultlessly dressed ; 
 and, besides, she always took them to Trouville. 
 
 She had never had any grief in her life, except the 
 loss of the Second Empire ; and even that she got over 
 vvhen she found that flying the Red Cross flag had 
 saved her hotel, without so much as a teacup being 
 broken in it, that MM. Worth and Offenbach were 
 safe from all bullets, and that society under the Sep- 
 tennate promised to be every bit as leste as under the 
 Empire. 
 
 In a word, Madame Mila was a type of the women 
 of hof time.
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 33 
 
 The women who go semi-nude in an age which has 
 begun to discover that the nude in sculpture is very 
 immoral; who discuss "Tue-la" in a generation which 
 decrees Moliere to be coarse, and Beaumont and 
 Fletcher indecent ; who have the Journal pour Rire on 
 their tables in a day when no one who respects them- 
 selves would name the Harlot's Progress ; who read 
 Gautier and Baudelaire in an era which finds " Don 
 Juan" gross, and Shakspeare far too plain ; who strain 
 all their energies to rival Miles. Rose The and La 
 Petite Boulotte in everything ; who go shrimping or 
 oyster-hunting on fashionable sea-shores, with their 
 legs bare to the knee ; who go to the mountains with 
 confections, high heels, and gold-tipped canes, shriek 
 over their gambling as the dawn reddens over the Alps, 
 and know no more of the glories of earth and sky, of 
 sunrise and sunset, than do the porcelain pots that hold 
 their paint, or the silver dressing-box that carries their 
 hair-dye. 
 
 Women who are in convulsions one day and on the 
 top of a drag the next ; who are in hysterics for their 
 lovers at noonday and in ecstasies over baccarat at 
 midnight ; who laugh in little nooks together over each 
 other's immoralities, and have a moral code so elastic 
 that it will pardon anything except innocence; who 
 gossip over each other's dresses, and each other's pas- 
 sions, in the selfsame self-satisfied chirp of content- 
 ment, and who never resent anything on earth, except 
 any eccentric suggestion that life could be anything 
 except a per})etual fete a la Watteau in a perpetual 
 blaze of lime-lii>;ht. 
 
 Pain ? — Are there not chloral and a flattering doc- 
 
 B* c
 
 34 -^^V A WINTER CI TV. 
 
 tor ? Sorrow ? — Are there not a course at the Baths, 
 })lay at Monte Carlo, and new cases from Worth? 
 Shame ? — Is it not a famine-fever which never comes 
 near a well-laden table? Old Age? — Are there not 
 white and red paint, and heads of dead hair, and even 
 false bosoms? Death? — Well, no doubt there is death, 
 but they do not realize it; they hardly believe in it, 
 they think about it so little. 
 
 There is something unknown somewhere to fall on 
 fchem some day that they dread vaguely, for they are 
 terrible cowards. But they worry as little about it as 
 possible. They give the millionth part of what they 
 possess away in its name to whatever church they be- 
 long to, and they think they have arranged quite com- 
 fortably for all possible contingencies hereafter. 
 
 If it makes things safe, they will head bazaars for 
 the poor, or wear black in Holy Week, turn lottery- 
 wheels for charity, or put on fancy dresses in the name 
 of benevolence, or do any little amiable trifle of that 
 sort. But as for changing their lives, — pas si Mte ! 
 
 A bird in the hand they hold worth two in the bush ; 
 and though your birds may be winged on strong desire, 
 and your bush the burning portent of Moses, they will 
 have none of them. 
 
 These women are not at all bad ; oh, no ! they are 
 like sheep, that is all. If it were fashionable to be 
 virtuous, very likely they would be so. If it were 
 cMg to be devout, no doubt they would ])ass their life 
 on their knees. But, as it is, they knoAV that a flavor 
 of vice is as necessary to their reputation as gn^t 
 ladies, as sorrel-leaves to soupe h la bonne femme. 
 They afiect a license if they take it not.
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 35 
 
 They are like the barber, who said, with much pride, 
 to Voltaire, " Je ne suis qu'un pauvre diable de perru- 
 quier, mais je ne crois pas en Dieu plus que les autres." 
 
 They may be worth very little, but they are desper- 
 ately afraid that you should make such a mistake as tc 
 think them worth anything at all. You are not likely, 
 if you know them. Still, they are apprehensive. 
 
 Though one were to arise from the dead to preach to 
 them, they would only make of him a nine days' won- 
 der, and then laugh a little, and yawn a little, and go 
 on in their own paths. 
 
 Out of the eater came forth sweetness, and from evil 
 there may be begotten good ; but out of nullity there 
 can only come nullity. They have wadded their ears, 
 and though Jeremiah wailed of desolation, or Isaiah 
 thundered the wrath of heaven, they would not hear, — 
 they would go on looking at each other's dresses. 
 
 What could Paul himself say that would change 
 them? 
 
 You cannot make saw-dust into marble ; you cannot 
 make sea-sand into gold. " Let us alone," is all they 
 ask ; and it is all that you could do, though the force 
 and flame of Horeb were in you. 
 
 Mila, Countess de Caviare, having arrived early in 
 the morning and remained invisible all day, had awak- 
 ened at five to a cup of tea, an exquisite dressing-gown, 
 and her choicest enamel ; she now gave many bird-like 
 kisses to her cousin, heaped innumerable endearments 
 upon her, and, hearing there was nothing to do, sent 
 out for a box at the French Theatre. 
 
 " It is wretched acting," said the Lady Hilda ; " I 
 went the other night, but I did iMit stay half an hour."
 
 36 I^ ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 "That of course, ma chere," said Madame Milaj 
 " but we shall be sure to see people we know, — heaps 
 of people." 
 
 " Such as they are," said the Lady Hilda. 
 
 " At any rate, it is better than spending an evening 
 alone. I never spent an evening alone in my life," 
 said Mme. de Caviare, who could no more live without 
 a crowd about her than she could sleep without chloro- 
 dyne, or put a petticoat on without two or three maids' 
 assistance. 
 
 The French company in Floralia is usually about the 
 average of the weakly patchwork troops of poor actors 
 that pass on third-rate little stages in the French depart- 
 ments; but Floralia, feminine and fashionable, flocks to 
 the French company because it can rely on something 
 tant soil peu hazards, and is quite sure not to be bored 
 with decency, and if by any oversight or bad taste the 
 management should put any serious sort of piece on 
 the stage, it can always turn its back to the stage and 
 whisper to its lovers or chatter shrilly to its allies. 
 
 They went into their box as the second act ended of 
 " Mme. de Scabreuse," — a play of the period, written 
 by a celebrated author, in w^hich the lady married her 
 nephew, and finding out that he was enamored of her 
 daughter, the offspring of a first marriage, bought 
 poison for them both, and then, suddenly changing her 
 mind, with magnificent magnanimity drank it herself, 
 and blessed the lovers as she died in great agonies. 
 
 It had been brought out in Paris with enormous 
 success, and as Lady Hilda and the countess had both 
 Been it half a dozen times they could take no interest 
 in it.
 
 JN A WINTER CITV. 37 
 
 "You would come!" said the former, raising her 
 eyebrows and seating herself so as to see nothing 
 whatever of the stage and as little as possible of the 
 house. 
 
 " Of course," replied Madame Mila, whose lorgnon 
 was ranging hither and thither, like a general's sj>y- 
 glass before a battle. " There was nothing else to do ; 
 at least you said there was nothing. Look ! some of 
 those women have actually got the ceuf de Paques cor- 
 sage — good heaven ! — those went out last year, utterly, 
 utterly ! Ah, there is Lucia San Luca, — what big 
 emeralds ! — and tliere is Maria Castelfidardo : how old 
 she is looking ! That is Lady Featherleigh : you re- 
 member that horrid scandal? — Yes, I hear they do 
 visit her here. How handsome Luisa Ottosecooli looks ! 
 powder becomes her so ; her son is a pretty boy, — oh, 
 you never stoop to boys; you are wrong; nothing 
 amuses one like a boy; hoiu they believe in one! There 
 is that Canadian woman who tried to get into notice in 
 Paris two seasons ago, — you remember? — they make her 
 quite cr^rae in this place, — the idea ! She is dressed 
 very well : I dare say if she were always dumb she 
 might pass. She never would have been heard of even 
 here, only Altavante pushed her right and left, bribed 
 the best people to her parties, and induced all his other 
 tendresses to send her cards. In love ! of course not ! 
 Who is in love with a face like a Mohican squaw's and 
 a squeak like a goose's ? But they are immensely rich ; 
 at least they have mountains of ready money ; he must 
 have suffered dreadfully before he made her dress well. 
 Teach her grammar, in any language, he never will. 
 There is the old Duchesse — why, she was a centenarian
 
 38 /-V A ]Vh\TEIi CI TV. 
 
 when Ave were babies — but they say she plays every 
 atom as keenly as ever ; nobody can beat lier for lace, 
 either — look at that Spanish point. There are a few 
 decent people here this winter; not many, though ; I 
 think it would have been wiser to have stopped at 
 Nice. Ah, mon cher, comment ya va? — tell me, 
 Maurice, who is that woman in black with good dia- 
 monds, there, with Sanpierdareno and San Marco ?" 
 
 " Maurice," pressing her pretty hand, sank down on 
 to the hard bench behind her arm-chair and insinuated 
 gracefully that the woman in black with good diamonds 
 was not "d'un vertu assez fort" to be noticed by or 
 described to such ladies as Mila, Countess de Caviare, 
 but, since identification of her was insisted on, pro- 
 ceeded to confess that she was no less a person than the 
 wild Duke of Stirling's Gloria. 
 
 " Ah ! is that Gloria ?" said Madame, with the keen- 
 est interest, bringing her lorgnon to bear instantly. 
 " How curious ! I never chanced to see her before. 
 How quiet she looks, and how plainly she is dressed !" 
 
 " I am afraid we have left Gloria and her class no 
 other way of being singular!" said the Lady Hilda, 
 who had muttered her welcome somewhat coldly to 
 Maurice. 
 
 Maurice, Vicomte des Gommeux, was a young 
 Parisian^ famous for leading cotillons and driving pie- 
 balds; he followed Mme. de Caviare with the regu- 
 larity of her afternoon shadow, was as much an institu- 
 tion with her as her anodynes, and much more useful 
 than her courier. To avoid all appearances that might 
 set a wicked world talking, he generally arrived in a 
 city about twenty-four hours after her, and, as she was
 
 /-V A WINTER CITY. 39 
 
 a woman of good breeding who insisted on les m(ew8, 
 always went to anotlier hotel. He had held his present 
 post actually so long as three years, and there were as 
 yet no signs of his being dismissed and replaced, for 
 he was very devoted, very obedient, very weak, saw 
 nothing that he was intended not to see, and was very 
 adroit at rolling cigarettes. 
 
 "II est si bon enfant!" said the Count de Caviare to 
 everybody ; he really was grateful to the young man, 
 some of Aviiose predecessors had much disturbed his 
 wife's temper and his own personal peace. 
 
 " Bonsoir, mesdaraes," said the Due de St. Louis, 
 entering the box. "Comtosse, charme de vous voir 
 — Miladi, h vos pieds. What a wretched creature that 
 is playing Julie de Seabreuse! I blush for my country. 
 When I was a young man, the smallest theatre iu 
 France would not have endured that woman. There 
 was a public then with proper feeling for the histrionic 
 as for every other art ; a bad gesture or a false intona- 
 tion was hissed by every audience, were that audi- 
 ence only composed of workmen and work-girls; but 
 now " 
 
 "May one enter, mesdames?" asked his friend, Delia 
 Rocca. 
 
 " One may, — if you will only shut the door. Thanks 
 for the cyclamens," said the Lady Hilda, with a little 
 of the weariness going off her delicate, proud face. 
 
 Delia Rocca took the seat behind her, as the slave 
 Maurice surrendered his to M. de St. Louis. 
 
 " Happy flowers ! I found them in my own woods 
 this morning," he said, as he took his seat. " You do 
 not seem much amused, madame."
 
 40 Jy A WINTER CITV. 
 
 (( 
 
 •Amused! The play is odious. Even poor Deselee's 
 genius could only give it a horrible fascination." 
 "It has the worst fault of all, it is unnatural." 
 "Yes; it is very curious, but the French will have 
 so much vice in the drama, and the English must have 
 so much virtue, that a natural or possible play is an 
 impossibility now upon either stage." 
 
 " You looked more interested in the majolica this 
 
 morning " 
 
 " How ! did you see me ?" 
 
 "I was passing through the tower of the Podesta on 
 business. Is it not wonderful our old pottery ! It is 
 intensely to be regretted that Ginori and Carocci imitate 
 it so closely ; it vulgarizes a thing whose chief beauty 
 after all is association and age." 
 
 "Yes; what charm there is in a marriage plate of 
 ]\Iaestro Giorgio's, or a sweetmeat-dish of your Orazio 
 Fontana's ! But there is very scanty pleasure in repro- 
 ductions of them, however clever these may be, such as 
 Pietro Gay sends out to Paris and Vienna Exhibitions." 
 
 "You mean, there can be no mind in an imitation?' 
 
 "Of course; I would rather have the crudest origi- 
 nal thing than the mere galvanism of the corpse of a 
 dead genius. I Avould give a thousand paintings by 
 Froment, Damousse, or any of the finest living artists 
 of S&vres, for one Y>'iece by old Van der Meer of Delft ; 
 but I would prefer a painting on Sevres done yesterday 
 by Froment or Damousse, or even any nnich less famous 
 worker, provided only it had originality in it, to the 
 best reproduction of a Van der Meer that modern manu- 
 facturers could j)roduce." 
 
 "I think you are right; but I fear our old pot*<iry-
 
 IX A WINTER CITY. 41 
 
 painters were not very original. They copied from the 
 pictures and engravings of Mantegna, Eatfuelle, Marc- 
 antonio, Marco di Ravenna, Beatricius, and a score of 
 others." 
 
 "The application was original, and the sentiment 
 they brought to it. Those old artists put so much 
 heart into their work." 
 
 " Because when they painted a stemma on the glaze 
 they had still feudal faith in nobility, and when they 
 painted a Madonna or Ecce Homo they had still child- 
 like belief in divinity. What does the pottery-painter 
 of to-day care for the coat of arms or the religious sub- 
 ject he may be commissioned to execute for a dinner- 
 service or a chapel ? It may be admirable painting, — if 
 you give a very high price, — but it will still be only 
 manufacture." 
 
 " Then what pleasant lives those pottery-painters of 
 the early days must have led ! They were never long 
 stationary. They wandered about decorating at their 
 fancy, now here and now there, — now a vase for a 
 pharmacy, and now a stove for a king. You find 
 German names on Italian ware, and Italian names 
 on Flemish gres ; the Nuremberger would work in 
 Venice, the Dutchman would work in Rouen." 
 
 "Sometimes, however, they were accused of sorcery; 
 the great potter, Hans Kraut, you remember, was 
 feared by his townsmen as possessed by the devil, and 
 was buried ignominiously outside the gates, in his nook 
 of the Black Forest. But on the whole they were 
 happy, no doubt, — men of simple habits and of worthy 
 lives." 
 
 "You care for art yourself, M. Delia Rocca?" 
 
 4*
 
 42 ^^' A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Tliere came a gleam of interest in her handsome, 
 languid hazel eyes, as she turned them upon him. 
 
 " Every Italian does," he answered her. " I do not 
 think we are ever, or I think, if ever, very seldom, 
 connoisseurs in the way that your Englishman and 
 Frenchman is so. We are never very learned as to 
 styles and dates; we cannot boast the huckster's eye of 
 the Northern bric-a-brac hunter : it is quite another 
 thing with us ; we love art as children their nurses' 
 tales and cradle-songs ; it is a familiar affection with 
 us, and affection is never very analytical ; the Robbia 
 over the cha})el-door, the apostle-pot that the men in 
 the stables drink out of, the Sodoma or the Beato 
 Angelico that hangs before our eyes daily as we dine, 
 the old bronze secchia that we wash our hands in as 
 boys in the loggia, — these are all so homely and dear 
 to us that w'e grow up with a love for them all as 
 natural as our love for our mothers. You will say the 
 children of all rich people see beautiful and ancient 
 things from their birth ; so they do, but not as we see 
 them : here they are too often degraded to the basest 
 household uses, and made no more account of than the 
 dust which gathers on them ; but that very neglect of 
 them makes them the more kindred to us. Art else- 
 where is the guest of the salon, — with us she is the 
 playmate of the infant and the serving-maid of the 
 peasant : the mules may drink from an Etruscan sar- 
 cophagus, and the pigeons be fed from a patina of the 
 twelfth century." 
 
 Lady Hilda listened with the look of awakened in- 
 terest still in her large eyes; he spoke in his own tongue, 
 and with feeling and grace: it was new to her to find
 
 I\ A WINTER CITV. 4^ 
 
 a mnn willi whom art was an emotion instead of an 
 oj)ini()n. 
 
 Tlie art world she had met with Avas one that was 
 very positive, very eclectic, very hypercritical, very 
 highly cnltured ; it had many theories and elegant 
 ])hrases; it laid down endless doctrines, and fonnd 
 pleasure in endless disputations. Whenever she had 
 tired of the world of fashion, this was the world she 
 had turned to ; it had imbued her with knowledge of 
 art, and immeasurable contempt for those to whom art 
 was a dead letter; but art had remained with her rather 
 an intellectual dissipation than a tenderness of senti- 
 ment. 
 
 " As you care for these things, madame," continued 
 Delia Rocca, with hesitation, " might I one day hope 
 that you would honor my poor villa? It has little else 
 left in it, but there are still a few rare pieces of Gubbio 
 and Urbino and Faenza, and I have a Calvary which, 
 if not by Lucca himself, is certainly by Andrea della 
 Robbia." 
 
 "I shall be glad to see them. Your villa is near?" 
 
 " About ten miles' distance, up in the hills. It was 
 once a great stronghold as well as palace. Now it can 
 boast no interest save such as may go with fallen for- 
 tunes. For more than a century we have been too poor 
 to be able to do any more than keep wind and water 
 out of it ; and it had been cleared before my time of 
 almost everything of value. Happily, however, the 
 chestmit woods outside it have not been touched. They 
 shroud its nakedness." 
 
 "Your villa, Delia Rocca?" cried Madame de Ca- 
 viare, who had known him for several years. "I have
 
 44 I^' -^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 never seen it ; we will drive out there some clay when 
 the cold winds are gone " 
 
 " Vous me comblez de bontes," he answered, with a 
 low bow. " Alas, madame, there is very little that will 
 repay you : it is hardly more than a ruin. But if you 
 and Miladi will indeed honor it " 
 
 " It is a very fine place still," said the Due de St. 
 Louis, a little impatiently. " It has suffered in sieges, 
 and is by so much the more interesting. For myself, 
 I endure very much pain from having a whole house, 
 and one built no later than 1730. My great-grandfather 
 pulled down the noble old castle, built at the same time 
 as Chateau-Gaillard, — imagine the barbarism ! — and 
 employed the ponderous rocaille of Oppenord to replace 
 it. It is very curious, but loss of taste in the nobles 
 has always been followed by a revolution of the mob. 
 The decadence always ushers in the democracy." 
 
 " We may well be threatened, then, in this day with 
 universal equality !" said the Lady Hilda, hiding a very 
 small yawn behind her fan. 
 
 " Nay, madame," said Delia Rocca. " In this day 
 the nobles do not even do so much as to lead a wrong 
 taste ; they accept and adopt every form of it, as im- 
 posed on them by their tailors, their architects, their 
 clubs, and their municipalities, as rocaille was imposed 
 by the cabinet-makers." 
 
 " How fearfully serious you all are !*' said Madame 
 de Caviare. " There is that dreadful Canadian woman 
 standing up, — what rubies ! — how fond vulgar women 
 always are of rubies ! That pa^se-partout of hers is 
 rather pretty ; gold thread on blondine satin, is it not, 
 Hilda ? My glass is not very strong "
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 45 
 
 Lady Hilda looked through her glass, and decided 
 the important point in the affirmative. 
 
 " How she is rouged !" pursued the countess. " 1 
 am sure Altavante did not lay that on ; he is much too 
 artistic. Maurice, have you a cigarette ?" 
 
 " It is not allowed, ma chere," said the Lady Hilda, 
 
 " Pooh !" said Madame de Caviare, accepting a little 
 delicate paper roll. "It was very kind of you, Hilda, 
 to remind me of that; you wished me to enjoy it. 
 Won't you have one too ?" 
 
 Lady Hilda said " No" with her fan. 
 
 " If the Rococo brought the Revolution, Due," she 
 asked, " what will our smoking bring ? — the end of the 
 world ?" 
 
 " It will bring animosity of the sexes, abolition of 
 the marriage-laws, and large increase of paralysis," 
 replied M. de St. Louis, with great decision. 
 
 " You have answered me without a compliment : — 
 what flattery to my intelligence !" 
 
 " Miladi, I never flatter you. I am not in the habit 
 of imitating all the world." 
 
 " You look severe, Delia Rocca," said Madame Mila. 
 " Do you disapprove of women smoking?" 
 
 " Madame, a woman of grace lends grace to all she 
 does, no doubt." 
 
 " That is to say, you don't approve it?" 
 
 " Madame, I merely doubt whether Lionardo would 
 have painted Mona Lisa had she smoked." 
 
 " What a good idea you give me ! — I will be painted 
 by Millais or Cabanel, smoking. It will be novel. The 
 cigar shall be in my mouth. I will send you the first 
 photograph. Ah ! there is Nordlingen ; he will come
 
 46 i^V ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 over here, and he is the greatest bore in Europe. You 
 know what your king here said when Nordlingen had 
 bored him at three audiences about heaven knows what : 
 * I never knew the use of sentinels before : let that 
 man be shot if he ask audience again !' We cannot 
 shoot him; let u^ go to supper. Due, you will follow 
 us, with M. des Gommeux? — and you too, Delia Rocca? 
 There is that odious Canadian woman going ; let us 
 make haste ; I should like to see that blondine cloak 
 close ; I shall know whether it looks like Worth or 
 Pingat." 
 
 She passed out on the Due's arm, and the Lady 
 Hilda accepted Delia Rocca's, while the well-trained 
 Maurice, who knew his duties, rushed to find the foot- 
 man in the vestibule, and to arrest another gilded youth 
 and kindred s])irit, a M. des Poisseux, whom Madame 
 Mila had espied in the crowd and charged him to bring 
 with him to supper. Madame Mila preferred, to all 
 the world, the young men of her world of five-and- 
 twenty or less ; they had no mind whatever, they had 
 not character enough to be jealous, and they were as full 
 of the last new scandals as any dowager of sixty. 
 
 "They talk of the progress of this age: contrast M. 
 de St. Louis with M. des Gommeux and M. des Pois- 
 seux !" said the Lady Hilda, with her little contempt.- 
 uous smile. 
 
 Delia Rocca laughed. 
 
 " You make me for the first time, madame, well con- 
 tent to belong to what the Gommeux and the Poisseux 
 would call a past generation. But there are not many 
 like our friend the Due; he has stepped down to us 
 from the terraces of Marly; I am certain he went to
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 47 
 
 sleep one night after a gavotte wUh Montespan, and 
 has only just awakened." 
 
 The supper was gay and bright; Lady Hilda, reject- 
 ing chicken and champagne and accepting only ice- water 
 and cigarettes, deigned to be amusing, tliough sarcastic, 
 and Madame Mila was always in one of the two ex» 
 tremes, — either syncope, sal volatile, and hysterics, or 
 laughter, frolic, smoke, and risque stories. 
 
 She and her sisterhood spend their lives in this see- 
 saw ; the first state is for the mornings, when they re- 
 member their losses at play, their lovers' looks at other 
 women, the compromising notes they have written, and 
 how much too much to be safe their maids know of 
 them ; the second state is for the evenings, when they 
 have tlieir war-paint on, have taken a little nij) of some 
 stimulant at afternoon tea, are going to half a dozen 
 houses between midnight and dawn, and are quite sure 
 their lovers never even see that any other women 
 exist. 
 
 " He could not have a better illustration of the differ- 
 ence between a woman with taste and a woman without 
 it," thought the Due de St. Louis, surveying the two ; 
 the countess had a million or two of false curls in a 
 tower above her pretty tiny face, was almost as decol- 
 Idee as a Guiza picture, chirped the fashionable slang 
 of the boulevards and salons in the shrillest and swift- 
 est of voices, and poured forth slanders that were more 
 diverting than decorous. 
 
 Lady Hilda was dressed like a picture of Marie An- 
 toinette in 1770; her rich hair was lifted from her low 
 fair forehead in due keeping with her costume; she 
 swept aside her cousin's naughty stories with as much
 
 48 IN A WINTER CI TV. 
 
 tufstc as conleiiipt, and spoke a Frencli which Marie 
 Antoinette could have recognized as the language in 
 which Voltaire once scoffed and Andre Chenier sighed. 
 To be sure, she did smoke a little ; but then even the 
 most perfect taste cannot quite escape the cachet of its 
 era. 
 
 "It was not necessary, my friend, to say that your 
 place was so poor," said M. de St. Louis, as they went 
 out of the hotel together : he had known his companion 
 from boyhood. 
 
 " 1 am not ashamed of my poverty," said Delia 
 Rocca, somewhat coldly. " Besides," he added, with a 
 laugh which had not much mirth in it, " our poverty is 
 as well known as that of the city. I think the most 
 dishonest Delia Rocca could not conceal it by his adroit- 
 ness, any more than Floralia could conceal her public 
 debt." 
 
 " That may be, but neither you nor the town need 
 proclaim the state of your affairs," said the Due, who 
 never gave up an opinion. " You should let her be 
 interested in you before you make it so evident that 
 such silence is quite permissible. You need say no- 
 thing ; you need hide nothing ; you need only let things 
 alone." 
 
 " My dear Due," said Delia Rocca, with a laugh that 
 had merriment in it and some irritation, " think for 
 one moment of that woman's position, and say could 
 anything ever induce her to change it, — except one 
 thing? Riches could add nothing to her; the highest 
 rank could scarcely be any charm to her ; she has every- 
 thing she can want or wish for; — if she had the power 
 of wishing left, which I doubt, the only spell that
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 49 
 
 might enchain lier would be love, if she have any ca- 
 pacity to feel it, which I doubt also. — Well, granted 
 that aroused, what would poverty or riches in her lover 
 matter to one who has secure forever a golden pedestal 
 of her own from which to survey the wars of the world ? 
 She refused the Prince of Deutschland ; that I know, 
 since he told me himself ; and men do not boast of re- 
 jections: what position, pray, would ever tempt her 
 since she refused Deutschland? — and he has all personal 
 attractions, too, as well as his future crown." 
 
 " Still, granting all that, to make your lack of fortune 
 so very conspicuous is to render your purpose conspicu- 
 ous also, and to draw her attention to it unwisely," said 
 the Due, who viewed all these matters calmly, as a kind 
 of mixture of diplomacy and business. 
 
 " Caro mio," said Delia Eocca, lightly, as he de- 
 scended the last step, " be very sure that if I ever have 
 such a purpose your Lady Hilda has too much wit not 
 to perceive it in a day. But I have not such a purpose. 
 I do not like a woman who smokes." 
 
 And with a good-night he walked away to his own 
 house, which was a street or two distant. The Due 
 chuckled, no wise discomfited. 
 
 " An Italian always swears he will never do the thing 
 he means to do in an hour," he reflected, as he got in 
 his cab. 
 
 The Delia Rocca Palace was let to many tenants and 
 in various divisions ; he himself retained only a few 
 chambers looking upon the old quiet green garden, 
 high- walled, dark with ilex, and musical with foun- 
 tains. 
 
 He crossed the silent courts, mounted the vast black 
 c 6 i>
 
 50 IN A WINTER CITF. 
 
 stairways, and entered liis solitary rooms. There was 
 a lamp burning; and his dog got up and welcomed 
 him. He slipped on an old velvet smoking-coat, 
 . lighted a cigar, and sat down : the counsels and projects 
 of JM. de St. Louis were not so entirely rejected by him 
 as he had wished the Due to suppose. 
 
 He admired her ; he did not approve her ; he was 
 not even sure that he liked her in any way ; but he 
 could not but see that here at last was the marriage 
 which would bring the resurrection of all his fortunes. 
 
 Neither did he feel any of the humility which he 
 had expressed to M. de St. Louis. Though she might 
 be as cold as people all said she was, he had little fear, 
 if he once endeavored, he would fail in making his 
 way into her grace. AVith an Italian, love is too per- 
 fect a science for him to be uncertain of its results. 
 
 Besides, he believed that he detected a different char- 
 acter in her to what the world thought, and she also 
 thought, was her own. He thought men had all failed 
 with her because they had not gone the right road 
 to work. After all, to make a woman in love with you 
 was easy enough. At least he had always found it so. 
 
 She was a woman, too, of unusual beauty, and of 
 supreme grace, and a great alliance; her money would 
 restore him to the lost power of his ancestors, and save 
 a mighty and stainless name from felling into that 
 paralysis of poverty and that dust of obscurity whicii 
 is sooner or later its utter extinction. She seemed cast 
 across his path by a caress of Fortune, from which it 
 would be madness to turn aside. True, he had a wholly 
 different ideal for his wife; he disliked those world- 
 famous elegantes; he disliked Avomen who smoked and
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 51 
 
 knew their Paris as thoroughly as Houssaye or Dumas ; 
 he disliked the extravagant, artificial, empty, frivolous 
 life they led, their endless chase after new excitements, 
 and their insatiable appetite for " frissons nouveaux ;" 
 lie disliked their literature, their habits, their cynicisru, 
 their ennui, their coldness, and their dissipations ; he 
 knew them well, and disliked them in all things ; what 
 he desired in his wife were natural emotions, unworn 
 innocence, serenity, simplicity, and freshness of enjoy- 
 ment : though he was of the world, he did not Ciire 
 very much for it ; he had a meditative, imaginative 
 temperament, and the whirl of modern society was soon 
 wearisome to him ; on the other hand, he knew the 
 world too well to want a woman beside him who knew 
 it equally well. 
 
 On the whole, the project of M. de St. Louis repelled 
 as much as it attracted him. Yet his wisdom told him 
 that it was the marriage beyond all others which would 
 best fulfill his destiny in the way which from his earli- 
 est years he had been accustomed to regard as inevita- 
 ble ; and moreover there was something about her which 
 charmed his senses, though his judgment feared and in 
 some things his taste disapproved her. 
 
 Besides, to make so self-engrossed a woman love, — 
 he smiled as he sat and smoked in the solitude of his 
 great dim vaulted room, and then he sighed impatiently. 
 
 After all, it was not a hecm rule to woo a woman for 
 the sheer sake of her fortune ; and he was too true a 
 gentleman not to know it. And what would money 
 do for him if it were hers and not his? — it would only 
 humiliate him. lie felt no taste for the position of a 
 prince consort: it would pass to his children certainly
 
 52 /^V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 after him, and so raise up the old name to its olden 
 dignity ; but for himself 
 
 He got up and walked to the window ; the clear 
 winter stars, large before morning, were shining through 
 the iron bars and lozenged panes of the ancient case- 
 ment ; the fountain in the cortile was shining in the 
 moonlight; the ducal coronet, carved in stone above 
 the gateway, stood out whitely from the shadows. 
 
 " After all, she would despise me, and I should de- 
 spise myself," he thought: the old coronet had been 
 sadly battered in war, but it had never been chaffered 
 and bought. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "What do you think of Delia Rocca, Hilda?" 
 asked Madame Mila at the same hour that night, toast- 
 ing her pink satin slipper before her dressing-room fire. 
 
 Lady Hilda yawned, unclasping her riviere of sap- 
 phires. 
 
 " He has a very good manner. There is some truth 
 in what Olga Schouvaloff always maintains, that after 
 an Italian all other men seem boors." 
 
 " I am sure Maurice is not a boor !" said the coun- 
 tess, pettishly. 
 
 " Oh, no, my dear : he parts his hair in the middle, 
 talks the last new, unintelligible, aristocratic argot, and 
 he has the charms of every actress and dancer in Paris 
 catalogued clearly in a brain otherwise duly clouded, 
 a.s fashion requires, by brandy in the morning and
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 53 
 
 absinthe before dinner! Boors don't do those things, 
 nor yet get half as learned as to Mile. Eose The and 
 la Petite Boulotte." 
 
 Madame Mila reddened angrily. 
 " What spiteful things to say ! He never lockeil at 
 that hideous little Boulotte, or any of the horriWe 
 creatures ; and he never drinks ; he ls a perfect gen- 
 tleman." 
 
 " Not quite that, ma chere ; if he had been, he would 
 either have dismissed himself or made you dismiss 
 your husband !" 
 
 Madame Mila raged in passionate wrath for five 
 minutes, and then began to cry a little, whimperingly. 
 Lady Hilda gathered up her riviere, took her candle- 
 stick, and bade her good-night. 
 
 "It is no use making that noise, Mila," she said, 
 coolly. " You have always known what I think ; but 
 you prefer to be in the fashion ; of course you must go 
 on as you like; only please to remember, — don't let 
 me see too much of Des Gommeux." 
 
 Madame Mila, left alone to the contemplation of her 
 pink slippers, fumed and sulked and felt very angry 
 indeed ; but she had borrowed a thousand pounds some 
 six or eight times from the Lady Hilda to pay her 
 debts at play ; and of course it was such a trifle that 
 she had always forgotten to pay it again, because if 
 ever she had any ready money there was always some 
 jeweler or man dressmaker, or creditor of some kind 
 who would not wait ; and then, though it was not her 
 fault, because she played as high as she could any night 
 she got a chance to do so, somehow or other she gen- 
 erally lost, and never had a single sou to spare : so she
 
 54 AY A WINTER CI TV. 
 
 muttered her rage to the pink slippers alone, and de- 
 cided that it was never worth while to be put out about 
 the Lady Hilda's " ways." 
 
 " She is a bit of ice herself," she said to her slippers, 
 and wondered how Lady Hilda or anybody else could 
 object to what she did, or see any harm in it. Maurice 
 always went to anotlier hotel. 
 
 Mme. Mila lived her life in a manner very closely 
 resembling that of the horrible creatures Miles. Hose 
 The and Boulotte ; really, when compared by a cynic, 
 there was very little difference to be found between 
 those persons and pretty Madame Mila. 
 
 But Rose Th6 and Boulotte of course were creatures, 
 and she was a very great little lady, and went to all 
 the courts and embassies in Europe, and was sought 
 and courted by the very best and stifPest people, being 
 very chic and very rich, and very lofty in every way, 
 and very careful to make Maurice go to a diflferent 
 hotel. 
 
 She had had twenty Maurices in her time, indeed, 
 but then the Count de Caviare never complained, and 
 was careful to drive with her in the Bois, and pass at 
 least three months of each year under the same roof 
 with her ; so that nobody could say anything, it being 
 an accepted axiom with Society that when the husband 
 does not object to his own dishonor there is no dishonor 
 at all in the matter for any one. If he be sensitive to 
 it, then indeed you must cut his wife, and there will be 
 nothing too bad to be said of her ; but if he only do 
 but connive at his own infamy himself, then all is quite 
 right, and everything is as it should be. 
 
 When the Prince of Cra(!OW, with half Little Russia
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 55 
 
 in his possession, entertains the beautiful Lady Light- 
 wood at a banquet at his villa at Frascati, llichmond, 
 or Auteuil, a score of gilded lackeys shout, " La voiture 
 de Madame la Comtesse !" the assembled guests receive 
 her sweet good-night, the Prince of Cracow bows low 
 and thanks her for the honor she has done to him, she 
 goes out at the hall door, and the carriage bowls away 
 with loud crash and fiery steeds and rolls on its way 
 out of the park gates. Society is quite satisfied. So- 
 ciety knows veiy well that a million roubles find their 
 yearly way into the empty pockets of Lord Lightwood, 
 and that a little later the carriage will sweep round 
 again to a side-door hidden under the laurels wide 
 open, and receive the beautiful Lady Lightwood : but 
 what is that to Society? It has seen her drive away: 
 that is quite sufficient ; everybody is satisfied with that. 
 
 If you give Society very good dinners, Society will 
 never be so ill-bred as to see that side-door under your 
 laurels. 
 
 Do drive out at the hall door ; do, — for the sake of 
 les Bienseances ; that is all Society asks of you : there 
 are some things Society feels it owes to Itself, and this 
 is one of them. 
 
 Of course, whether you come back again or not, can 
 be nobody's business. 
 
 Society can swear to the fact of the hall door. 
 
 Madame Mila was attentive to the matter of the hall 
 door; indeed, abhorred a scandal, — it always made 
 everything uncondbrtable. She was always careful of 
 appearances. Even if you called on her unexpectedly, 
 Des Gommeux was always in an inner room, unseen, 
 and you could declare with a clear conscience that you
 
 56 IN A WINTER CITV. 
 
 never found him with her, Avcre the oath ever required 
 in defense of lier clmracter. Of course, you have no 
 sort of business witli who or wliat may be in inner 
 rooms : Society does not require you to searcli a house 
 as if you were a detective. 
 
 If you can say, coolly, " Oh, there's nothing in it ; 
 I never see him there," Society believes you, and is 
 quite satisfied : that is, if it wishes to believe you ; if 
 it do not wish, nothing would ever satisfy it, — no, not 
 though there rose one from the dead to bear Avitness. 
 
 Madame Mila would not have done anything to 
 jeopardize her going to courts, and having all the 
 embassies to show her jewels in, for anything that any 
 man in the whole world could have offered her. 
 
 Madame Mila thought a woman who left her hus- 
 band and made a scandal, a horrid creature ; nay, she 
 was worse, she was a blunderer, and by her l)lunder 
 made a great deal of unpleasantness for other and 
 wiser women. After a stupid, open thing of that 
 kind, Society always got so dreadfully prudish for 
 about three months, that it was disagreeable for every- 
 body. To run off with a man, and lose your settle- 
 ments, and very likely have to end in a boarding-house 
 in Boulogne ? — could anything be more idiotic ? 
 
 Madame Mila thought that a woman so forgetting 
 herself deserved even a worse fate than the boarding- 
 house. Madame Mila, who was quite content that her 
 husband should make a fool of himself about Blanche 
 Souris, or anybody else, so long as he walked arm-in- 
 arm now and then with Des Gommeux and called him 
 "mon cher," was indeed in every iota the true Femme 
 Galante of the nineteenth century.
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 57 
 
 The Femme Galante has passed through many vari- 
 ous changes, in many countries. The dames of the 
 Decamerone were unlike the fair athlete-seekers of the 
 days of Horace; and the powdered coquettes of the 
 years of Moliere were sisters only by the kinship of a 
 common vice to the frivolous and fragile fagot of im- 
 pulses that is called Frou-frou. 
 
 Thp Femme Galante has always been a feature ni 
 every age. Poets, from Juvenal to Musset, have railed 
 at her; artists, from Titian to Winterhalter, have painted 
 her; dramatists, from Aristophanes to Congreve and 
 Beaumarchais and Dumas Fils, have pointed their 
 arrows at her ; caricaturists, from Archilochus and 
 Simonides to Hogarth and Gavarni, have poured out 
 their aqua-fortis for her. But the real Femme Galante 
 of to-day has been missed hitherto. 
 
 Frou-frou, who stands for her, is not in the least the 
 true type. Frou-frou is a creature that can love, can 
 suffer, can repent, can die. She is false in sentimen- 
 tality and in art, but she is tender after all ; poor, 
 feverish, wistful, changeful morsel of humanity, — a 
 slender, helpless, breathless, and frail thing, who, 
 under one sad, short sin, sinks down to death. 
 
 But Frou-frou is in no sense the true Femme 
 Galante of her day. Frou-frou is much more a fancy 
 than a fact. It is not Frou-frou that Moliere would 
 have handed down to other generations in enduring 
 ridicule had he been living now. To Frou-frou he 
 would have doffed his hat with dim eyes; what he 
 would have fastened for all time in his pillory would 
 have been a very different, and far more conspicuous 
 offender.
 
 58 /-V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 The Femrae Galante, who has neither the scruples 
 oor the follies of poor Frou-frou ; who neither forfeits 
 her place nor leaves her lord; who has studied adultery 
 as one of the fine arts and made it one of the domestic 
 virtues ; who takes her lover to her friends' houses as 
 ehe takes her muff" or her dog, and teaches her sons and 
 daughters to call him by familiar names ; who writes 
 notes of assignation with the same pen that calls her 
 boy home from school, and who smooths her child's 
 curls with the same fingers that stray over her lover's 
 lips ; who challenges the world to find a flaw in her, 
 and who smiles serene at her husband's table on a so- 
 ciety she is careful to conciliate ; who has woven tJie 
 most sacred ties and most unholy pleasures into so deft 
 a braid that none can say where one commences or the 
 other ends ; who uses the sanctity of her maternity to 
 cover the lawlessness of her license ; and who, inca- 
 pable alike of the self-abandonment of love or of the 
 self-sacrifice of duty, has not even such poor, cheap 
 lionor as in the creatures of the streets may make guilt 
 loyal to its dupe and partner. 
 
 This is the Femme Galante of the passing century, 
 who, with her hand on her husband's arm, babbles of 
 her virtue in complacent boast, smiles in her lover's 
 eyes, and, ignoring such a vulgar word as Sin, talks 
 with a smile of Friendship. Beside her Frou-frou 
 were innocence itself, Marion de I'Orme were honesty, 
 Marion Leseant were purity, Cleopatra were chaste, 
 and Faustina were faithful. 
 
 She is the female Tartufe of seduction, the Precieuse 
 Ridicule of passion, the parody of Love, the standing 
 gibe of Womanhood.
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 59 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 The next day tlie Duca della Rocca left cards on 
 i^ady Hilda and the Coratesse de Caviare, and then for 
 a fortnight never went near either of them, except to ex- 
 change a few words with them in other people's houses. 
 M. de St. Louis, who was vastly enamored of his pro- 
 ject, because it was his project (what better reason has 
 anybody ?), was irritated and in despair. 
 
 " You fly in the face of Fate !" he said, with much 
 impatience. 
 
 Delia Rocca laughed. 
 
 " There is no such person as Fate : she perished with 
 all the rest of the pagan world when we put up our first 
 gas-lamp. The two I regret most of them all are 
 Faunus and Picus : nowadays we make Faunas into a 
 railway contractor, and shoot Picus for the market- 
 stall." 
 
 " You are very romantic," said the Due, with serene 
 contempt. " It is an unfortunate quality, and I con- 
 fess," he added, with a sigh, as if confessing a blemish 
 in a favorite horse, " that perhaps she is a little deficient 
 in the other extreme, a little too cold, a little too unim- 
 pressionable ; there is absolutely no shadow of cause to 
 suppose she ever felt the slightest emotion for any one. 
 That gives, perhaps, a certain hardness. It is not 
 natural. ' Une petite faiblesse donne tant de charme.' " 
 
 " For a wife, one might dispense with the ' j)etite 
 faiblesse,' — for any one else," said Della Rocca, with a
 
 go Jy ^1 WINTER CITY. 
 
 smile: the blemish did not seem much of a fault in his 
 eyes. 
 
 " That is a romantic notion/' said the Due, with a 
 little touch of disdain. " In real truth, a woman is 
 easier to manage who has had — a past. She knows 
 what to expect. It is flattering to be the first object of 
 passion to a woman. But it is troublesome: she exact** 
 so much !" 
 
 "If I were not that, I have seldom cared to be any- 
 thing," said Delia Rocca. 
 
 " That is an Italian amorous fancy. Romeo and 
 Othello are the typical Italian lovers. I never can tell 
 how a Northerner like Shakspeare could draw either. 
 You are often very unfaithful; but while you are faith- 
 ful you are ardent, and you are absorbed in the woman. 
 That is one of the reasons why an Italian succeeds in 
 love as no other man does. ' L'art de brftler silen- 
 cieusement le coeur d'une femme,' is a supreme art with 
 you. Compared with you, all other men are children. 
 You have been the supreme masters of the great pas- 
 sion since the days of Ovid." 
 
 " Because it is much more the supreme pursuit of 
 our lives than it is with other men. How can Love be 
 of much power where it is inferior to fox-hunting, and 
 a mere interlude when there is no other sport to be had, 
 as it is with Englishmen?" 
 
 "And with a Frenchman it is always inferior to him- 
 self!" confessed the French Due, with a smile. "At 
 least they say so. But every human being loves his 
 vanity first. 'Only wounded my vanity?' poor Lord 
 Strangford used to say. ' Pray, what dearer and more 
 integral part of myself could you wound ?' He was
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. GJ 
 
 fery right. If we are not on good terms with our- 
 jelves, we can never prevail with others." 
 
 "Yet a vain man seldom succeeds with women." 
 
 " A man who lets them see that he is vain does not : 
 that is another matter. Vanity — ah ! there is Miladi, 
 she has plenty of vanity; yet it is of a grandiose kind, 
 and it would only take a little more time and the first 
 gray hairs to turn it into dissatisfaction. All kinds of 
 discontent are only superb vanities, — Byron's, Musset's, 
 Bolingbroke's " 
 
 A horse nearly knocked the Due down in the midst 
 of his philosophies as he picked his way delicately 
 among the standing and moving carriages to the place 
 where the white great-coats with the black velvet col- 
 lars of the Lady Hilda's servants were visible. 
 
 The Lady Hilda's victoria stood in that open square 
 where it is the pleasure of fashionable Floralia to stop 
 its carriages in the course of the drive before dinner. 
 
 The piazza is the most unlovely part of the park ; it 
 has a gaunt red cafe and a desert of hard-beaten sand, 
 and in the middle there are some few plants, and a vast 
 quantity of iron bordering laid out in geometrical pat- 
 terns, with more hard-beaten sand between them, this 
 being the modern Floralian idea of a garden; to which 
 fatal idea are sacrificed the noble ilex shades, the bird- 
 filled cedar groves, the deep delicious dreamful avenues, 
 the moss-grown ways, and the leaf-covered fountains, 
 worthy to shelter Narcissus and to bathe Nausicaa, 
 which their wiser forefathers knew were alike the bless- 
 ing and the glory of this land of the sun. 
 
 Nevertheless, — perhaps because it is the last place in 
 the world where anybody with any gleam of taste wouM 
 
 6
 
 62 I^ A WINTER CITV. 
 
 be supposed ever voluntarily to stop a carriage, — here 
 motley modern society delights to group its fusing 
 nationalities ; and the same people who bored each 
 other in the morning's calls, and will bore each other 
 in the evening's receptions, bore each other sedu- 
 lously in the open air, and would not omit the sa- 
 cred ceremonial for anything, — unless, indeed, it 
 rained. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, Floralia reads aright the gener- 
 ation that visits it. The ilex shadows and the cedar 
 groves need Virgil and Horace, Tasso and Petrarca, 
 Milton and Shelley. 
 
 The Lady Hilda, who never by any chance paused 
 in the piazzone, had stopped a moment there, to please 
 Madame Mila, who, in the loveliest lucroyable bonnet, 
 was seated beside her. 
 
 The men of their acquaintance flocked up to the 
 victoria. Lady Hilda paid them scanty attention, and 
 occupied herself buying flowers of the poor women 
 who lifted their fragrant basket-loads to the carriage. 
 Madame Mila chattered like the brightest of parroquets, 
 and was clamorous for news. 
 
 " Quid novi ?" is the cry in Floralia from morning 
 till night, as in Athens. The most popular people are 
 those who, when the article is not to be had of original 
 growth, can manufacture it. Political news nobody 
 attends to in Floralia ; financial news interests society 
 a little more, because everybody has stocks or shares 
 in something somewhere; but the news is gossip, — dear 
 delicious perennial ever-blessed gossip, that reports a 
 beloved friend in difficulties, a rival in extremis, a 
 neighbor no better than she should be, and some exalted
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 63 
 
 personage or another caught hiding a king in his sleeve 
 at cards or kissing his wife's lady-of-the-bedchaniber. 
 
 Gossip goes the round of the city in winter as the 
 lemonade-stands do in summer. 
 
 If you wish to be clioye and asked out every night, 
 learn to manufacture it; it is very easy: take equal 
 parts of flour of malice and essence of impudence, with 
 several pepper-corns of improbability to spice it, some 
 candied lemon-peel of moral reflections, and a few dro])S 
 of the ammonia of indecency that will make it light 
 of digestion, and the toothsome morsel will procure you 
 welcome everywhere. 
 
 If you can also chop up any real Paschal lamb of 
 innocence in very fine pieces, so that it is minced and 
 hashed and unrecognizable forever, serve the mince 
 with the vinegar of malignity, and the fresh mint of 
 novelty, and you will be the very Careme of gossip 
 henceforward. Run about society with your concoc- 
 tions in and out of the best houses, as fast as you can 
 go, and there will be no end to your popularity. You 
 will be as refreshing to the thirst of the dwellers in 
 them as are the lemonade-sellers to the throats of the 
 populace. 
 
 Perhaps Fate still lurked and worked in the Latin 
 land, and had hidden herself under the delicate mara- 
 bouts of the chapeau Incroyable ; at any rate, Madaine 
 Mila welcomed the Due and his companion with eager- 
 ness, and enjrao-ed them both to dinner with her on the 
 morrow in a way that there was no refusing. 
 
 Madame Mila was discontented with the news of 
 the day. All her young men could only tell her of 
 one person's ruin, — poor Victor de Salarvs', which she
 
 64 Jy A WINTER CITY. 
 
 had always predicted and contributed to cause, and 
 which was therefore certainly the more agreeable, — and 
 two scenes between married people whom she knew : 
 one because the brute of a husband would not allow 
 his wife to have her tallest footman in silk stockings; 
 the otlier because the no less a brute of a husband 
 would not let Ms wife have a Friendshij). Madame 
 Mi la scarcely knew which refusal to oondcmn as the 
 most heartless and the most vulgar. 
 
 The Lady Hilda dined with her on the morrow; and 
 the little Comtesse, with the fine instinct at discovering 
 future sympathies of a woman "qui a vecu," took care 
 that Delia Rocca took her cousin in to dinner. 
 
 " I would give all I possess to see Hilda attendrie," 
 she said to herself. As what she possessed just then 
 was chiefly an enormous quantity of unpaid bills, per- 
 haps she would not have lost so very much. But the 
 Lady Hilda w^as not atfendrie: she thought he talked 
 better than most men,— at least, differently, — and he 
 succeeded in interesting her probably because he had 
 been so indifferent in calling upon her. That was all. 
 Besides, his manner was perfect; it was as vieille cour 
 as M. de St. Louis's. 
 
 I^ady Hilda, who should have been born under Louis 
 Quatorze, suffered much in her taste from an age when 
 manner, except in the South, is only a tradition, smoth- 
 ered under cigar-ash and buried in a gun-case. 
 
 As for him, he mused, while he talked to her, on the 
 words of the Due, who had known her all her life. 
 Was it true that she had never felt even a passing 
 " weakness"? AVas it certain that she had always been 
 as cold as she looked?
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 66 
 
 He wished that he could be sure. 
 
 After all, she was a woman of wonderful charm, 
 though she did go about with Madame Mila, smoke 
 cigarettes after dinner, and correct you as to the last 
 mot made on the boulevards. He began to think that 
 this was only the mere cachet of the world she lived in, 
 — only the mere accident of contact and habit. 
 
 All women born under the Second Empire have it 
 more or less; and, after all, she had but little of it; 
 she was very serene, very contemptuous, very high- 
 bred ; and her brilliant, languid, hazel eyes looked so 
 untroubled that it would have moved any man to wish 
 to trouble their still and luminous depths. 
 
 She seemed to him very objectless and somewhat 
 cynical. It was a pity. Nature had made her perfect 
 in face and form, and gifted her with intelligence, and 
 Fashion had made her useless, tired, and vaguely 
 eynical about everything, as everybody else was in her 
 world ; except that yet larger number who resembled 
 Madame Mila, — a worse type still, according to his 
 view. 
 
 It was a pity, so he thought, watching the droop of 
 her long eyelashes, the curve of her beautiful mouth, 
 the even coming and going of her breath under her 
 shining necklace of opals and emeralds. 
 
 He began to believe that the Due was right. There 
 was no "past" in that calmest of indolent glances. 
 
 "You smoke, madame?" he said, a little abruptly to 
 her, after dinner. 
 
 She looked at her slender roll of paper. 
 
 "It is a habit, — like all the rest of the things one 
 
 docs. I do not ci\re about it." 
 
 G* E
 
 66 I^^ A WINTER CITV. 
 
 " Why do it, then? Are you not too proud to follow 
 a habit, and imitate a folly ?" 
 
 She smiled a little, and let the cigarette pale itvS inef- 
 fectual fires and die out. 
 
 " They have not known how to deal with her," he 
 thought to himself; and he sat down and played ecarte^ 
 and allowed her to win, though he was one of the best 
 players in Europe. 
 
 Fate had certainly been under the Incroyable bonnet 
 of Madame Mila. For during the evening she sud- 
 denly recalled his villa, and announced her intention of 
 coming to see it. In her little busy brain there was a 
 clever notion that if she only could get her cousin once 
 drawn into what the Due Avould call a "petite fai- 
 blesse," she herself would hear no more lectures about 
 Maurice ; and lectures are always tiresome, especially 
 when the lecturer has lent you several thousands, that 
 it would be the height of inconvenience ever to be 
 reminded to repay. 
 
 A woman who has " petites faiblesses" is usually 
 impatient with one who has none; the one who has 
 none is a kind of standing insolence. Women corrupt 
 more women than men do, Lovelace does not hate 
 chastity in women ; but Lady Beilaston does with all 
 her might. 
 
 Pretty Madame Mila was too good-natured and also 
 too shallow to hate anything; but if she could have 
 seen her cousin "compromised" she would have derived 
 an exquisite satisfaction and entertainment from the 
 sight. She would also have felt that Lady Hilda would 
 have become thereby more natural and more comfort- 
 able company.
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. Q'J 
 
 " Dear me ! she might have done anything she had 
 liked all these years," thought Madame Mila ; " no- 
 body would have known anything; and nothing would 
 hurt her if it were known, whilst she has all that 
 money." 
 
 For Madame Mila herself, perched on one of the 
 very topmost rungs of the ladder of the world's great- 
 ness, and able therefore to take a bird's-eye view there- 
 from of everything, was very shrewd in her way, and 
 knew that society never was known yet to quarrel with 
 the owner of fifty thousand a year. 
 
 So she carried her airy little person, laden to-night 
 with gold embroideries on dull Venetian red until she 
 looked like a little figure made in lac, over to the 6cart6- 
 table when the ecart6 was finished, and arranged a morn- 
 ing at Palestrina for the day after to-morrow. He could 
 only express his happiness and honor, and his regrets 
 that Palestrina was little more than an empty shell for 
 their inspection. 
 
 The day after the morrow was clear and cloudless, 
 balmy and delicious, — such days as the Floralian cli- 
 mate casts here and there generously amidst the winter 
 cold, as a foretaste of its paradise of summer. The 
 Bnow was on the more distant mountains of course, but 
 only made the landscape more lovely, changing to the 
 softest blush color and rose under the brightness of the 
 noonday sun. The fields were green with the spring- 
 ing cereals; the pine woods were filling with violets; 
 the water-courses were brimmino; and boisterouslv 
 
 j )yous. 
 
 It was winter still, but the sort of winter that one 
 would expect in fairy-land or in the planet Venus.
 
 eg IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Madame Mila, clad in the strictest Directoire cos- 
 tume, with a wonderful hat on her head that carried 
 feathers, grasses, oleander-flowers, and a bird of Dutch 
 Guiana, and was twisted up on one side in a manner 
 known only to Caroline Reboux, descended with her 
 ^faurice to the Lady Hilda's victoria, lent her for the 
 day. To drive into the country at all was an act 
 abominable and appalling to all her ideas. 
 
 In Paris, except on race-days, she never went farther 
 than the lake, and never showed her toilettes at Ver- 
 sailles in the Assembly, because of the endless drive 
 necessary as a means to get there. 
 
 In country-houses she carefully kept her own room 
 till about five o'clock ; and, when forced for her health 
 to go to Vichy, or St. Moritz, or any such place, she 
 played cards in the mornings, and, when she was obliged 
 to go out, looked at the other invalids' dresses. Moun- 
 tains were only unpleasant things to be tunneled ; for- 
 ests were tolerable, because one could wear such pretty 
 Louis Quinze hunting-habits and the curee by torch- 
 light was nice ; the sea, again, was made endurable by 
 bathing-costumes, and it was fun to go and tuck up 
 your things and hunt for prawns or pearls in the rock- 
 pools and shallows, — it gave rise to many very pretty 
 situations. But merely to drive into the country ! — it 
 was only fit occupation for a maniac. Though she had 
 proposed it herself, the patient Maurice had a very 
 'nauvais quart-cV heure as they drove. 
 
 The Lady Hilda, who was too truly great an elegante 
 ■ever to condescend in the open air to the eccentricities 
 and bizarreries of Madame Mila, — mountebankisms 
 worthy a traveling show, she considered them to be, —
 
 IX A WINTER CITY. 69 
 
 was clad in her black sable, which contrasted so well 
 with the fairness of her skin, and drove out with the 
 Princess Olga, Carlo Mareinnia and M. de St. Louis 
 fronting them in their Schouvaloff barouche. She did 
 not hate the cold, and shiver from the fresh sea-wind, 
 and worry about the badness of the steep roads, as 
 Madame Mila did; on the contrary, she liked the drive, 
 long though it was, and felt a vague interest in the first 
 sights of Palestrina, its towers and belfries shining 
 white on the mountain-side, with tlie little villages 
 clustered under its broad dark ring of forest. 
 
 " What a pity that Paolo is so poor !" said Carlo 
 Maremma, looking upAvard at it. 
 
 "He carries his poverty with infinite grace," said the 
 Princess Olga. 
 
 "He is worthy of riches," said the Due. 
 
 Lady Hilda said nothing. 
 
 Palestrina was twelve miles and more from the city, 
 and stood on the high hills facing the southwest; it 
 was half fortress, half palace ; in early times its lords 
 had ruled from its height all the country round ; and 
 later on, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, a 
 great cardinal of the Delia Rocca had made it into as 
 sumptuous a dwelling-place as Caprarola or Poggio a 
 Cajano. 
 
 Subsequently the family had ranged itself against 
 the ruling faction of the province, and had suffered 
 from war and confiscation ; still later, Palestrina had 
 been plundered by the French troops of Napoleon ; 
 yet, despoiled and impoverished as it was, it was majes- 
 tic still, and even beautiful ; for, unlike most such 
 places, it had kept its girdle of oak and ilex woods ;
 
 70 ^'V A WINTER CITr 
 
 and its gardens, though wild and neglected, were un- 
 shorn of their fair proportions ; and the fountains fell 
 into their marble basins, and splashed the maidenhair 
 ferns that hung over them, as they had done in an- 
 other age for the delight of the great cardinal and his 
 favorites, 
 
 Delia Rocca received them in the southern loggia, a 
 beautiful vaulted and frescoed open gallery, designed 
 by Braraante, and warm in the noonday sun as though 
 January were June. 
 
 A king could not have had more grace of welcome 
 and dignity of courtesy than this ruined gentleman j 
 he had a very perfect manner, certainly, thought the 
 Lady Hilda once again. She was one of those women 
 (they are many) upon whom manner makes more im- 
 pression than mind or morals. Why should it not? It 
 is the charm of life and the touchstone of breeding. 
 
 There was only one friend with him, a great minister, 
 who had retired from the world and given himself up 
 to the culture of roses and strawberries. There was a 
 simple repast, from the produce of his own lands, ready 
 in what had been once the banqueting-hall. It was 
 made graceful by the old Venetian glass, the old Urbino 
 plates, the old Cellini salt-cellars; and by grapes, regina 
 and salamana, saved from the autumn, and bouquets of 
 Parma violets and Bengal roses, in old blue Savona 
 vases. It was a frugal meal, but fit for the tale-tellers 
 of the Decamerone. 
 
 They rambled over the great building first, with its 
 vast windows showing the wide landscape of mountain 
 and plain, and far away the golden domes and airy 
 spires of the city shining through a soft m:st of olive-
 
 IX A WINTER CITV. ^l 
 
 treevS. The glory of tliis house was gone, but it was 
 beautiful still, with the sweet clear sunlight streaming 
 through its innumerable chambers, and touching the 
 soft hues of frescoed walls that had grown faded with 
 age but had been painted by Spinello, by Francia, by 
 the great Frate, and by a host whose names were lost, 
 of earnest workers, and men with whom art had been 
 religion. 
 
 It was all dim and worn and gmy with the passage 
 of time ; but it was harmonious, majestic, tranquil. It 
 was like the close of a great life withdrawn from the 
 world into a cloistered solitude and content to be alone 
 with its God. 
 
 " Do not wish for riches," said the Lady Hilda to 
 him, as he said something to her of it. " If you had 
 riches you would desecrate this; you would * restore' it, 
 you would 'embellish' it, you would ruin it." 
 
 He smiled a little sadly. 
 
 " As it is, I can only keep the rains from entering 
 and the rats from destroying it. Poverty, madame, is 
 only poetical to those who do not suifer it. Look !" he 
 added, with a laugh, " you will not find a single chair, 
 I fear, that is not in tatters." 
 
 She glanced at the great old ebony chair she was 
 resting in, with its rich frayed tapestry seat, and its 
 carved armorial bearings. 
 
 " I have suffered much more from the staring, gilded, 
 and satin abominations in a millionaire's drawing-room. 
 You are ungrateful " 
 
 "And you, madame, judge of pains that have never 
 touched and cannot touch you. However, I can be 
 but too glad that Palestrina pleases you in any way.
 
 72 I^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 It has the sunshine of heaven, though not of for- 
 tune." 
 
 " And I am sure you woukl not give it up for all the 
 wealth of the Rothschilds/' 
 
 " No." 
 
 " How lovely this place would look," Madame Mila 
 was saying at the same moment, out of his hearing, to 
 the Princess Olga, " if Owen Jones could renovate it 
 and Huby furnish it! Fancy it with all the gilding 
 re-gilded, and the pictures restored, and Aubussoii and 
 Persian carpets everywhere, and all those horrid old 
 tapestries, that must be full of spiders, pulled down 
 and burnt. What a heavenly place it would be ! — and 
 what balls one might give in it ! Why, it would hold 
 ten thousand people !" 
 
 " Poor Paolo will never be able to do It," said the 
 Princess Schouvaloff, " unless " 
 
 She glanced at the Lady Hilda where she sat at the 
 farther end of the chamber, whilst Delia Rocca leaned 
 against the embrasure of the window. 
 
 " I think she has a fancy for him," said Madame 
 Mila. **But as for marrying, you know. — that, of 
 course, is out of the question." 
 
 " I don't see why," said the princess. 
 
 "Oh, out of the question," said Madame Mila, 
 hastily. " But if she should take a liking to him, it 
 would be great fun. She's been so awfully exaltee 
 about all that sort of thing. Dear me! what a pity 
 all those nasty, old, dull frescoes can't be scraped olf 
 and something nice and bright, like what they paint 
 now, be ])ut there! but I suppose it would take so 
 much money. I should hang silk over ^hew ; all
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 73 
 
 these clouds of pale angels would make me melancholy 
 mad. There is no style I care a bit for but Louis 
 Quinze. I am having new Avall-hangings for my «aloon 
 done by the Ste. Marie lleparatrice girls; a lovely 
 green satin, — aj^ple-green, — embroidered with wreaths 
 of roses and broom, after flower-groups by Fan tin. 
 Louis Quinze is so cheerful, and lets you have such lots 
 of gilding, and the tables have such nice straight legs, 
 and you always feel wath it as if you were in a theatre 
 and expecting the Jeune Premier to enter. Here one 
 feels as if one were in a church." 
 
 " A monastery," suggested Princess Olga. 
 
 Thereon they went and had their luncheon, and 
 Madame Mila, studying the Capo di Monte dessert- 
 service, ap])raised its value, — for she was a shrewd 
 little woman, — and wondered, if Paolo della Pocca 
 were so poor as they said, why did he not send up all 
 these old porcelains and lovely potteries to the Hotel 
 Drouot: Capo di Monte, she reflected, sells for more 
 than its weight in gold, now that it is the rage of the 
 fashion. She felt inclined to suggest this to him, only 
 she was not quite sure how he might take it. Italians, 
 she had heard, were so absurdly proud and susceptible. 
 
 After luncheon, they went into the green old gardens, 
 green with ilex and arbutus and laurel and cypress av- 
 enues, although it was mid-winter ; and the great min- 
 ister discoursed on the charms of the country and the 
 beauty of solitude in a way that should almost have 
 awakened the envy of Horace in his grave; and the 
 Due de St. Louis disagreed with him in witty argu- 
 ments that might have made the shades of Rochefou- 
 cauld and Pivarol jealous, 
 n 7
 
 71 IX A WINTER CI TV. 
 
 And they rambled and idled and talked and saun- 
 tered in those charming hours which an Italian villa 
 alone can create ; and then the Ave Maria chimed frr^ni 
 the belfries of a convent up above on the hill, and the 
 winds grew chill, and the carriages were called round 
 to the steps of the southern terrace, and the old steward 
 brought to each lady the parting gift of a great cluster 
 of the sweet Parma violets. 
 
 " Well, it's been pleasanter than I thought for," said 
 Madame Mila, rolling homeward. "But, oh, this 
 wretched, odious road ! I shall catch my death of 
 cold!" 
 
 Lady Hilda was very silent as they drove downward, 
 and left Palestrina alone to grow gray in the shades of 
 the twilight. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "I THINK Italians are like Russian tea; they spoil 
 
 you for any other " wrote Lady Hilda to her brother 
 
 Clairvaux. It was not a very clear phrase, nor very 
 grammatical ; but she knew what she meant herself, — 
 which is more than all writers can say they do. 
 
 Russian tea, or rather tea imported through Russia, 
 is so much softer and of so much sweeter and subtler a 
 flavor, that once drinking it you will find all other tea 
 after it seem flat or coarse. When she had written this 
 sentiment, however, she tore up the sheet of note-paper 
 which contained it, and tossed it in the fire : after all, 
 Clairvaux would not understand, — he never understood
 
 IX A wixTKR cirv. 75 
 
 anytliing, dear old fellow, — and he would be very likely 
 to say all sorts of foolish things which there was not the 
 slightest reason for any one's supposing. 
 
 "Do come out here as soon as you can," she wrote, 
 instead. " Of course it will all depend on your racing 
 engagements ; but if you do go to Paris to see Charles 
 Lafitte, as you say, pray come on here. Not that you 
 will care for Floralia at all; you never do care for these 
 art cities, and it is its art, and its past, and its people 
 that make its irresistible charm. Floralia is so grace- 
 ful and so beautiful and so full of noble memories that 
 one cannot but feel the motley society of our own pres- 
 ent day as a sort of desecration to it ; the cocottes and 
 cococdettes, the wheel-skaters and poker-players, the 
 smokers and the baigneuses of our time suit it sadly ill : 
 it wants the scholars of Academe, the story-tellers of 
 Boccaccio ; it wants Sordello and Stradella, Desdemona 
 and Giulietta. 
 
 " One feels oneself not one-half good enough for the 
 stones one treads upon ; life here should be a perpetual 
 Kyrie Eleison ; instead of which, it is only a chorus of 
 OflPenbach's. Not that society anywhere now ever does 
 rise higher than that; only here it jars on one more 
 than elsewhere, and seems as profane as if one ' played 
 ball with Homer's skull.' 
 
 " Floralia is a golden Ostensoir filled with great 
 men's bones, and we choke it up with cigar-ashes and 
 champagne-dregs. It cannot be helped, I suppose. 
 The destiny of the age seems to be to profane all that 
 have preceded it. It creates nothing, — it desecrates 
 everything. Society does not escape from the general 
 influence; its kings are all kings of Brentford.
 
 76 IN A WINTER CITr. 
 
 ''Mila — who is here and happy as a bird — thinks 
 Jack Cade and the Oflenbach chorus the perfection of 
 delight at all times. 
 
 "For myself, I confess, neither entertains me; I '^ail 
 to see the charm of a drawing-room democracy decollete 
 and decoussue ; and I never did appreciate ladies who 
 pass their lives in balancing themselves awkwardly on 
 the bar of Dumas's famous Triangle ; but that may be 
 a prejudice, — Mila says that it is. 
 
 "By-the-by, that odious young Des Gommeux has 
 followed her here. I make myself disagreeable to him. 
 I cannot do more. Spiridon has never interfered, and 
 *on ne pent pas etre plus royaliste que le roi.' But you 
 will skip all this, or give it to your wife. I know I 
 never read letters myself, so why should I expect you 
 to do so? I am so sorry to hear of Vieille Garde's 
 sprain ; it is too vexing for you, just as he was so high 
 in the betting. I hope Sister to Simonides turns out 
 worth all we gave for lier. There will be racing here 
 in April, but it would only make you laugh, — which 
 would be rude; or swear, — which would be worse. So 
 please come long before it." 
 
 She folded up her letter, wrote " Pray try and come 
 soon" across the top of it, and directed the envelope to 
 the Earl of Clairvaux, Broomsden, Northampton, and 
 then was provoked to think that she did not want good, 
 clumsy, honest Clairvaux to come at all, — not in her 
 heart of hearts, because Clairvaux was always asking 
 questions, and going straight to the bottom of things in 
 his own simple, sturdy fashion, and never understood 
 anything that was in the very least complex. 
 
 And then, again, she was more irritated still Avith
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 77 
 
 herself, for admitting even to licr own thoughts that 
 there was anything complex or that she did not want to 
 examine too closely, — -just yet. And then she sat and 
 looked into the fire, and thought of Palestrina, with 
 its sweet faint scent of Parma violets, and its dim nol)le 
 frescoes, and its mountain solitudes, under the clear 
 winter moon. 
 
 She sat dreaming about it a long time, — for her, 
 because she was not a person that dreamed at all usu- 
 ally. Her life was too brilliant, and too much occu- 
 pied, and too artificial. She was thinking, wath a great 
 deal of money, without desecrating it by " restoration," 
 hut by bringing all the art knowledge in the world to 
 its enrichment, it would be possible to make it as great 
 as it had been in the days of its cardinal. What a 
 pastime it would be, wdiat an interest, what an occu- 
 pation almost for a lifetime, to render that grand old 
 palace once more the world's wonder it had been in the 
 sixteenth century ! 
 
 Then she rose suddenly with an impatient sigh, and 
 went into her bedroom, and found fault with her maids : 
 they had put Valenciennes on her petticoats, and she 
 hated Valenciennes, — no other laces had been so cheap- 
 ened by imitation ; they had put out her marron velvet 
 with the ostrich feathers for that day's wearing, when 
 they should have laid out the silver-gray cloth with the 
 Genoa buttons ; they were giving her glace gloves in- 
 stead of peau de Suede ; they had got out Pompadour 
 boots, and she required Paysanne shoes, — it was a fine 
 dry day. In })oint of fact, everything was wrong, and 
 they were idiots, and she told them so as strongly as a 
 high-bred lady can demean herself to speak. Each 
 
 7*
 
 78 I^ A WiyTER CITY. 
 
 costume was put all together, — dress, bonnet, boots, 
 gloves, — everything ; what business had they to go and 
 mix them all up and make everything wrong? 
 
 Her maids were used to her displeasure ; but, as she 
 was very generous, and if they were ill or in sorrow she 
 was kind, they bore it meekly, and contented themselves 
 with complaining of her in all directions to their allies. 
 
 " If she would only have her petites affaires like 
 other ladies, she would be much easier to content," said 
 her head maid, who had served the aristocracy ever 
 since the earliest days of the Second Empire. 
 
 When there were no lovers, there were much fewer 
 douceurs and perquisites ; however, they endured that 
 deprivation, because Miladi was so very rich and so 
 easily plundered. 
 
 Miladi now, arrayed in the silver-gray cloth with 
 the Genoa buttons and the marabout feather trimming, 
 went out to her victoria, en route to the galleries, of 
 which she never tired, and the visits which immea- 
 surably bored her. She had been in the great world for 
 ten years, and the great world is too small to divert one 
 for very long, unless one be as Madame Mila. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Lady Hilda found that Floral ia 
 interested her more than she would have believed that 
 anything would do. 
 
 After all, Floralia was charming by the present, not 
 only by the past. If it had its kings of Brentford, 
 with Offenbach choruses, so had every other place ; if 
 it had a pot-pourri of nationalities, it had some of the 
 most agreeable persons of every nation ; if trying to 
 be very naughty it generally only became very dull, — 
 that was the doom of modern society everywhere.
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 79 
 
 There were charming houses in it, where there M'ere 
 real wit, real music, and real welcome. If people saw 
 each other too often, strong friendships could come out 
 of such frequency as well as animosities ; there was a 
 great charm in the familiar, easy, pleasant intimacies 
 which so naturally grew out of the artistic idling under 
 these sombre and noble walls, and in the palaces where 
 all the arts once reigned. 
 
 She had begun to take the fair city into her Ijcart, 
 as every one who has a iieart must needs do, once 
 having dwelt within the olive girdle of its pure pale 
 hills, and seen its green waters wash the banks erst 
 peopled with the gorgeous splendors of the Renais- 
 sance. 
 
 She even began to like her daily life in it; the morn- 
 ings dreamed away before some favorite Giorgione or 
 Veronese, or spent in dim old shops full of the oddest 
 mingling of rubbish and of treasure; i\\e twilights 
 spent in picture-like old chambers, where dames of 
 high degree had made their winter-quarters, fragrant 
 with flowers and quaint with old tapestries and porce- 
 lains; the evenings passed in a society which, too motley 
 to be intimate, yet too personal to dare be witty, was 
 gradually made more than endurable to her, by the 
 sound of one voice for which she listened more often 
 than she knew, by the sight of one face which grew 
 more necessary to her than she was aware. 
 
 " If one could be only quite alone here it would bo 
 too charming," she thought, driving this morning, while 
 the sun shone on the golden reaches of the river, and 
 the softly-colored marbles caught the light, and the pic- 
 turesf^ue old shops glean)ed many-liued as Harlequin
 
 80 -^-V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 under the beetling brows of projecting roofs and the 
 <;arved stone of dark archways. 
 
 But if slie had looked close into her own heart she 
 would have seen that the solitude of her ideal Avould 
 have been one like the French poet's, — solitude d deux. 
 
 She did not go, after all, to her visits ; she went, in- 
 stead, in and out of the studios whose artists adored 
 her, though she was terribly hard to please, and had 
 much more acquaintance with art than is desirable in a 
 purchaser. 
 
 In one of the studios she chanced to meet the master 
 of Palestrina ; and he went with her to another atelier, 
 and another, and another. 
 
 She had her Paysanne shoes on, and her gold-headed 
 cane, and let her victoria stand still while she walked 
 from one to the other of those sculptors' and painters' 
 dens, which lie so close together, like beavers' work, in 
 the old gray quarters of the city. 
 
 Up and down the dark staircases, and in and out the 
 ,gloomy vaulted passages, her silver-gray cloth with the 
 marabout ruches gleamed and glistened, and to many 
 of the artists proved as beneficent as a silvery cloud to 
 the thirsty field in summer. 
 
 She was surprised to find how much she liked it. 
 There was not much genius, and there was a great deal 
 of bad drawing, and worse modeling, and she had edu- 
 cated herself in the very strictest and coldest lessons of 
 art, and really cared for nothing later than Luca Signo- 
 relli, and abhorred Canova and everything that has 
 come after him. But there were some little figures in 
 marble of young children that she could conscientiously 
 buy ; and the little Meissonnier and Fortuny-like 2>ic-
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 81 
 
 tures were clever, if tlicy were mere trick-work and 
 told no story; and the modern oak carvings were really 
 good ; and on the whole she enjoyed her morning un- 
 usually; and her companion looked pleased, because she 
 foinid things to praise. 
 
 As she Avalked, with Delia Rocca beside her, in and 
 out the dusky passage-ways, with the obnoxious Valen- 
 ciennes under her skirts sweeping the stones, and her 
 silvery marabouts glancing like hoar-frost in the shadows 
 of the looming walls, the Lady Hilda felt very happy, 
 and on good terms with herself and the world. No 
 doubt, she thought, it was the fresh west wind blowing 
 up the river from the sea which had done her so much 
 good. 
 
 The golden Ostensoir, to which she had likened 
 Floralia, no longer seemed filled with cigar-ash and 
 absinthe-dregs, but full of the fragrant rose-leaves of an 
 imperishable Past, and the shining sands of a sweet 
 unspent Time. 
 
 She made a poor sculptor happy for a year; she freed 
 a young and promising painter from a heavy debt; she 
 was often impatient with their productions, but she was 
 most patient with their troubles. 
 
 She was only a woman of the world, touched for a 
 day into warmer sympathies, but the blessings she drew 
 down on her sank somehow into her heart, and made 
 her half ashamed, half glad. 
 
 What was the use of writing fine contemptuous 
 
 things of society unless one tried to drop oneself some 
 
 little holy relic into the golden Reliquary? She went 
 
 home contented, and was so gentle with her maids that 
 
 they thought she nuist be going to be unwell. 
 
 D* P
 
 82 J^ A WINTER CI TV. 
 
 Her friend the Princess Olga came to chat witli lier, 
 and they liad their tea cosily in her dressing-room; and 
 at eight o'clock she ■went to dine with JNIrs. Washington, 
 an American Parisienne or Parisian American, known 
 wherever the world of fashion extended, and was taken 
 in to dinner by the Duca della Rocca. 
 
 After dinntir there was a new tenor, who was less of 
 a delnsion than most new tenors are ; and there was a 
 great deal of very aesthetic and abstruse talk about 
 music ; she said little herself, but sat and listened to 
 Della Rocca, who spoke much and eloquently with in- 
 finite grace and accurate culture. To a woman who 
 has cared for no one all her life, there is the strangest 
 and sweetest pleasure in finding at last one voice whose 
 mere sound is melody to her. 
 
 On the whole, she went to bed still with that dream- 
 ful content which had come on her in the day, — no 
 doubt Avith the fresh sea-wind. She knew that she had 
 looked at her best in a dress of pale dead-gold, with old 
 black Spanish lace; and she had only one regret, — that 
 in too soft a mood she had allowed an English person, 
 a Lady Featherleigh, of whom she did not approve, to 
 be presented to her. 
 
 She was habitually the one desire and the one despair 
 of all her countrywomen. 
 
 Except so far as her physical courage, her skill in 
 riding, and her beautiful complexion, which no cold 
 could redden, and no heat could change, might be 
 counted as national characteristics, the Lady Hilda was 
 a very un-English Englishwoman in everything. 
 
 Indeed, your true elegante is raised high above all 
 such small things as nationalities; she floats f^erenely
 
 IX A WINTER CITV. 83 
 
 in an atmosphere far too elevated to be colored by 
 country, — a neutral ground on which the 'ciiders of 
 every civilized land meet far away from all ordinary 
 mortality. 
 
 In Floralia she found a few such choice spirits accus • 
 tomed to breathe the same ether as herself, and with 
 those she lived, carefully avoiding the Penal Settle- 
 ment, as she continued to call the cosmopolitan so- 
 ciety which was outside the zone of her own supreme 
 fashion. 
 
 She saw it, indeed, in ball-rooms and morning recep- 
 tions; it sighed humbly after her, pined for her notice, 
 and would have been happy if she would but even 
 have recompensed it by an insolence ; but she merely 
 ignored its existence, and always looked over its head 
 innocently and cruelly with that divine serenity of in- 
 difference and disdain with which Nature had so liber- 
 ally endowed her. 
 
 "Why should I know them? They wouldn't please 
 me," she would say to those who ventured to remon- 
 strate ; and the answer was unanswerable. 
 
 " I can't think how you manage, Hilda, to keep so 
 clear of people," said Madame Mila, enviously. "Now, 
 J get inundated with hosts of the horridest " 
 
 " Because you cheapen yourself," said Lady Hildti, 
 very coolly. 
 
 " I never could keep people off me," pursued the 
 Coratesse. " When Spiridion had the Embassy in 
 London, it was just the same; I was inundated! It's 
 good nature, I suppose. Certainly you haven't got too 
 much of thrd.''^ 
 
 Lady Hilda smiled ; she thought of those six or
 
 84 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 eight thousands which had gone for Madame ISlila'a 
 losses at play. 
 
 " Good nature is a very indifferent sort of quality," 
 she answered. " It is compounded of weakness, lazi- 
 ness, and vulgarity. Generally speaking, it is only a 
 desire for popularity ; and there is nothing more vulgar 
 than that." 
 
 " I don't see that it is vulgar at all," said Madame 
 Mila, with some sharpness. " I like to think I am 
 popular ; to see a mob look after me ; to have the 
 shop-boys rush out to get a glimpse of me ; to hear 
 the crowd on a race-day call out, ' Ain't she a rare 'un ! 
 my eye, ain't she fit !' just as if I were one of the 
 mares. I often give a crossing-sweeper a shilling in 
 London, just to make him ' bless my pretty eyes.' 
 Why, even when I go to that beastly place of Spiridion's 
 in Russia, I make the hideous serfs in love with me ; 
 it puts one on good terms with oneself. I often think 
 when the people in the streets don't turn after me as I 
 go — then I shall know that I'm old !" 
 
 Lady Hilda's eyebrows expressed unutterable con- 
 tem])t ; these were sentiments to her entirely incompre- 
 hensible. 
 
 " How very agreeable ! — to make the streets the 
 barometer of one's looks, — * fair or foul' ! So you live 
 in apprehension of a railway porter's indifference, and 
 only approve of yourself if a racing tout smiles ! My 
 dear Mila, I never did believe you would have gone 
 lower in the scale of human adorers than your Gom- 
 ineux and Poisseux." 
 
 " .,^t all events, I am not so vain as you are, Hilda," 
 retorted the Conitesse. ^^You approve of yourself
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 85 
 
 eternally, whether all the world hates you or not. I 
 remember Charlie Barrington saying of you once, ' I 
 wonder why that woman keeps straight. Why shoui.l 
 she? She don't care a hang what anybody says of 
 her.'" 
 
 " How discerning of Lord Barrington ! If people 
 only 'keep straight' for the sake of what other people 
 say of them, I think they may just as well ' go off the 
 rails' in any manner they like. Certainly, what I chose 
 to do, I should do, without reference to the approbation 
 of the mob, — either of the streets or of the drawing- 
 rooms." 
 
 " Exactly what Barrington said," returned Madame 
 Mila ; " but then why do you — I mean, why don't you 
 — amuse yourself?" 
 
 The Lady Hilda laughed. 
 
 "My dear, the Gommeux and the Poisseux would 
 not amuse me. I am not so happily constituted as you 
 are." 
 
 Madame Mila colored. 
 
 " That's all very fine talk, but you know it isn 
 natural " 
 
 "To live decently? — no, I suppose it is not nowa- 
 days. Perhaps it never was. But, my dear Mila, you 
 needn't be too disquieted about me. If it make you 
 any more comfortable as to my sanity, I can assure you 
 it is not virtue; no one knows such a word ; it is only 
 indifference." 
 
 " You are very queer, Hilda," said Madame Mila, 
 impatiently : " all I know is, I should like to see you 
 in love, and see what you'd say then." 
 
 The Lady Hilda, wlio was never more moved by her 
 
 8
 
 8C /-V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 feather-headed cousin's words than a rock by a butter- 
 fly, felt a sudden warmth on her face, — perhaps of 
 anger. 
 
 " In love !" she echoed, with less languor and more 
 of impetuosity than she had ever displayed; "are you 
 ever in love, any of you, ever? You have senses 
 and vanity and an inordinate fear of not being in the 
 fashion ; and so you take your lovers as you drink your 
 stimulants and wear your wigs and tie your skirts back, 
 —because everybody else does it, and not to do it is to 
 be odd, or prudish, or something you would hate to 
 be called. Love! it is an unknown thing to you all. 
 You have a sort of .miserable hectic passion, perhaps, 
 that is a drug you take as you take chlorodyne, — just 
 to excite you and make your jaded nerves a little alive 
 again, — and yet you are such cowards that you have 
 not even the courage of passion, but label your drug 
 Friendship, and beg Society to observe that you only 
 keep it for family uses, like arnica or like glycerine. 
 You want notoriety; you want to indulge your ftmcies, 
 and yet keep your place in the world. You like to 
 drag a young man about by a chain, as if he were the 
 dancing monkey that you depended upon for subsist- 
 ence. You like other women to see that you are not 
 too passee to be every whit as improper as if you were 
 twenty. You like to advertise your successes as it 
 were with drum and trumpet, because if you did not, 
 people might begin to doubt that you had any. You 
 like all that, and you like to feel there is nothing you 
 do not know and no length you have not gone, and 
 so you ring all the changes on all the varieties of in- 
 trigue and sensuality, and go over the gamut of sickly
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 87 
 
 sentiment and nauseous license as an orchestra tunes its 
 strings up every night ! Tliat is what all you people 
 call love. I am content enough to have no knowledge 
 of it " 
 
 "Good gracious, Hilda!" said Madame Mila, with 
 wide-open eyes of absolute amazement, "you talk as if 
 you were one of the angry husbands in a comedy of 
 Feuillet or Dumas! I don't think you know anything 
 about it at all; how should you? You only admire 
 yourself, and like art and all that kind of thing, and 
 are as cold as ice to everybody. 'A la place du coeur, 
 vous n'avez qu'un caillou ;' I've read that somewhere." 
 
 "'Elle n'a qu'un ecusson,'" corrected Lady Hilda, 
 her serenity returning. "If Hugo had known much 
 about women, he would have said, 'qu'un chiffon;' but 
 perhaps a dissyllable wouldn't have scanned " 
 
 "You never will convince me," continued Madame 
 de Caviare, " that you would not be a happier woman 
 if you had what you call senses and the rest of it. 
 One can't live without sensations and emotions of 
 some sort. You never feel any except before a bit of 
 Kronenthal china or a triptych of some old fogy of 
 a painter. You do care awfully about your horses, 
 to be sure; but then, as you don't bet on anything, I 
 don't see what excitement you can get out of them. 
 You won't play, — which is the best thing to take to of 
 all, because it will last; the older they grow the wilder 
 women get about it; look at the Grand Duchesse 
 Seraphine, — over eighty, — as keen as a ferret over her 
 winnintrs, and as fierce as a tom-cat over her losses. 
 Now, that is a thing that can't hurt any one, let you 
 say wliat you like everybody plays, — why won't you?
 
 88 AV A WINTER CITV. 
 
 If you lost half your income in one night, it wouldn't 
 ruin you; and you have no idea how delicious it is to 
 get dizzy over the cards; you know one bets even at 
 
 pok(ir to any amount " 
 
 " Thanks ; it won't tempt me," answered Lady Hilda. 
 ' ] have played at Baden, to see if it would amuse me, 
 and it didn't amuse me in the least, — no more than M. 
 des Gommeux does ! My dearest Mila, I am sure that 
 you people who do excite yourselves over baccarat and 
 poker, and can feel really flattered at having a Maurice 
 always in attendance, and can divert yourselves with 
 oyster suppers and masked balls and cotillon riots, are 
 the happy women of this world, — that I quite grant 
 you : oysters and Maurices and cotillon and poker are 
 
 so very easy to be got " 
 
 " And men like women who like them ! " 
 " That I grant too ; poker and cotillons don't exact 
 any very fine manners, and men nowadays always like 
 to be, metaphorically, in their smoking-coats. Only, 
 you see, we are not always all constituted of the same 
 fortunate disposition : poker and cotillons only bore 
 me. You should think it my misfortune, not my fault. 
 I am sure it must be charming to drink a quantity of 
 champagne, and whirl round like a South-Sea islander, 
 and play pranks that pass in a palace though the police 
 \vould interfere in a dancing-garden, and be found by 
 the sun drinking soup at a supper-table; I am sure 
 it must be quite delightful. Only, you see, it doesn't 
 amuse me, — no more than scrambling among a pack 
 of cards flung on their faces, which you say is delight- 
 ful too, or keeping a IVIaurice in your pocket, like youi 
 cigar-case and your handkerchief, which you say is most
 
 7.Y A WINTER CITY. 89 
 
 delightful of all. But good-by, my clear; we shall 
 quarrel if we talk much longer like this ; and we must 
 not quarrel till to-morrow morning, because your Dis- 
 simulee dress will look nothing without my xiustrasienne 
 one. What time shall I call for you ? Make it as lato 
 as you can. I shall only just show myself." 
 
 " Three o'clock, then, — that is quite early enough," 
 muttered Madame Mila, somewhat sulkily ; but she had 
 teased and prayed her cousin into accompanying her, 
 in Louis Seize costumes most carefully compiled by 
 Worth from engravings and pictures of the period, 
 to the Trasimene costume ball, and would not fall out 
 with her just on the eve of it, because she knew their 
 entrance would be the effect of the night. 
 
 " Say half-past," answered the Lady Hilda, as she 
 closed the door and went into her own rooms on the 
 opi>osite side of the staircase. 
 
 " I really begin to think she is jealous of INfaurice 
 and in love with him," thought INIadame Mila, in whose 
 eyes Maurice was irresistible, though, Avith the peculiar 
 opticism of ladies in her position, she was perfectly cer- 
 tain that he was adamant also to all save herself. And 
 the idea of her fastidious cousin's hopeless passion so 
 tickled her fancy that she laughed herself into a good 
 humor as her maids disrobed her; and she curled her- 
 self up in her bed to get a good night's sleep out bef(»re 
 donning the Dissimulee costume for the Trasimene oall, 
 so that she should go at half-past three "as fresh as 
 paint," in the most literal sense of the word, to all 
 the joyous rioting of the cotillon which Maurice was 
 to lead. 
 
 " You shine upon us late, madamc," said Delia Rocca, 
 
 8*
 
 90 ly A WINTER CITY. 
 
 advancing to meet Lady Hilda, when they reached, at 
 four o'clock in the morning, the vast and lofty rooms 
 glittering with fancy dresses. 
 
 " I only came at all to please Mi la, and she only 
 comes for the cotillon," she answered him ; and she 
 thought how well he looked as she glanced at him. 
 He wore a white Louis Treize mousquetaire dress, and 
 he had the collar of the Golden Fleece about his throat, 
 for, among his many useless titles and barren dignities, 
 he was, like many an Italian noble, also a grandee of 
 Spain. 
 
 " You do not dance, madarae?" he asked. 
 
 " Very seldom," she answered, as she accepted his 
 arm to move throue-h the rooms. " When mediaeval 
 dresses came in, dancing should have been banished. 
 \yho could dance well in a long close-clinging robe 
 tightly tied back and heavy with gold tliread and bul- 
 lion fringes? They should revive the minuet: we 
 might go through that without being ridiculous. But 
 if they will have the cotillon instead, they should dress 
 like the girls in Offenbach's pieces, as many of them 
 happen to be to-night. I do not object to a mixture 
 of epochs in furniture, but romping in a Renaissance 
 skirt ! — that is really almost blasphemy enough to raise 
 the ghost of Titian !" 
 
 " I am afraid Madama Pampinet and the Fiammina 
 must have roiuped sometimes," said Delia Rocca, with 
 a smile. "But then you will say the Decadence had 
 already cast its shadow before it." 
 
 " Yes ; but there never was an age so vulgar as our 
 own," said the Lady Hilda. "That I am positive of; 
 > — look, even peasants are vulgar now : they wear tall
 
 IX A WINTER CITY. 91 
 
 hats and tawdry bonnets on Sundays ; and, as for our 
 society, it is ' rowdy :' there is no other word for it, if 
 you uudei'stand what that means." 
 
 "Canaille?" 
 
 "Yes, canaille. M. de St. Louis says the 'femme 
 comme il faut' of his youth is extinct as the dodo: 
 language is slang, society is a mob, dress is display, 
 amusement is riot, people are let into society who have 
 no other claim to be there but money and impudence, 
 and are as ignorant as our maids and our grooms, and 
 more so. It is all as bad as it can be, and I suppose it 
 will only go on getting w^orse. You Italians are the 
 only people with whom manner is not a lost art." 
 
 " You do us much honor. Perhaps we too shall be 
 infected before long. We are sending our lads to pub- 
 lic schools in your country : they will probably come 
 back unable to bow, ashamed of natural grace, and 
 ambitious to enuilate the groom model in everything. 
 This is thouo;ht an advanced education." 
 
 Lady Hilda laughed. 
 
 "The rich Egyptians go to English universities, and 
 take back to the Nile a passion for rat-hunting and 
 brandy, and the most hideous hats and coats in the 
 universe, and then think they have improved on the 
 age of the Pharaohs. I hope Italy will never be in- 
 fected, but I'm afraid ; you have gas-works, tramways, 
 and mixed marriages, and your populace has almost 
 entirely abandoned costume." 
 
 " And in the cities we have lost the instinct of good 
 taste in the most fatal manner. Perhaps it has died 
 out with the old costumes. Who knows? Dress is, 
 after all, the thermometer of taste. Modern male at-
 
 92 I^' A WINTER CITY. 
 
 tire is of all others the most frightful, the most gro- 
 tesque, the most gloomy, aud, to our climate, the most 
 unsuitable." 
 
 " Yes. Tall hats and tail-coats appear to me to be 
 like the locusts: wherever they spread they bear bar- 
 renness in their train. But the temper of your people 
 will always procure to you some natural grace, some 
 natural elegance." 
 
 "Let us hope so; but in all public works our taste 
 already is gone. One may say, without vanity, that in 
 full sense of beauty and of proportion Italy surpassed 
 of old all the world : how is it, I often ask myself, 
 that we have lost all this? Here in Floralia if we 
 require gas-works we erect their chimneys on the very 
 l)ank of our river, ruining one of the loveliest views 
 in the world, and one that has been a tradition of 
 beauty for ages. If it be deemed necessary to break 
 down and widen our picturesque old bridges, we render 
 them hideous as any railway road, by hedging them 
 with frightful monotonous parapets of cast iron, the 
 heaviest, most soulless, most hateful thing that is man- 
 ufactured. Do we make a fine hill-drive, costing us 
 enormously, when we have no money to pay for it, we 
 make one, indeed, as fine as any in Europe ; and, hav- 
 ing made it, then we ruin it by planting at every step 
 cafes, and guinguettes, and guard-houses, and every arti- 
 ficial abomination and vulgarity in stucco and brick- 
 M'ork that can render its noble scenerv ridiculous. Do 
 we deem it advisable, for sanitary or other purposes, 
 to turn the people out of the ancient market where 
 they keep their stalls under the old palace-walls hap- 
 pily enough, summer and winter, like so many Dutch
 
 IX Ji WINTER CITY. 93 
 
 pictures, we build a cage of iron and glass like an 
 enormous cucumber-frame, inexpressibly hideous, and 
 equally incommodious, and only adapted to grill the 
 people in June and turn them to ice in January. What 
 is the reason ? We have liberal givers, such as your 
 countryman Sloane, such as my countryman Galliera, 
 yet what single modern thing worth producing can we 
 show ? We have destroyed much that will be as irrep- 
 arable a loss to future generations as the art destroyed 
 in the great siege is to us. But we have produced no- 
 thing save deformity. Perhaps, indeed, we might not 
 have any second Michael Angelo to answer if we called 
 on him ; but it is certain that we must have architects 
 capable of devising something in carven stone to edge 
 a bridge ; w^e must have artists who, were they con- 
 sulted, would say, ' Do not insult a sublime panorama 
 of the most poetic and celebrated valley in the world 
 by putting into the foreground a square guards' box, 
 a stucco drinking-house, and the gilded lamps of a 
 dancing-garden.' We must have men capable of so 
 much as that: yet they are either never employed or 
 never listened to ; the truth, I fear, is that a public 
 work nowadays with us is like a plant being carried to 
 be planted in a city square, of which every one who 
 passes it plucks off a leaf: by the time it reaches its 
 destination the plant is leafless. The public work is the 
 plant, and the money to be got from it is the foliage ; 
 provided each one plucks as much foliage as he can, no 
 one cares in what state the plant reaches the piazza." 
 
 Lady Hilda looked at him as he spoke with an 
 eloquence and earnestness which absorbed him for the 
 moment, so that he forgot that he was talking to a
 
 04 J^ ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 woman, and a Avoman whose whole life was one o' 
 trifling;, of languor, and of extravagance. 
 
 " All that is very true," she said, with some hesi- 
 tation ; " but M'hy then do you hold yourself aloof? 
 — why do you do nothing to change this state of 
 public things? You see the evil, but you prescribe 
 no remedy." 
 
 " The only remedy will be Time," he answered her. 
 " Corruption has eaten too deeply into the heart of this 
 nation to be easily eradicated. The knife of war has 
 not cut it out; we can only hope for what the medi- 
 cines of education and of open discussion may do; 
 the greatest danger lies in the inertia of the people ; 
 they are angry often, but they do not move " 
 
 " Neither do you move, though you are angry." 
 
 He smiled a little sadly. 
 
 " If I were a rich man I would do so. Poor as I 
 am, I could not embrace public life Avithout seeming 
 to seek my own private ends from office. A man 
 without wealth has no influence, and his motives will 
 always be suspected, — at least here." 
 
 " But one should be above suspicion " 
 
 " Were one certain to do good, — yes." 
 
 " But why should you despair ? You have a country 
 of boundless resources, a people affectionate, impression- 
 able, infinitely engaging, and much more intelligent 
 naturally than any other populace, a soil that scarce 
 needs touching to yield the richest abundance, and in 
 nearly every small town or obscure city some legacy 
 of art or architecture, such as no other land can 
 Bhoxv " 
 
 " Despair ! God forbid that I should despair. I
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 95 
 
 think there is infinite hope; but I cannot disguise from 
 myself that there are infinite dangers also. An unedu- 
 cated peasantry has had its religion torn away from it, 
 and has no other moral landmark set to cling to; old 
 ways and old venerations are kicked away, and nothing 
 substituted ; public business means almost universally 
 public pillage; the new text placed before the regener- 
 ated nation is, ' Make money, honestly if you can — but 
 make money !' haste, avarice, accumulation, cunning, 
 neglect of all loveliness, desecration of all ancientness, 
 — these, the modern curses which accompany * progress,' 
 are set before a scarcely awakened people as the proper 
 objects and idols of their efforts. We, who are chiefly 
 to be moved by our affections and our imaginations, are 
 only bidden to be henceforth inspired by a joyless pros- 
 perity and a loveless materialism. We, the heirs of 
 the godhead of the Arts, are only counseled to emulate 
 the mechanical inventions and the unscrupulous com- 
 merce of the American genius, and are ordered to learn 
 to blush with shame because our ancient cities, sacred 
 with the ashes of heroes, are not spurious brand-new 
 lath-and-plaster human ant-hills of the growth of yes- 
 terday ! Forgive me, madame," he said, interrupt- 
 ing himself, with a little laugh; "I forget that I am 
 tedious to you. With the taxes at fifty-two per cent., 
 a poor land-owner like myself may incline to think that 
 all is not as well as it should be." 
 
 '* You interest me," said the Lady Hilda, and her 
 eyes dwelt on him with a grave, musing regard that 
 they had till then given to no man. " And on your 
 own lands, with your own people, — how is it there?" 
 
 His face brightened.
 
 96 ^^V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " My jieople love me," he said, softly. " As for the 
 lands, — when one is poor, one cannot do much ; but 
 every one is content on them : that is something." 
 
 " Is it not everything ?" said the Lady Hilda, with 
 a little sigh ; for she herself, who could gratify her 
 every wish, had never yet quite known what content 
 could mean. *' Let us go and look at the ball-room ; 
 JMila will be coming to know if we have heard of 
 MacMahon's death, that we talk so seriously." 
 
 She floated on his arm to the scene of tumult, where, 
 being hemmed in by lookers-on till the pressure left 
 them scarcely any space to perform upon, the dancers 
 were going through a quadrille with exceeding viva- 
 city, and with strong reminiscences in it of some steps 
 of the cancan, Madame Mila and Lady Featherleigh 
 particularly distinguishing themselves by their imita- 
 tions of the Chimpanzee dance, as performed in the last 
 winter's operetta of Ching-aring-aring-ching. 
 
 They were of course being watched and applauded 
 very loudly by the ring of spectators as if they were 
 really the actors in the Ching-aring-aring-ching, which 
 aiForded them the liveliest pleasure possible, great ladies 
 being never so happy nowadays as when they are quite 
 sure that they might really be taken for comedians or 
 courtesans. 
 
 It was hard upon Madame Mila that just as she had 
 jumped so high that La Petite Boulette herself could 
 scarcely have jumped higher, the lookers-on turned their 
 heads to see the Lady Hilda in the door- way on the arm 
 of her white mousquetaire. Lady Hilda was beyond 
 all dispute the most beautiful woman of the rooms, she 
 threw them all into the shade as a crown diamond
 
 7.Y A WINTER CITV. 97 
 
 throws stars of strass ; and many of the men were so 
 dazzled by her appearance there that they actually lost 
 the sight of Madame Mila's rose-colored stockings 
 twinkling in the air. 
 
 " Paolo fait bonne fortune," they said to one another, 
 and began to make wagers that she would marry him, 
 or, on the other hand, that she was only playing with 
 him : opinion varied, and bets ran high. 
 
 Society bets on everything; peace and love, and 
 lienor and happiness, are only "staying" horses or 
 " non-stayers," on M'hose running the money is piled. 
 It is fortunate indeed and rare when the betting is 
 " honest," and if the drinking-waters of i)eace be not 
 poisoned on purpose, or the smooth turf of a favorite's 
 career be not sprinkled with glass, by those who have 
 laid the odds heavily against it. So that they land 
 their bets, what do they care whether or not the sub- 
 ject of their speculations be lamed for life and destined 
 to drag out its weary days between the cab-shafts till 
 the end comes in the knacker's yard ? 
 
 As for the Lady Hilda, she was so used to be the 
 observed of all observers wherever she went, that she 
 never heeded who looked at her, and never troubled 
 herself what anybody might say. She walked about 
 with Delia Rocca, talked with him, and let him sit by 
 her in little sheltered camellia-filled velvet-hung nooks, 
 because it pleased her, and because he looked like an 
 old Velasquez picture in that white Louis Treize dress. 
 Of what anybody might think she was absolutely in- 
 different ; she was not mistress of herself and of thirty 
 thousand a year to care for the tittle-tattle of a small 
 winter city. 
 
 £ 9 a
 
 98 AV A WIXTKR C!Ty\ 
 
 It was very pleasant to be mistress of herself, — to 
 do absolutely as she chose, — to have no earthly creature 
 to consult, — to go to bed in Paris and wake up in St. 
 Petersburg if the fancy took her, — to buy big diamonds 
 till she could outblaze Lady Dudley, — to buy thorough- 
 bred horses and old pictures and costly porcelains and 
 all sorts of biblots, ancient and curious, that might 
 please her taste, — to obey every caprice of the moment 
 and to have no one to be responsible to for its indul- 
 gence, — to write a check for a large amount if she saw 
 any great distress that was painful to look upon, — to 
 adorn her various houses with all that elegance of whim 
 and culture of mind could gather together from the 
 treasures of centuries, — to do just as she pleased, in a 
 word, without any one else to ask, or any necessity to 
 ponder whether the expense were wise. It was very 
 agreeable to be mistress of herself; and yet 
 
 There is a capitalist in Europe who is very un- 
 happy because all his wealth cannot purchase the world- 
 famous key of the Strozzi princes. 
 
 Lady Hilda was never unhappy, but she was not 
 quite content. 
 
 Out of the very abundance of her life she was weary, 
 and there was a certain coldness in it all; it was too 
 like one of her own diamonds. 
 
 She sighed a little to-night when her Avhite mousque- 
 taire had led her to her carriage, and she was rolling 
 across the bridge homeward, whilst Madame Mila's 
 gossamer skirts were still twirling and her rosy stock- 
 ings still twinkling in all the intricacies and diversions 
 with which the Vicomte Maurice would keep the cotil- 
 lun going until nine o'clock in the morning.
 
 JN A WINTER CITV. 99 
 
 In the darknass of her carriage, as it went over the 
 stones through the winding ill-lit streets, she saw soft 
 amorous eyes looking at her under their dreamy lids. 
 She could not forget their look ; she was haunted by 
 it, — it had said so much. 
 
 The tale it had told was one she had heard at 
 least twenty times a year for ten long years, and it 
 had never moved her; it had bored her, — nothing 
 more. 
 
 But now a sudden warmth, a strange emotion, thrilled 
 in her, driving through the dark with the pressure of 
 his hand still seeming to linger upon hers. 
 
 It was such an old old tale that his eyes had told, 
 and yet for once it had touched her somehow, and made 
 her heart quicken, her color rise. 
 
 " It is too ridiculous !" she said to herself. " I am 
 dreaming. Fancy my caring !" 
 
 And she was angry with herself, and, when she 
 reached her own rooms, looked a moment at her full 
 reflection in the long mirrors, diamonds and all, before 
 she rang for her maid to come to her. 
 
 It was a brilliant and beautiful figure that she saw 
 there in the gorgeous colors copied from a picture by 
 Watteau le Jeune, and with the great stones shining 
 above her head and on her breast like so many little 
 dazzling suns. 
 
 She had loved herself very dearly all her life, lived 
 for herself, and in a refined and lofty way had been 
 as absolutely self-engrossed and amorous of her own 
 pleasure and her own vanities as the greediest and cru- 
 dest of ordinary egotists. 
 
 "Am I a fool?" she said, angrily, to her own image.
 
 100 IN A \\L\TKR CITY. 
 
 "It is too absurd! AVliv should he move me more 
 than any one of all the others?" 
 
 And yet suddenly all the life which had so well sat- 
 isfied her seemed empty, — seemed cold and hard as one 
 of her many diamonds. 
 
 She rang with haste and impatience for her maid, 
 and all they did, from the hot soup they brought to 
 the way they untwisted her hair, was wrong, and when 
 she lay down in her bed she could not sleep, and when 
 the bright forenoon came, full of the sound of pealing 
 bells and gay street songs and hurrying feet, she fell 
 into feverish dreams, and, waking later, did not know 
 what ailed her. 
 
 From that time Delia Rocca ceased to avoid the 
 Hotel Murat ; he was received there oftener than on 
 her "day;" he went about with her on various pilgrim- 
 ages to quaint old out-of-the-way nooks of forgotten 
 art which he could tell her of, knowing every nook and 
 corner of his native city; she almost always invited 
 him when she had other people to dine with her; her 
 cousin did the same, and he was usually included in all 
 those manifold schemes for diversion which, woman- 
 like, Madame Mila was always setting on foot, think- 
 ing with Didei'ot's vagabond that it is something at 
 any rate to have got rid of Time. 
 
 Sometimes he availed himself of those opportunities 
 of Fortune, sometimes he did not. His conduct had 
 a variableness about it which did more than anything 
 else would have done to arrest the attention of a woman 
 sated with homage ns the Lady Hilda had been all her 
 days. She missed him when he was absent; she was 
 influenced by him when he was present. Beneath the
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 101 
 
 softness of his manner there was a certain seriousness 
 which had its weight with lier. He made her feel 
 ashamed of many things. 
 
 Something in his way of life also attracted her. 
 There are a freedom and simplicity in all the habits of 
 an Italian noble that are in strong contrast with the 
 formal conventionalism of the ways of other men; there 
 is a feudal affectionateness of relation between him and 
 his dependants which is not like anything else; when 
 he knows anything of agriculture, and interests him- 
 self personally in his people, the result is an existence 
 wiiich makes the life of the Paris flaneurs and the Lon- 
 don idlers look very poor indeed. 
 
 Palestrina often saw its-lord drive thither by six in the 
 morning, walk over his fields, hear grievances and redress 
 them, mark out new vine-walks with his bailiff, watch 
 his white oxen turn the sods of the steep slopes, and 
 plan trench-cuttings to arrest the winter-swollen brooks, 
 long before the men of his degree in Paris or in Lon- 
 don opened their heavy eyes to call for their morning 
 taste of brandy, and awoke to the recollection of their 
 night's gaming losses, or their wagers on coming races. 
 
 The finest of fine gentlemen, the grandest of grand 
 seigneurs, in court or drawing-room or diplomatic circle, 
 Paolo della Rocca, among his own gray olive orchards 
 and the fragrance of his great wooden storehouses, was 
 as simple as Cincinnatus, laughed like a boy with his 
 old steward, caressed like a woman the broad heads of 
 his beasts at the plow, and sat under a great mulberry 
 to break his bread at noonday, hearkening to the talk of 
 his peasants as though he were one of them. 
 
 The old Etrurinn gentleness and love of the rural life 
 
 9*
 
 102 '^-"^' ^ \\'iyTF.R VITV. 
 
 are still alive iu this land ; may they never perish, for 
 they are to the nation as the timely rains to the vine, 
 as the sweet strong sun to the harvest. 
 
 This simplicity, this naturalness, which in the Italian 
 will often underlie the highest polish of culture and of 
 reremony, had a curious fascination for a woman in 
 whose own life there had been no place for simplicity 
 and no thought for nature. 
 
 She had been in the bonds of the world always, as 
 a child in its sw^addling bands, — none the less so be- 
 cause she had been one of its leaders in those matters 
 of supreme fashion wherein she had reigned as a god- 
 dess. Her life had been altogether artificial ; she had 
 always been a great garden lily in a hot-house, she had 
 never known what it was to be blown by a fresh breeze 
 on a sun-swept moorland like a heather flower. The 
 hot-house shelters from all chills and is full of perfume, 
 but you can see no horizon from it ; that alone is the 
 joy of the moorland. Now and then, garden lily in a 
 stove-heated palace though she was, some vague want, 
 some dim unfulfilled wish, had stirred in her; she 
 began to think now that it had been for that unknown 
 horizon. 
 
 ''Men live too much in herds, in crowded rooms, 
 among stoves and gas-jets," he said to her once. " There 
 are only two atmospheres that do one morally any good, 
 — the open air and the air of the cloister." 
 
 " You mean that there are only two things that are 
 good, — activity and meditation ?" 
 
 " I think so. The fault of society is that it substi- 
 tutes, for those, stimulants and stagnation." 
 
 He made her think ; he influenced her more than
 
 7.V A WINTER CITY. 103 
 
 she knew. Uuder the caressing subserviency to her as 
 of a courtier, she felt the power of a man who discerned 
 life more clearly and more wisely than herself. 
 
 The chief evil of society lies in the enormous impor- 
 tance which it gives to trifles. She began to feel that 
 with all her splendor she had been only occupied with 
 trifles. Nature had been a sealed book to her, and she 
 began to doubt that she had even understood Art. 
 
 " If you can be pleased with this," says a great art- 
 critic, " this" being a little fresco of St. Anne, " you 
 can see Floralia. But if not, — by all means amuse your- 
 self there, if you find it anuising, as long as you like; 
 you can never see it." 
 
 The test may be a little exaggerated, but the general 
 meaning of his words is correct. 
 
 Cosmopolitan and Anglo-American Floralia, for the 
 main part, do not see the city they come to winter in ; 
 see nothing of its glories, of its sanctities, of its almost 
 divinities; see only their own friends, their own faces, 
 their own fans, flirtations, and fallals, reflected as in 
 mirrors all around them, and filling up their horizon. 
 
 " A Dutchman can be just as solemnly and entirely 
 contemplative of a lemon-pip and a cheese-paring as an 
 Italian of the Virgin in glory." 
 
 Cosmopolitan and Anglo-American Floralia is in 
 love with its lemon-pips, and has no eyes for the Glory. 
 When it has an eye, indeed, it is almost worse, because 
 it is bent then on buying the Glory for its drawing- 
 room staircase, or, worse yet, on selling it again at a 
 profit. 
 
 The Lady Hilda, who did not love lemon-pijis, but 
 who yet had never seen the Glory with that simplicity^
 
 101 I^' A WINTER CITY. 
 
 as of a child's worship, which alone constitutes the true 
 sight, began to unlearn many of her theories, and to 
 learn very mu.-h in emotion and vision, as she carried 
 her delicate disdainful head into the little dusky chaj>cls 
 and the quiet prayer-worn chantries of Floralia. 
 
 Her love of Art had, after all, been a cold =he 
 began to think a poor, passion. She had studied the 
 philosophy of Art, had been learned in the contempla- 
 tive and the dramatic schools, had known the signs 
 manual of this epoch and the other, had discoursed 
 learnedly of Lombard and Byzantine, of objective and 
 subjective, of archaic and naturalistic ; but all the 
 while it had been not very much more than a scholarly 
 jargon, a graceful pedantry, which had seemed to make 
 her doubly scornful of those more ignorant. Art is a 
 fashion in some circles, as religion is in some, and license 
 is in others, and Art had been scarcely deeper than a 
 fashion with her, or cared for more deeply than as a 
 superior kind of furniture. 
 
 But here, in this the sweetest, noblest, most hallowed 
 city of the world, which has been so full of genius iii 
 other times that the fragrance thereof remains, as it 
 were, upon the very stones, like that Persian attar, to 
 make one ounce of which a hundred thousand roses die, 
 here something nuich deeper yet much simpler came 
 upon her. 
 
 Her theories melted away into pure reverence, her 
 philosophies faded into tenderness, new revelations of 
 human life came to her, before those spiritual imagin- 
 ings of men to whom the blue sky had seemed full of 
 angels, and the watches of the night been stirred by 
 the voice of God : before those old panels and old fres-
 
 AV A WISTER CITY. 105 
 
 coes, often so simple, often so pathetic, always so sin- 
 cere in faith and in work, she grew lierself simpler 
 and of more humility, and learned that Art is a religion 
 for whose right understanding one must needs become 
 "even as a little child." 
 
 She had been in great art cities before, — in the home 
 of Tintoretto and the Veronese, in the asylum of the Ma- 
 donna de San Sisto, in the stone wilderness of Ludwig 
 where the Faun sleeps in exile, in mighty Rome itself; 
 but she had not felt as she felt now. She had been 
 full of appreciation of their art, but they had left her 
 as they had found her, cold, vain, self-engrossed, en- 
 tirely shut in a holy of holies of culture and of criti- 
 cism ; she had covered her Cavalcaselle with pencil- 
 notes, and had glanced from a ])redella or a pieta to the 
 pages of her Rusk in with a serene smile of doubt. 
 
 But here and now Art ceased to be science, and be- 
 came emotion in her. Why was it? She did not care 
 to ask herself. 
 
 Only all her old philosophies seemed falling about 
 her like shed leaves, and her old self seemed to her but 
 a purposeless, frivolous, chilly creature. The real rea- 
 son she would not face, and indeed as yet was not con- 
 scious of ; the reason that love had entered into her, and 
 that love, if it be worth the name, has always two 
 handmaidens, swift sympathy, and sad humility, keep- 
 ing step together.
 
 ]06 ^-^' ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Foreign Floralia, i.e., that portion of Floralia wliicli 
 is not indigenous to the soil, but has only flown south 
 with the swallows, is remarkable for a really godlike 
 consciousness: it knows everything about everybody, 
 and all things, past, present, and to come, that ever did, 
 could, would, should, cannot, will not, or never shall 
 happen ; and is aware of all things that have ever 
 taken place, and of a great many things that never 
 have done so. It is much better informed about you 
 than you are yourself; knows your morals better than 
 your confessor, your constitution better than your doc- 
 tor, your income better than your banker, and the day 
 you were born on better than your mother. It is om- 
 niscient and omnipresent, microscopic and telescopic j 
 it is a court-edition of Scotland Yard, and a pocket- 
 edition of the Cabinet Noir ; it speeds as many inter- 
 rogations as a telegraph-wire, and has as many mysteries 
 as the agony column of a newspaper : only it always 
 answers its own questions, and has all the keys to its 
 own mysteries, and, what is still more comforting, always 
 knows everything for " certain." 
 
 It knows that you starve your servants because you 
 are poor and like to save on the butcher and baker ; it 
 knows that you overpay them because you are rich and 
 want them to keep your secrets ; it knows that your 
 great-grandmother's second cousin was hanged for for- 
 gery at Tyburn ; it knows that your silk stockings have
 
 7.V A ULXTER CI TV. 107 
 
 cotton tops to tlieni ; it knows that your heirloom gui- 
 )iiiie is imitation, made the other day at Rapallo; it 
 l-^nows tiiat your Embassy only receives you because — 
 hush ! — a great personage — ah, so very shocking ; it 
 knows that you had green ])eas six weeks before any- 
 body else; it knows that you have had four dinner- 
 parties this week and are living on your capital ; it 
 knows that when you were in Rome you only went to 
 the Quirinal Wednesdays, because [whisper, whisper, 
 whisper) — oh, indeed it is perfectly true, — had it on 
 the best authority, — dreadful, incredible, but perfectly 
 true. 
 
 In point of fact, there is nothing it does not know. 
 
 Except, to be sure, it never knows that Mrs. Poti- 
 phar is not virtuous, or that Lady Messalina is not 
 everything slie should be; this it never knows and 
 never admits, because if it did it could not very well 
 drink the Potiphar champagne, and might lose for its 
 daughters the Messalina balls. Indeed, its perpetual 
 loquacity, which is " as the waters come down at Lo- 
 dore," has most solemn and impressive interludes of 
 refreshing dumbness and deafness when any incautious 
 Bpeaker, not trained to its ways, hints that Mrs. Poti- 
 phar lives in a queer manner, or that Lady Messalina 
 would be out of society anywhere else ; then indeed does 
 Anglo-Saxon Floralia draw itself up with an injured 
 dignity, and rebuke you with the murmur of — Chris- 
 tian charity. 
 
 In other respects, however, it has the soul of Samuel 
 Pejiys multijilied by five thousand. It watched the pro- 
 gress of intimacy between Lady Hilda and the ruined 
 lord of Palcstrina, and knew " all about it," — knew a
 
 108 I^^ ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 vast (leal more than the persons concerned, of course; 
 it, always does, or what would be the use of talking;? 
 
 Gossiping over its bonbons and tea in the many 
 pleasant houses in which the south-wintering northern 
 swallows nestle, it knew that he and she had been in 
 love years and years before ; the family would not let 
 her marry him because he was so poor ; it was tlie dis- 
 covery of his letters to her that had killed poor old 
 rich Vararlberg ; he and her brother had fought in the 
 Bois, — indeed ! — oh, yes, it was hushed up at the time, 
 but it was quite true, and he had shot her brother in 
 the shoulder; the surgeon who had attended the 
 wounded man had told the physician who had attended 
 the sister-in-law of the cousin of the most intimate 
 friend of the lady who had vouched for this. There 
 could not be better authority. But there never was 
 anything against her? — oh, dear me, no, never any- 
 thing ; everybody said this very warmly, because 
 everybody had been, hoped to be, or at least would 
 not despair of being, introduced to her and asked to 
 dinner. It was very romantic, really most interesting; 
 they had not met for nine years, and now! — ah, that 
 explained all her coldness then, and that extraordinary 
 rejection of the Crown Prince of Deutschlaud, which 
 nobody ever had been able to understand. But was 
 it not strange that he had never tried to resume his 
 old influence before? No ; he was as proud as he was 
 poor, and, besides, they had quarreled after the duel 
 with her brother ; they had parted one night very 
 bitterly, after one of the Empress's balls at St. Cloud, 
 out on the terrace there ; but he had always refused to 
 give up her portrait; somebody had seen it upon his
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 109 
 
 chest when he had been stripped in the hospital after 
 Ciistozza. Oh, yes, they remembered that perfectly. 
 
 Altogether they made such a very pretty story that 
 it was quite a pity that it w'as not true, and that the 
 subjects of it had never met until the Due de St. Louis 
 had brouo;ht them face to face that winter. The one 
 real truth which did begin to embitter the life of the 
 Lady Hilda and lie heavy on her thoughts waking and 
 sleeping was one that the garrulous gossiping Pepys- 
 like northern swallows, chirping so busily, did not 
 guess at all. Indeed, this is a sad fate which generally 
 befalls gossip. 
 
 It is like tlie poor devil in the legend of Fugger's 
 TeufFelpalast at Trent : it toils till cock-crow picking 
 up the widely-scattered grains of corn by millions till 
 the bushel measure is piled high, and, lo ! the five 
 grains that are the grains always escape its sight and 
 roll away and hide themselves. The poor devil, being 
 a primitive creature, shrieked and flew away in despair 
 at his failure. Gossip hugs its false measure and says 
 loftily that the five grains are of no consequence what- 
 ever. 
 
 The Due de St. Louis, who had not got the five 
 grains any more than they had, yet who could have 
 told them their bushelful was all wrong, like a wise 
 man, seeing the project of his affections in a fair way 
 towards realization, — at least, so he thought, — pru- 
 dently abstained from saying one word about it to any 
 one. "Trop de zele" spoiled everything, he knew, from 
 politics to omelettes, from the making of proselytes lo 
 the frying of artichokes. A breath too much has be- 
 fore now to])plcd down the most carefully built house 
 
 10
 
 110 ^^^ ^ UIXTER CI TV. 
 
 of cards. When to let things alone is perhaps the 
 subtlest, rarest, and most useful of all knowledge. 
 
 A man here and there has it ; it may be said that no 
 woman has, has had, or ever will have it. If Napoleon 
 had had it he might have died at eighty at St. Cloud 
 instead of St. Helena. But genius, like woman, never 
 has been known to have it. For genius and caution 
 are as far apart as the poles. 
 
 " Tout va bien," the Due said to himself, taking off 
 his hat to her when he saw Delia Rocca by her car- 
 riage, meeting them in discussion before some painting 
 or statue that she was about to buy, or watching them 
 Ute-a-tete on some couch of a ball-room, or in some 
 nook of a gas-lit grove of camellias. 
 
 " Tout va bien," said the Due, smiling to himself, 
 and speeding on his way to his various missions, recon- 
 ciling angry ladies, making the prettiest flatteries to 
 pretty ones, seeking some unobtainable enamel, ivory, 
 Oi* Elzevir, penning sparkling proverbs in verse, ar- 
 ranging costume quadrilles, preventing duels and smil- 
 ing on debutantes, adjusting old quarrels and hearing 
 new tenors ; always in a whirl of engagements, always 
 courted and courteous, always the busiest, the wittiest, 
 the happiest, the most urbane, the most charming, the 
 most serene person in all Floralia. " Tout va bien," 
 said the Due, and the town with him : the two persons 
 concerned were neither of them quite so sure. 
 
 Meanwhile, for a little space the name and fame and 
 ways and wonders of the Lady Hilda, which filled 
 Floralia witJi a blaze as of electric lights, quelling all 
 lesser luminaries, were almost disregarded in a colossal 
 sentiment, a gigantic discussion, a debate which, for
 
 JJV A WINTER CI TV. HI 
 
 endless eloquence and breatliless conflict, Avould require 
 the dithyrambs of Pindar meetly to record, — the grave 
 question of who would, and who would not, go to the 
 Postiche ball. 
 
 " Number One goes to dine with Number Two, only 
 that he may say he did so to Number Three," some 
 cynic has declared; but Floralia improves even on 
 this; before it goes to dine or dance, it spends the 
 whole week in trying to find out who all the Number 
 Fours will be, or in declaring that if such and such a 
 Number Four goes it does not think it can go itself, — 
 out of principle; all which diversions while its time 
 away and serve to amuse it as a box of toys a child. 
 Not that it ever fails to go and dine or dance, — only 
 it likes to discuss it dubiously in this Avay. 
 
 The Postiche ball was really a thing to move society 
 to its depths. 
 
 The wintering-swallows had never been so fluttered 
 about anything since the mighty and immortal question 
 of the previous season, when a Prince of the Holy 
 Roman Empire, a United Netherlands Minister, and a 
 Due et Pair of France, had all been asked to dinner 
 together with their respective wives at an American 
 house, and the hostess and all the swallows with her 
 had lived in agonies for ten days previously, torn 
 to pieces by the terrible doubts of Precedence; be- 
 seeching and receiving countless counsels and coun- 
 selors, and consulting authorities and quoting precedents 
 with the research of Max Muller and the zeal of Dr. 
 Kenealy. 
 
 But the Postiche ball was a much wider, indeed 
 almost an international matter; because the Anglo-
 
 112 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Saxor. races had staked their lives that it should be a 
 success; and the Latin and Muscovite had declared 
 that it would be a failure ; and everybody was dying 
 to go, and yet everybody was ashamed to go ; a statt 
 of mind wdiich constitutes the highest sort of social 
 ecstasy in this age of coni})osite emotions. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Joshua R. Postiche, some said, were 
 Jews, and some said were Dutch, and some said were 
 half-castes from Cuba, and some said were America)is 
 from Arkansas, and some said had been usurers, and 
 some gin-sellers, and some opium-dealers, and some 
 things even yet worse ; at any rate they had amassed a 
 great deal of money, and had therefore got into society 
 by dint of a very large expenditure and the meekes. 
 endurance of insults; and had made an ancient palace 
 as gaudy and garish as any brand-new hotel at Nice or 
 Scarborough, and gathered in it all the cosmopolitan 
 crowd of Floralia; some of the Italian planets and Mus- 
 covite stars alone hanging aloof in a loftier atmosphere, 
 to the very great anguish of the Joshua R. Postiches. 
 ' The ball was to be a wonderful ball, and the cotillon 
 })resents were whispered to have cost thirty thousand 
 francs, and there w^ere various rumors of a " surprise" 
 tiiere would be at it, as poor Louis Napoleon used to 
 })romise the Parisians one for the New Year. Louis 
 Napoleon's promises always ended in smoke, but the 
 surprise of the Joshua R. Postiches was always to h 
 reckoned on as something excellent: — salmon comt 
 straio-ht from the Scotch rivers; lobsters stewed in 
 tokay du krone ; French comic actors fetched from 
 Paris ; some great singer, paid heaven knew what for 
 merely opening her mouth; some dove flyiuL'" about
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. II3 
 
 Nvitli jewels in liis beak for everybody ; or something 
 of that sort, which showed that the Joshua E,. Postiches, 
 wherever they had been " raised," or even if they liad 
 kept a drinking-bar and eating-siiop in Havana, as some 
 people said, were at all events persons who knew the 
 requirements of their own generation and the w^ay to 
 mount into " La Haute." 
 
 Why they wanted to get there no mortal could tell ; 
 they had no children, and were both middle-aged ; but 
 no doubt, if you have not been used to them, the cards 
 of countesses are as balm in Gilead, and to see a fash- 
 ionable throng come up your stiiircase is to have attained 
 the height of human desire. 
 
 At any rate, the Joshua R. Postiches had set their 
 souls on this sort of social success, and they achieved it; 
 receiving at their parties many distinguished and in- 
 finitely bored personages who had nothing to do in Flo- 
 ralia, and would have cut them in Paris, Vienna, or 
 London with the blandest and blankest stare of uncon- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Madame Mila was on the point of adding herself to 
 those personages. 
 
 " I must go to the ball," she said. " Oh, it will be 
 the best thing of the season except Nina Trasimene's. 
 I must go to the ball ; but then I can't endure to know 
 the woman." 
 
 "Can't you go without knowing her?" said the Lady 
 Hilda. " That has been done " 
 
 Madame Mila did not feel the satire. 
 
 " Yes ; one could do it in Paris or London ; but not 
 in a little place like this," she answered, innocently. 
 '' I must let them present her to me ; and I must leave 
 
 10* H
 
 114 IN A WINTER crrr. 
 
 a card. That is what's so horrid. The Avoman is 
 dreadful; she murders all the languages; and the man's 
 always looking about for a spittoon, and calls you my 
 lady. They are too dreadful ! But I must go to the 
 ball. Besides, our own people want Maurice to lead 
 the cotillon. Now Guido Salvareo is ill, there's nobody 
 that can come near Maurice " 
 
 " But I suppose he would not dare to go if you were 
 not there ?" 
 
 "Of course he would not go; the idea! But I mean 
 to go ; I must go. I'm only thinking how I can get 
 out of knowing the woman afterwards. It's so diffi- 
 cult in a small place, and I am always so good-natured 
 in those things. I suppose it's no use asking. you to 
 come, Plilda? else, if you would, you could cut them 
 afterwards most deliciously, and I should do as you did. 
 Left to myself, I'm ahvays too good-natured." 
 
 " I would do most things to please you, my dear 
 Mila," answered her cousin, " but I don't think I can 
 do that. You know it's my rule never to visit people 
 that I won't let visit me ; and I don't like murdered 
 languages, and being called ' my lady.' " 
 
 " Oh, the people are horrid, — I say so," answered 
 the Comtesse. " I shall have nothing to do with them, 
 of course, — after their ball." 
 
 "But surely it's very low, Mila, that sort of thing. 
 I know people do it nowadays. But, really, to be a 
 guest of a person you intend to cut next day " 
 
 " What does it matter ? She wants my name on 
 lier list ; she gets it ; I'm not bound to give her any- 
 thing more. There is nothing unfair about it. She 
 has what she wants, and more than she could expect.
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 115 
 
 Of course, all that kind of persons must know per- 
 fectly well that we only go to them as Ave go to the 
 opera, and have no more to do with them than we 
 have with the opera door-keepers. Of course they 
 know we don't visit them as we visit our own people 
 But if snobbish creatures like those find pleasure in 
 entertaining us, though they know quite well what we 
 think of them, and how we esteem them, and why wc 
 go to them, — well, I don't see that they deserve any- 
 thing better." 
 
 " Nor I," said the Lady Hilda. " Only I shouldn't 
 go to them; that's all. And it is very funny, my love, 
 that you, who have lived in all the great courts of 
 Europe, and have had your own embassy in London, 
 should care one straw for a ball at the Joshua R. Pos- 
 tiches'. Good gracious! You must have seen about 
 seventy thousand balls in your time !" 
 
 "I am only six years older than you, Hilda," said 
 she, tartly. "I suppose you've been telling Delia 
 Rocca not to go to the Postiches'. Olga and the Baron- 
 ess and Madame Valkyria and scores of them have 
 been trying to persuade him all the week, because if he 
 stay away so many of the other men will ; and none of 
 us can stir him an inch about it. *On pent etre do 
 tr^s-braves gens, — mais je n'y vais pas,' that is all he 
 says ; as if there being ' braves gens' or not had any- 
 thing to do with it; and yet I saw him the other day 
 with his hand on a contadino's shoulder in the market- 
 place, and he was calling him 'carissimo mio.'" 
 
 "One of his own peasants, most likely," said the 
 Lady Hilda, coldly. " I have never heard these Pob- 
 tiches even mentioned by M. Delia Rocca, and I cer-
 
 11(5 IN A WINTER CITV. 
 
 tainly have nothing whatever to do with where he goea 
 or doesn't go." 
 
 " He is always with you, at any rate," said Madame 
 Mila ; " and if you would make him go, it would only 
 be kind of you. You see we want everybody we know, 
 so that we may be sure to make the square dances only 
 of our own people, and not to see anything of anybody 
 the Postiches may have asked themselves. Little Dickie 
 Dorrian, who's managing it all, said to the woman Pos- 
 tiche, 'I'll bring the English division if you'll spend 
 enough on the cotillon toys ; but I won't undertake the 
 Italians.' Now, if Delia Rocca " 
 
 " Would you want a new dress, Mila ?" said the 
 Lady Hilda ; " I am sure you must if you're going to 
 a woman you can't know the next day." 
 
 "I should like one, of course," said the Comtesse, 
 "but I've had thirty new ones this season already — 
 and what I owe Worth ! — not to talk of the JNIaisou 
 Roger " 
 
 " Let me give you one," said the Lady Hilda. 
 *' Worth will do anything at short notice for either 
 of us ; and I must think this poor Postiche woman 
 ought to see you in a new dress, as she's never to see 
 you again." 
 
 " You are a darling, Hilda !" said Madame Mila, 
 with ardent effusion, rising to kiss her cousin. 
 
 Lady Hilda turned to let the caress fall on the old 
 guipure lace fichu round her throat, and drew her 
 writing-things to her to pen a telegram to M. Worth. 
 
 "I suppose you don't care to say what color?" she 
 asked, as she wrote. 
 
 "Oh, no," answered the Comtesse. "He remembers
 
 7.Y A WINTER CI TV. ]]7 
 
 all the combinations I've had much better than I do. 
 You dictate to him a little too much; I've heard him 
 
 say so " 
 
 "He never said so to me," said the Lady Hilda, with 
 a laugh. "Of coui*se I dictate to him. Whatever 
 taste your dress-maker, man or woman, may have, — 
 and he has genius, — there are little touches which should 
 always come from oneself, and which can alone give 
 originality. That is why all that herd of women, who 
 really do go to Worth but yet are nobodies, look hardly 
 the better for him ; he thinks about us, and we think 
 about ourselves ; but he doesn't think about them, and, 
 as they have no thoughts themselves, the result is that 
 they all look as conventional and similar as if they 
 were dolls dressed for a bazaar. Women ought to be 
 educated to more sense of color and form. Even an 
 ugly woman ought to be taught that it is her duty to 
 make her ugliness as little disagreeable as possible. If 
 the eyes and the taste of women were cultivated by ar- 
 tistic study, an ill-dressed woman would become an im- 
 possibility. If I were ever so })Oor," continued the Lady 
 Hilda, impressively, — "if I were ever so poor, and had 
 to sew my own gowns, and make them of serge or of 
 dimity, I would cut them so that Giorgione or Gains- 
 borough, if they were living, would be able to look at 
 me with complaisancy, — or at all events without a 
 shudder. It is not half so much a question of material 
 as it is of tivste. But nowadays the people who cannot 
 aiford material have no taste; so that after us, and tiie 
 women whom Worth manages to make look decently 
 in spite of themselves, there is nothing but a multitude 
 of hideously-attired persons, who make the very streets
 
 118 I^^ ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 appalling either by dreariness or gaudiness: — they never 
 have any medium. Now, a peasant-girl of the Marche, 
 or of the Agro Romana, or of the Pays de Vaud, is 
 charming, because her garments have beauty of hue in 
 them, and that other beauty which comes from perfect 
 Buitability and ah! come sta, Duca?" 
 
 She interrupted herself, and turned to Delia Rocca, 
 who was standing behind her, the servant's amiouuce- 
 ment of him having been unheard: it was her day to 
 receive. 
 
 "Oh that the rest of your sex, madame," he said, 
 after his salutations were made, "could sit at your feet 
 and take in those words of wisdom ! Yes, I heard most 
 that you said; I can understand your tongue a little; 
 you are so right ; it is the duty of every woman to make 
 herself as full of grace as she can ; all cannot be lovely, 
 but none need be unlovely." 
 
 "Exactly; women are reproached with thinking too 
 much about dress, but the real truth is, they do not 
 think enough about it, — in the right way. They talk 
 about it dreadfully, in the vulgarest fashion, but bring 
 any thought to it they don't. Most women will wear 
 anything if it be only de rigueur. I believe if I, and 
 Princess Metternich, and Madame de Gallifet, and Mad- 
 ame Aguado, and a few like us wore that pea-green silk 
 coat and waistcoat which the Advanced Thought Ladies 
 of America are advocating as the best new kind of dress 
 for women, that you would see ten thoasand pea-green 
 coats and waistcoats blazing in the streets the week after- 
 wards." 
 
 "Not a bad idea for the Cotton Costmne ball," said 
 Madame Mila. "I will have a pea-green coat and
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 119 
 
 waistcoat, a tall hat, and Hessians, and call myself 
 ^Advanced Thought.'" 
 
 " To be completely in character, Mila, you must have 
 blue spectacles, a penny whistle, a phial full of nos- 
 trums, a magpie for your emblem, and a calico banner, 
 inscribed 'Everything is Nothing!' " 
 
 "Charming! It shall be the best thing there. Draw 
 it for me, Delia Rocca, and I will send the sketcli to 
 Paris, so that it can all come in a box together, magpie 
 and all." 
 
 He drew a sheet of paper to him, and sketched the 
 figure in ink, with spirit. 
 
 "You have all the talents; so many thanks," said 
 Madame Mila, looking over his shoulder. 
 
 Delia Rocca sighed. 
 
 " If I have them I have buried them, madame ; — 
 but indeed I can make no such claim." 
 
 " So many thanks," echoed the Comtesse. " Pray 
 don't say a word about it, or we shall have a dozen 
 ' Advanced Thoughts' in calico. Hilda, I am just 
 going to Nina's to see about i\\Q 3Tascadins. I have 
 resolved we shall play that piece or no other. I shall 
 be back in ten minutes; ask Olga to wait." And 
 Madame Mila wafted herself out of the room, and 
 <l()wn-stairs to the court-yard, where the coupe and the 
 exemplary Maurice were Avaiting. 
 
 "How she does amuse herself!" said Lady Hilda, a 
 little enviously. "I wish I could do it! AVhat can it 
 matter whether they play the Muscadins or anything 
 else?" 
 
 " Plus on est fou, plus on rit," said Delia Rocca, 
 gketching arabesques with his pen. "Nay, that is too
 
 120 ^-^ ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 impolite in me to charming Madame Mila. But, like 
 all old proverbs, it is more true than elegant." 
 
 "Do you know, madame," he continued, with a little 
 hesitation, "I have often ventured to think that, de- 
 spite your brilliancy, and your position, and all youj 
 enviable fate, you are not altogether — quite happy ? 
 Am I right? Or have I committed too great an im- 
 pertinence to be answered ?" 
 
 " No impertinence whatever," said the Lady Hilda, 
 a little wearily. " You may be right ; I don't know ; 
 I am not unhappy, certainly, — I have nothing to be 
 unhappy about; but — most things seem very stupid to 
 me. I confess, Mila's endless diversions and excite- 
 ments are quite beyond me. There is such a terrible 
 sameness in everything." 
 
 " Because you have no deeper interests," he answered 
 her. He still sat near her at her writing-table beside 
 the fire, and was playing with the little jeweled boy 
 who held her pen-wiper. 
 
 She did not answer him ; and he continued : 
 
 " I think you have said yourself, madame, the cause 
 why everything seems more or less wearisome to you : 
 you have ' nothing to be unhappy about ;' that is, you 
 have no one for whom you care." 
 
 He thought that her proud delicate face colored a 
 little ; or it might be the warmth from the fire of oak- 
 logs and pine-cones. 
 
 "No; I don't care about people," she answered 
 him, indifferently. " When you have seen a person a 
 few times, it is enough. It is like a book you have 
 read through: the interest is gone; you know the moi 
 (Tenif/me."
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 121 
 
 "You speak of society; I spoke of affections." 
 
 The Lady Hilda laughed a little. 
 
 " I can't follow you. I do not feel them. I like 
 Clairvaux, my brother, certainly, but we go years with- 
 out seeing each other quite contentedly." 
 
 " I spoke of affections, — other affections," replied 
 Delia Rocca, with a little impatience. " There is no- 
 thing else that gives warmth or color to life. With- 
 out them there is no glow in its pictures, they are all 
 painted en grisaille. Pleasure alone cannot content 
 any one whose character has any force or mind, any 
 high intelligence. Society is, as you say, a book we 
 soon read through, and know by heart till it loses all 
 interest. Art alone cannot fill more than a certain 
 part of our emotions ; and culture, however perfect, 
 leaves us unsatisfied. There is only one thing that 
 can give to life what your poet called the light that 
 never was on sea or land, — and that is human love." 
 
 His eyes rested on her ; and for once in her life her 
 own eyes fell ; a troubled softness came for a moment 
 on her face, dispersing all its languor and its coldness. 
 In another moment she recovered herself, and smiled a 
 little. 
 
 " Ah ! you are appassionato, as becomes your coun- 
 try." 
 
 Delia Eocca looked at her with something of disap- 
 pointment and something of distaste. He rose, and 
 approached the grand piano. 
 
 "You allow me?" lie said, and touched a few of the 
 chords. He sang very low, and almost as it were to 
 himself, a canzone of the people : 
 F 11
 
 122 -f^V A WINTER CI TV. 
 
 '■ Si tu mi lasci, lasciar non te voglio ; 
 Se m' abbandoni, ti voseguitare; 
 Se passi il mare, il mar passare io voglio ; 
 Se girl il mondo, il mondo vo' girare," etc.* 
 
 The words were very simple, but the melody was 
 passionate and beautiful ; his voice, so low at first, 
 rose louder, with all the yearning tenderness in it with 
 which the song is laden; and the soft sounds echoed 
 through the silent room, as they had echoed ten thou- 
 sand times in moonlit nights of midsummer, over the 
 land where Romeo and Stradella and Francesca loved. 
 
 His voice sank softly into silence ; and Lady Hilda 
 did not move. 
 
 There was a mist that was almost like tears in her 
 proud eyes ; she gazed into the fire, with her cheek 
 leaning on her hand ; she did not speak to him ; there 
 was no sound but the falling of some burning wood 
 u[)on the hearth. 
 
 "The simplest contadina in the land would under- 
 stand that," he said, as he rose ; " and you, great lady 
 thougli you are, cannot? Madame, there are things, 
 after all, that you have missed." 
 
 " Go back and sing again," she said to him, taking 
 no notice of his words; "I did not know you ever 
 eang " 
 
 " Every Italian does, — or well or ill," he answered 
 her. "We are born with music in us, like the birds." 
 
 " But in society who hears you?" 
 
 *" Leavest thou me? — leave thee I will not. 
 Dost thou forsake me, yet will I follow thee. 
 Does the sea take thee ? — the sea will I traverse. 
 Wilt thou wander the world, then a wanderer am I."
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 123 
 
 "No one. An atraospliere of gas, candles, ennui, 
 perfume, heat, and inane flatteries! ah no, madame; 
 nuisic; is meant for silence, moonlight, vine-paths, sum- 
 mer nights " 
 
 " This is winter and firelight, a few arm-chairs and 
 a great deal of street-noise ; all the same, go back and 
 Ring me more." 
 
 She spoke indifferently and lightly, leaning her hand 
 back on her chair, and hiding a little yawn with her 
 hand ; she would not have him see that he had touched 
 her to any foolish, momentary weakness. But he had 
 seen. He smiled a little. 
 
 " As you command," he answered, and he went back 
 and made her music as she wished ; short love-lyrics 
 of the populace, sonnets set to noble airs, wild mourn- 
 ful boat-songs, and snatches of soft melodies, such as 
 echo all the harvest-time through the firefly-lighted 
 corn, — things all familiar to him from his infancy, 
 but to her unknown, and full of the force and the 
 yearning of the passion which was unknown to her 
 also, and in a certain way derided by her. 
 
 He broke off abruptly, and came and leaned on the 
 chimney-piece near her, with his arm among the little 
 pug-dogs in Saxe, and figures and fountains in Capo di 
 Monte, which she had collected in a few weeks from 
 the bric-a-brac people. He did not speak ; he only 
 looked at her where she sat, with the firelight and the 
 dying daylight on the silver-fox furs fringing her dress, 
 on the repousse gold and silver work of her loose girdle, 
 on the ends of the old Spanish lace about her throat, 
 on th(! great rings that sparkled on her white fingers, 
 which were lying so idly clasped together on her lap.
 
 124 I^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 "You sing very beautifully," she said, calmly, at 
 length, with her eyes half closed and her head lying 
 back on the chair-cushions. " It is very strange you 
 should be so mute in society." 
 
 "I never sang to a crowd in my life, and never 
 would. Music is an impulse, or it is nothing. I could 
 never sing save to some woman who " 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 "Who was music in herself," he added, with a smile: 
 it was not what had been upon his lips. 
 
 " Then you should not have sung to me," she said, 
 still with half-closed eyes and a careless coldness in her 
 voice. " I am all discord ; have you not found that 
 out ? — every woman is, nowadays ; we have lost the 
 secret of harmony ; we are always wanting to be excited, 
 and never succeeding in being anything but bored." 
 
 " These are mere words, madame," he answered her. 
 " I hope they are not true. By discord I think you 
 only mean inconsistency. Pardon me, but I think you 
 are all so wearied because of the monotony of your lives. 
 I dare say that sounds very strangely to you, because 
 you pursue all the pleasures and all the extravagances 
 that are obtainable. But then all these are no novel- 
 ties, they are merely habits. Habit is nothing better 
 than a harness, even when it is one silvered and belled. 
 You have exhausted everything too early : how can it 
 have flavor? You pursue an unvarying routine of 
 amusement : how can it amuse ? The life of the great 
 world is, after all, when we once know it well, as tire- 
 some as the life of the peasant, — perhaps more so. I 
 know both." 
 
 "All that may be right enough," said the Lady Hilda,
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 125 
 
 " but there is no help for it, that I sec. If the world 
 is not amusing, that is not our fault. In the Beau 
 
 Siecle, perhaps, or in Augustan Rome " 
 
 " Be very sure it was the same thing. An artificial 
 life must grow tiresome to any one with a mind above 
 that of a parrot or a monkey. If we can be content 
 with it, we deserve nothing better. What you call 
 your discord is nothing but your dissatisfaction, — the 
 highest part of you. If it were not treason to say so, 
 treason against this exquisite apparel, I would say that 
 you would be more likely to know happiness were you 
 condemned to the serge and the dimity you spoke of 
 to Madame Mila an hour ago." 
 
 He had sunk on a stool at her feet as he spoke, and 
 caressed the silver fox and the gold girdle lightly ; 
 his hand touched hers in passing, and her face grew 
 warm. She put a feather screen between her and the 
 fire. 
 
 "That is the old argument of content in the cot- 
 tage, etc.," she said, with a slight laugh. " I do not 
 believe in it in the least. If it be ' best repenting in a 
 coach-and-six,' it must be best to be bored in an arm- 
 chair " 
 
 " Perhaps. It is not I, certainly, who should praise 
 poverty," he said, with some bitterness, and more sad- 
 ness; "and, indeed, poverty or riches has little to do 
 with the question of happiness; happiness can comp. 
 but from one thing " 
 
 " A good conscience? How terribly moral you are!" 
 
 "No: — from our emotions, from our passions, from 
 mur sympathies ; in fine, from Love." 
 
 His hand still played with the gold fringe of the 
 
 11*
 
 126 JN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 girdle as he sat at her feet ; his eyes were lifted to her 
 face; his voice was very low; in all his attitude and 
 action and regard there were an unuttered solicitation, 
 an eloquence of unspoken meaning; she was silent; — 
 then the door opened ; he dropped the girdle, and rose 
 to his feet; there came a patter of high heels, and a 
 cliime of swift aristocratic voices; and into the room 
 tliere entered the Princess Olga, attended by her con- 
 stant shadow, Don Carlo Maremma, with Lady Feather- 
 leigh behind her, accompanied by her attendant, Prince 
 Nicolas Doggendorft' 
 
 "Ma chere, there is a regular riot going on at Nina's," 
 said the Princess Olga, advancing with both hands out- 
 stretched. "All about those 3Iuscadins. Mila has 
 seceded in full form, and, of course, M. des Gommeux 
 with her. Blanche will only play if they have ' lifaut 
 qu'une porie,' etc., which is as old as the hills, and Mila 
 won't play at all if Blanche be allowed to play anything. 
 They have quarreled for life ; so have Mila and Nina. 
 They are slanging each other like two street-boys. Al- 
 berto Rimini is on his knees between them, and the Due 
 is declaring for the five thousandth time that it is the 
 last he will ever have to do with theatricals. I left 
 while I could escape with life. What a pity it is that 
 playing for charity always develops such fierce hostil- 
 ities! Well, Paolo, have you thought better of the 
 Postiche ball ? No ? How stiff-necked you are ! I 
 do believe Carlo will be the only Italian there!" 
 
 " It will be a distinction to inscribe on his tombstone, 
 madame," said Delia Rocca. "But then he goes under 
 command " 
 
 " And under protest," murmured Don Carlo.
 
 7iV^ A WINTER CITY. 127 
 
 "Wliich does not count. When one is no longer a 
 free agent " 
 
 Princess Olga hit him a little blow with her muff". 
 
 " But why should you not go to the Postichcs' ? 
 Just as you go to the Veglione; it is nothing more.'' 
 
 " Madame, I am very old-fashioned in my ideas, I 
 dare say, but I confess I think that no one should ac- 
 cept as a host a person he would never accept as his 
 guest. I may be wrong " 
 
 " Of course you are wrong. That is not the question 
 at all," said Princess Olga, who did not like people io 
 differ with her. "Joshua P. Postiche will never dream 
 of being asked to shoot your wild ducks or your par- 
 tridges. All he wants is that you should just be seen 
 going up his staircase and drinking his champagne. 
 Society is full of Postichcs, — low people, with a craze 
 for entertaining high people. They don't care how we 
 insult them, nor how we laugh at them, provided our 
 cards lie in the bowl in their hall. We take them at 
 their own valuation, and treat them as we treat the 
 waiters at Spillman's or Doney's : we have paid the 
 bill with our cards." 
 
 " That is to say, we have paid with our names, — ■ 
 which should represent all the honor, dignity, and self- 
 respect that we have inherited, and are bound to main- 
 tain, for our own sakes and for those who may come 
 after us." 
 
 "Oh, mon Dieu, quel grand s^rieux!" cried the prin- 
 cess, impatiently. "But, of course, if you've been sit- 
 ting with Hilda you have got more stiff-necked than 
 ever. What do you say, Hilda? Isn't it ill-natured 
 of him? He need only walk in, bow once to the
 
 128 -^^^' ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 woman, and look on at the edge of the ball-room for 
 twenty minutes. The other men will go if he will do 
 as much as that." 
 
 " I think M. della Rocca quite right not Ho do as 
 much as that/ " said the Lady Hilda. " Why Society 
 ever does as much as that, or half as much, or anything 
 at all, for Joshua R. Postiche, I can never tell. As it 
 does, to be consistent everybody should dine with the 
 fruit-woman from the street-corner, and play ecart^ 
 with their own chimney-sweeps." 
 
 " Oh, we shall come to that, madame," said Nicolas 
 Doggendorff. "At least, if chimney-sweej)ing ever 
 makes heaps of money ; I don't think it does ; it only 
 chokes little boys." 
 
 " Ce bon Monsieur Postiche sold rum and molasses," 
 murmured Don Carlo. 
 
 " What's it to us what he sold ?" said Lady Feather- 
 leigh. " We've nothing to do M'ith him ; we're only 
 going to his ball. You talk as if we asked the man to 
 dinner." 
 
 "What does the Archduchess Anna always say: 'Oii 
 je m'amuse, j'y vais.' So we do all. I hear he has 
 been put up for the Club: is it true?" said Princess 
 Olga to Carlo Maremma. 
 
 " Yes ; Krunensberg has put him up," he answered 
 her ; " but he shall never get into it, while there are 
 any of us alive." 
 
 " Et s'il n'y a qu'un, moi je serai celui-la," quoted 
 Della Rocca. 
 
 " But he has lent Krunensberg heaven knows what, 
 ■ — some say two million francs," said Lady Feather- 
 leifrh.
 
 7.V A WINTER cirr. 129 
 
 Prince Krnnensberg was a great personage, and, for 
 a foreigner, of great influence in the Club. 
 
 " Chere dame," said Delia Rocca, " if we elect all 
 Krunensberg's creditors we shall have to cover three 
 streets with our club-house !" 
 
 " Oh, my dear ! I am half dead !" cried Madame 
 Mila, flashing into the room, gorgeous in the feathers 
 of the golden pheasant, arranged in the most exquisite 
 combination on violet satin and bronze velvet, and 
 throwing her muff on one side of her and her parasol 
 on the other, while Maurice des Gommeux, who was 
 the most admirable of upper servants, stooped for them 
 and smoothed their ruffled elegance. " I am half dead ! 
 Such a scene I never went through in my life, — I, who 
 liate scenes, and never have any hardly even with 
 Spiridion ! Oh, has Olga told you ? Yes; it is horri- 
 ble, infamous, intolerable ! — after all I have done for 
 that odious Dumb Asylum, — and my costumes ordered 
 for the 3Iuscadins, and half the part learnt ! It is all 
 Krunensberg's doing, — and the Due didn't stand out 
 one-half as he should have done ; and Blanche ! — the 
 idea — the little wretch is made of wood, and can't even 
 open her mouth ! As for Krunensberg, he deserves to 
 be shot! It is all his influence that has set Nina 
 against the Muscadins, — -just to spite me ! What I 
 have gone through about this wretched theatre, — and 
 then to have that little chit of a Blanche set over my 
 head, a little creature, only married out of her convent 
 List vear, — it is unbearable ! of course neither I nor 
 Des Gommeux shall play. Oh, here comes the Due. 
 No, Due, it is not the slightest use ; if you have that 
 ridiculous musty old piece of De Musset's, or if you
 
 130 ^-'^' ^ UISTER a TV. 
 
 have Blanche in it at all, you don't have Me in any- 
 thing! A nice morning's work you have made of it! 
 Nina and I shall never speak again." 
 
 The Due laid his hat aside; his delicate features 
 were puckered, weary, and troubled. 
 
 " Mais, madame, pardon ! — mais vous avez toutes (lit 
 les choses les plus affreuses ! " 
 
 " Women always do, Due, when they are in a pas- 
 sion," said Lady Hilda. " There is nothing like a 
 scene for discovering our real opinions of each other. 
 "Why, you look actually — -worried ! I thought nothing 
 ever ruffled you by any chance whatev^er." 
 
 " Madame," said M. de St. Louis, stretching himself, 
 with a sigh, in a low chair beside her and the fire, " I 
 have always sedulously cultivated serenity. I believe 
 serenity to be the whole secret of human health, happi- 
 ness, longevity, good taste, sound judgment, everything 
 in point of fact that is desirable in the life of a human 
 being. But, alas ! we are all mortal, and our best plans 
 are but finite. In an evil moment, when Pandora's box 
 was packed, there was put in with it by the malice of 
 Mercury a detonating jwwder, called Amateur Rivalry. 
 When all the other discords were dispersed, this shot 
 itself into the loveliest forms and the gentlest bosoms; 
 and where it explodes, the wisest man stands helpless. 
 He cannot reconcile the warring elements nor retain 
 any personal peace himself. I am the slave of Madanie 
 Mila ; I adore the dust of the exquisite shoes of Ma- 
 dame Nina; I am penetrated with the most absolute 
 devotion to Madame Blanche : when these heavenly 
 graces are ready to rend each other's hair, what can I 
 do? What can I be except the most unhappy person
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 131 
 
 upon earth? To reconcile ladies who are j-*furiated 
 is a hopeless dream; it were easier to make wi*ole again 
 a broken glass of Venice. It makes one alji>'^st wish," 
 added the Due, with a second sigh, — "almoi^ wish that 
 Moliere had never been created, or, being created, had 
 never written. But for Moliere I doubt vf ry much if 
 the Drama as an Art would have lingere(^ on to the 
 present time." 
 
 " Console yourself, my dear Due," said 1 ady Hilda, 
 " console yourself with a line from JNIol ere : ' Cinq 
 ou six coups de baton entre gens qui airaent oe font que 
 ragaillardir I'amitie.' Mila, Nina, and Banche will 
 kiss each other to-morrow ; they must, or w) at becomes 
 of the great Contes de Mere d'Oie Quad ride to open 
 the Roubleskotr ball?" 
 
 " I shall never speak to either of them ?o long as I 
 live," said Madame Mila, still ruffling all h«r golden 
 feathers in highest wrath. " As for the quadrille, the 
 RoubleskofF must do as they can. I do thin»t Krunens- 
 berg has made Nina perfectly odious ; T nev t saw any- 
 body so altered by a man in ray life. "V^ ell, there's 
 one thing, it won't last. His ' affairs' nevei do." 
 
 " It will last as long as her jewels do," said Curio 
 Maremma. 
 
 " Oh, no, he can't be quite so bad as that.'' 
 
 "Foi d'honneur! — since he left the Sant Anselmo 
 you have never seen her family diamonds ex^^^pt in the 
 Paris paste replica^ which she tells you she A'ears for 
 safety and because it is such a bore to have ^o employ 
 policemen in plain clothes at the balls " 
 
 "Talk of policemen," said Madame Mila, '*they say 
 we're to have a caution sent us from the rrefecture
 
 132 J^ ^I U'TXTER CITY. 
 
 about oiu' playing baccarat the other night at the 
 cafe : they say no gambling is allowed in the city — 
 the idea!" 
 
 "While the State organizes the lotteries! — how very 
 consistent !" said the Lady Hilda. 
 
 " All your gaming is against the law, angels of my 
 Boul," said Carlo Maremma. 
 
 "Then we'll all leave Floralia," said Madame Mila. 
 " The idea of not being able to do what one chooses iu 
 one's own rooms I There is one thing, we can always 
 go up to RoubleskofF's ;— they will never dare to cau- 
 tion him. But what is the use of all this fuss? — every- 
 body plays, — everybody always will play." 
 
 "The Prefect is much too wise a man ever to im- 
 agine he can prevent ladies doing Avhat they like," said 
 Maremma. "It is those tremendous losses of young 
 De Fabris the other night that have made a stir, and 
 the Prefect thinks it necessary to say something : he is 
 afraid of a scandal." 
 
 " Good gracious ! As if anything filled a city half 
 60 well as a scandal ! AVhy don't Floralia have a good 
 gaming-place, like Monte Carlo? we shouldn't want to 
 use our own rooms then " 
 
 "I confess," said the Due, in his gentle, meditative 
 voice, " I confess that, like Miladi here, I fail to alto- 
 gether appreciate the moral horror of a game at bacca- 
 rat entertained by a municipality which in its legislation 
 legalizes the lottery. All gaming may be prejudicial to 
 the moral health of mankind ; it is certainly so to their 
 purses ; I am prepared to admit, even in face of Ma- 
 dame Mi la's direst wrath, that all forms of hazard are 
 exceedingly injurious to the character and to the for-
 
 7iV A WINTER CITY. lp,3 
 
 tunes of every person tempted by them. It may be 
 impossible even to exaggerate their baneful influences 
 or their disastrous consequences. But how can a gov- 
 ernment which publicly patronizes, sustains, and en- 
 riches itself by lotteries have any logic in contlemuing 
 the pastime of hazard in a private drawing-room or a 
 private club-house? I confess I cannot see how they 
 reconcile both courses. A government, whatever it be, 
 should never be an anomaly." 
 
 "Lotteries are to us what bull-fighting is to Span- 
 iards and revolutions are to the French," said Carlo 
 Maremma. "Every nation has its especial craze. The 
 lottery is ours." 
 
 "But is it for a government to intensify and pandei 
 to and j)rofit by a national insanity ?" said Delia Kocca, 
 with much seriousness. " When Rome bent to the yell 
 of Panem et Ci recuses, the days of her greatness were 
 numbered. Besides, the Due is quite right, — it is a 
 ridiculous anomaly to condemn games while you allow 
 lotteries. Great harm may result from private gam- 
 bling, — greater still from the public gaming-tables, — • 
 but the evil after all is not a millionth part so terrible 
 as the evil resulting from the system of public lotteries. 
 The persons who are ruined by ordinary gaming are, 
 after all, persons who would certainly be ruined hy 
 some vice or another. The compound of avarice and 
 excitement which makes the attraction of hazard does 
 not allure the higher kinds of character; besides, the 
 vice does not go to the player; the player goes to the 
 vice. Now, on the contrary, the lottery attacks openly, 
 and tries to allure in very despite of themselves, the 
 nuich wider multitude that is the very sap and support 
 
 V2
 
 134 ^^' ^ WIXTKR CITV. 
 
 of a imtioii : it entices the people themselves. It lures 
 the workman to throw away his wage, the student to 
 spend his time in feverish dreams, the simple day- 
 lahorer to consume his content in senseless calculations 
 that often bring his poor, empty brain to madness. 
 The lottery assails them in the street, is carried to 
 them in their homes, drops them some poor prize at 
 first to chain them in torment forever afterwards. It 
 changes honesty to cunning, peace to burning desire, 
 industry to a perpetual waiting upon chance, manly 
 effort to an imbecile abandonment to the dictates of 
 signs and portents and the expectancy of a fortune 
 which never comes. High-born gamblers are only the 
 topmost leaves of the tree of the State ; they may rot 
 away without detriment to the tree; but the lottery 
 lays the axe to the very trunk and root of it, because 
 it demoralizes the people." 
 
 Lady Hilda listened and watched him as he spoke, 
 M'ith a grave and almost tender meditation in her eyes, 
 which M. de St. Louis saw, and, seeing, smiled. 
 
 "Say all that in the Chamber, caro mio," muttered 
 Carlo Maremma. 
 
 " I would go to the Chambers to say it, or to worse 
 places even, were there any chance it would be attended 
 to. Madame Mila, have I been so unhappy as to have 
 offended you ? " 
 
 " I am a to]) leaf that may rot ! I was never told 
 anything so rude in my life, — from you, too ! the very 
 soul of ceremonious courtesy." 
 
 Delia Rocca made peace with her in flowery flattery. 
 
 " Well, I shall play baccarat to-night in this hotel, 
 just because the Prefect has been so odious and done
 
 IX A WIXTER CITV. 1^,5 
 
 that," said Madame Mila. " You will all come home 
 with me after the Roubleskoif's dinner? Promise !" 
 
 " Of course," said the Princess Olga. 
 
 " Of course," said Lady Featherleigh. 
 
 "Of course," said everybody else. 
 
 " And if the gendarmes come in?" 
 
 "We will shoot them!" 
 
 "No; we will give then^ champagne, — surer and 
 more humane." 
 
 "I wish the Prefect would come himself: I should 
 like to tell him my mind," continued Madame Mihi. 
 "So impudent of the man ! — when all the Royal Higii- 
 iiesses and Grand Dukes and Duchesses in Europe only 
 come to winter cities for play. He must know that." 
 
 " My dear Mila, how you do put yourself out about 
 it!" said the Lady Hilda. "Send ten thousand francs 
 to the public charities: you may play all night long in 
 the cafes then." 
 
 " Madame, j'ai Thonneur de vous saluer," murmured 
 Delia Rocca, bending low before her. 
 
 When the door had closed upon him and left the 
 others behind, a sudden blankness and dullness seemed 
 to fall on her: she had never felt the same thing before. 
 Bored she had often been, but this was not ennui, it was 
 a kind of loneliness : it was as if all about her grew 
 gray and cold and stupid. 
 
 More ladies came in, there were endless laugliter and 
 chatter ; Princess Olga wanted some tea, and had it ; 
 the other women cracked bonbons with their little 
 teeth like i)retty squirrels cracking fir cones; they 
 made charming groups in the firelight and lam{)]ight: 
 they made plans for a hundred diversions ; they were
 
 136 ^-v '-i \VL\Ti:ii cirv. 
 
 full of the gayest of scandals ; they dissected in tna 
 inost merciless manner all their absent friends; they 
 scolded their lovers and gave them a thousand contra- 
 dictory orders ; they discussed all the news and all the 
 topics of the day, and arranged for dinner-parties, and 
 driving-parties, and costume quadrilles, and bazaar- 
 stalls, and boxes at the theatre, and suppers at the 
 cafes ; and agreed that everything was as dull as ditch- 
 water, and yet that they never had a minute for any- 
 thing; and the Lady Hilda, with the jubilant noise 
 and the twittering laughter round her, thought how 
 silly they all were, and what a nuisance it was having 
 a day, — only if one hadn't a day it was worse still, 
 because then they were always trying to run in at 
 all hours on every day, and one was never free for a 
 moment. 
 
 "Thank goodness, they are gone!" she said, half 
 aloud, to the 8axe cups and the Capo di Monte children 
 on the mantel-piece, when the last flutter of fur and 
 velvet had vanished through the door, and the last of 
 those dearest friends and born foes had kissed each 
 other and separated. 
 
 Left alone, she stood thinking, by the fire, with all 
 tie lights burning behind her in that big, empty room. 
 What she thought was a very humble and pensive 
 thought for so disdainful a lady. It was only, — 
 
 " Is it myself? or only the money ?" 
 
 She stood some time there, motionless, her hand play- 
 ing with the gold girdle as his hand had done; her face 
 was ])ale, softened, troubled. 
 
 The clock among the Saxe dogs and the Capo di 
 Monte little figures chimed the half-lipiir after six.
 
 7.V A WINTER CITV. 137 
 
 She started as it struck, and remembered that she was» 
 to dine at eight with the Princess Roubleskotf, — a big 
 party for an English royalty on his travels. 
 
 "Anyhow, it would be of no use," she said to her- 
 self. " Even if I did wish it, it could never be." 
 
 And she was angry with herself, as she had been the 
 night before; she was impatient of these new weak- 
 nesses which haunted her. Nevertheless she was more 
 particular about her appearance that night than her 
 maids had ever known her be; she was very difficult 
 to satisfy ; tried and discarded four wholly new confec- 
 tions of her friend Worth's, miracles of invention and 
 of costliness, and at length had herself dressed quite 
 sim{)ly in black velvet, only relieved by all her dia- 
 monds. 
 
 "He said fair women should always wear black," 
 she thought: it was not her Magister of Paris of whom 
 she was thinking as the sayer of that wise phrase. 
 And then again she was angry with herself for remem- 
 bering such a thing and attiring herself in obedience 
 to it, and would have had herself undressed again only 
 there was but one small quarter of an hour in which 
 to reach the Roubleskotf villa, a palace of the fairies 
 four miles from the south gate. So she went as she 
 was, casting a dubious impatient glance behind her at 
 the mirrors. 
 
 "I look well," she thought, with a smile, and her 
 rontent returned. 
 
 She knew that he would be present at the dinner. 
 
 There is no escaping destiny in Floralia: people meet 
 
 too often. 
 
 The dinner disappointed her. 
 
 12*
 
 138 ly A ]\J\TKR CITV. 
 
 She thought it very lonp; and very stupid. She sat 
 ootwecn the Grand Dui<e of Rittersbiihn and the Envoy 
 of all the Russias, and Delia Rocca was not placed 
 within her sight ; and after the dinner the young 
 English prince would talk to no one but herself, de- 
 lightedly recalling to her how often she had bowled his 
 wickets down when they had been young children play- 
 ing on the lawns at Osborne. She felt disloyally thank- 
 less for his preference. He monopolized her. And as 
 the rooms filled with the crowd of the reception she 
 merely saw the delicate dark head of Delia Rocca afar 
 off, bent down in eager and possibly tender conversa- 
 tion with his beautiful country-woman, the Duchess 
 Medici-Malatesta. She felt angered and impatient. 
 
 If she had sat alone and neglected, as less lovely 
 women often do, instead of being monopolized by a 
 prince, with twenty other men sighing to take his place 
 when etiquette should permit them, she could scarcely 
 have been more ill-content. 
 
 Kever in all her life had it befallen her to think 
 angrily of another woman's beauty; and now she caught 
 herself irritatedly conning, across the width of the 
 room, the classic profile and the immense jewel-like 
 eyes of the Malatesta Semiramis. Never in all her life 
 had it happened to her to miss any one thing that she 
 desired, and now a strange sense of loneliness and emj)- 
 tiness came upon her, unreasoned and unreasoning; and 
 she had such an impatience and contempt of herself too 
 all the while! — that was the most bitter part of it. 
 
 After all, it was too absurd 
 
 As soon as the departure of the royal guests ])er- 
 mitted any one to leave, she went away, contemptuous,
 
 i.\ A \vL\TF.i: cm. ];5t) 
 
 and ill at ease; half ignorant of what moved her, and 
 half nn\villin<>: to probe her own emotions further. 
 
 " Plus on est fou, plus on rit," she murmured to her 
 pillow two hours later, with irritable disdain, as she 
 heard Mme. Mila and her troop noisily j)assing- her 
 door as they returned to their baccarat, which was to 
 be doubly delightful because of the Prefect's interdict. 
 
 " I wish I liad been born an idiot !" thought the 
 Lady Hilda, — as indeed, any one must do who finds 
 himself burdened with aching brains in this best of all 
 possible worlds. 
 
 " Perhaps, after all, you were right," said the Due 
 de St. Louis, driving back into the town with Delia 
 Rocca that night. " Perhaps you were right. Miladi 
 is most lovely, most exquisite, most perfect. But she 
 has caprices, — there is no denying that she has caprices 
 and extravagancies which would ruin any one short 
 of the despotic sovereign of a very wealthy nation." 
 
 The Due was a very wise man, and knew that the 
 escalier d^robe is the only way that leads in conversation 
 to any direct information. Their demeanor had puzzled 
 him, and he spoke accordingly with shrewd design. 
 
 Delia Rocca heard him with a little annoyance. 
 
 " She has not more caprices than other women that 
 I know of," he answered. " Her faults are the faults 
 rather of her monde than of herself." 
 
 " But she has adopted them Avith much affection !" 
 
 *'They are habits, — hardly more." 
 
 "And you were correct too in your diagnosis when 
 you saw her first," continued the Due, pitilessly. "To 
 me she is most amiable always ; but to the generality of 
 people it must be admitted that she is not so amiable."
 
 140 ^^' ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 "The amiability of most women," re])lied Delia 
 Rocca, " is nothing more than that insatiate passion 
 for admiration which makes them show their persons 
 almost nude at Trouville, and co})y the ways and man- 
 ners of femmcs entretcnues in the endeavor to rival such 
 with us. If they wish to be decent, they do not dare 
 to be ; they must be popular and chic before all." 
 
 " You are severe, but perhaps you are right. Miladi 
 is certainly above all such vulgarities. Indeed, she is 
 only a little too much above everything " 
 
 " It is better than to be below everything, — even be- 
 low our respect, — as most of our great ladies are." 
 
 "Certainly. Still, she is a little — a little selfish." 
 
 " How should she be otherwise ? She is quite alone, 
 — she has no one to care for " 
 
 " Most women make something to care for ; she has 
 many family ties, if she cared for tliem, — but she does 
 not. No ; she is beautiful, charming, grande dame en 
 tout, — but I begin to think that it is well for the peace 
 of mankind that she remains so invulnerable. She 
 would probably make any man who loved her very 
 unhappy if she married him." 
 
 " If he were a weak man, not otherwise." 
 
 "Pouf ! Do you think any man would ever have 
 control over her f 
 
 " I am quite sure that she would never care for any 
 man who had not." 
 
 " He would be a very bold person," murmured the 
 Due. " However, I am very glad that you think monj 
 highly of her. You know, mon cher, what always was 
 my opinion as to yourself " 
 
 Delia Rocca colored, and saw too late that his com-
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 141 
 
 panion had forced his card from liis hands In the most 
 adroit manner. He busied himself with lighting a 
 cigar. 
 
 " For myself," he said, coldly, " I can have no object 
 in what I say. My own poverty is barrier sufficient. 
 But I should be unjust not to admit what I think of her 
 as a friend. I believe that the habits of the world are 
 not so strong with her that they can satisfy her ; and I 
 believe that with her affections touched, with tenderer 
 ties than she has ever known, Avith a home, with chil- 
 dren, with a woman's natural life, in fact, she would 
 be a much happier and very different person. Mais 
 tout cela ne me regarde pas." 
 
 The Due glanced at him and laun;hed softlv. 
 
 "Ca vous regarde de bleu pres — bon succes et bon 
 soir !" he said, as he got out of the carriage at his hotel. 
 
 " I told him to marry her," he thought ; " but if he 
 expects to convert her too, he must be the boldest and 
 most sanguine man in Europe." 
 
 Lady Hilda made up her mind that she was tired of 
 Floralia, as she meditated over her chocolate the next 
 morning, after a night w^hich chloral had made pretty 
 passable, only the baccarat people had screamed so loudly 
 with laughter on the other side of the corridor that they 
 had awakened her once or twice. Yes, she certainly was 
 tired of it. If one did take the trouble to go into so- 
 ciety one might as well do it all for a big world and not 
 a little one. It was utter nonsense about her lungs in 
 Paris. She would go back. She would telegraph her 
 return to Hubert. 
 
 Hubert was her maitre-d'hotel. 
 
 She did telegraph, and told herself that fdie wouhl
 
 142 Jy ^ WINTER CI TV. 
 
 find immense interest in the fresco paintings which were 
 being executed in the ball-room of that very exquisite 
 hotel "entre cour et jardin," which she had deserted in 
 Paris, and in making nooks and corners in her already 
 overfilled tables and cabinets for the tazze and bacini 
 and ivories and goldsmith's work she had collected in 
 the last two months; and decided that the wall-decora- 
 tions of the drawing-rooms, which were of rose satin 
 with Louis Quinze paneling, were all very barbarous, 
 utterly incorrect, and should never have been borne 
 with so long, and should be altered at once ; the palest 
 amber satin was the only possible thing, with silver 
 mirrors and silver cornices, and not a touch of gilding 
 anywhere ; the idea had occurred to her before a pic- 
 ture in the galleries, where a silver casket was painted 
 against an amber curtain ; she would have it done 
 immediately, and she would go back to Paris and have 
 her old Thursday evenings again. 
 
 After all, Paris was the only place worth living in, 
 and doctors were always alarmists, — old women, — 
 everything that was stupid, unless you were very very 
 ill, when they did seem to dilate into demi-gods, because 
 of course you were weakened with morphine and other 
 stuff and did not want to die; though you ought to 
 wan! to die, being a Christian, if you were in the very 
 least degree consistent ; since if you were quite sure 
 that the next world would be so very much better than 
 this it was utterly illogical to be afraid of going to it : 
 but then were you quite sure ? 
 
 The Lady Hilda sighed. This dreadful age, whicli 
 has produced communists, petroleuses, and liberal think- 
 ers, had communicated its vague restlessness even to her;
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 143 
 
 although she belonged to that higher region where no- 
 body ever thinks at all, and everybody is more or less 
 devout in seeming at any rate, because disbelief is vul- 
 gar, and religion is an " affaire des moeurs," like decency, 
 still the subtle philosophies and sad negations which 
 have always been afloat in the air since Voltaire set 
 them flying had affected her slightly. 
 
 She was a true believer, just as she was a well-dressed 
 woman, and had her creeds just as she had her batli in 
 the morning, as a matter of course. 
 
 Still, when she did come to think of it, she was not 
 so very sure. There was another world, and saints and 
 angels and eternity, yes, of course ; but how on earth 
 would all those baccarat people ever fit into it? Who 
 could by any stretch of imagination conceive Madame 
 Mila and Maurice des Gommeux in a spiritual existence 
 around the throne of Deity? 
 
 And as for punishment and torment and all that 
 other side of futurity, who could even think of the 
 mildest purgatory as suitable to those poor flibberti- 
 gibbit inanities who broke the seventh commandment 
 as gayly as a child breaks his India rubber ball, and 
 were as incapable of passion and crime as they were 
 incapable of heroism and virtue? 
 
 There might be paradise for virtue, and hell for 
 crime, but what in the name of the universe was to be 
 done with creatures that were only all Folly? Perhaps 
 they would be always flying about, like the souls Virgil 
 speaks of, " suspense ad ventos," to purify themselves ; 
 as the sails of a ship spread out to dry. The Huron 
 Indians pray to the souls of the fish they catch ; well, 
 why not? a fish has a soul if Modern Society has one;
 
 Ill ^^V A WlSTKIl CITV. 
 
 one coiikl conceive a fish going softly tlirongh sliining 
 waters forever and forever in the ecstasy of motion ; 
 but who could conceive Modern Society in the spheres? 
 
 Wandering thus from her drawing-room furniture 
 to problems of eternity, and only succeeding in making 
 herself unsettled and uncomfortable, the Lady Hilda, 
 out of tune with everything, put off her cashmere 
 dressing-gown, had herself wrapped in her sables, and 
 thought she w^ould go out; it w^as just twelve o'clock. 
 
 ] .ooking out of the window, she saw a lady, all sables 
 like herself, going also out of the hotel to a coupe, the 
 image of her own. 
 
 " Who is that ?" she asked of her favorite maid. 
 
 '' That is Mdlle. Lea, Miladi," said the maid. '' She 
 came last night. She has the suite above," 
 
 " How dare you mention her?" said the Lady Hilda. 
 
 The little accident filled up the measure of her dis- 
 gust. Mdlle. Jenny Lea was a young lady who had 
 seduced the affections of an emperor, three archdukes, 
 and an untold number of the nobility of all nations ; 
 she was utterly uneducated, inconceivably coarse, and 
 had first emerge 1 from a small drinking-shop in the 
 dens of WhiteCiiapel ; she was the rage of the moment, 
 having got a needy literary hack to write her auto- 
 biography, which she published in her own name, as 
 *' Aventures d'une Anglaise ;" the book liad no 
 decency, and as little wit, but it professed to show up 
 the scandals of a great court, and it made some great 
 men ridiculous and worse, so eighty thousand copies of 
 it had been sold over Europe, and great ladies leaned 
 from their carriages eager to see Mdlle. Jenny Lea pass 
 by them.
 
 IN A WINTER CITF. I45 
 
 Mdllc. Jenny Lea, indeed, having put the finishing- 
 stroke to her popularity by immense debts and a forced 
 sale of her effects in Paris, Avas the sensation of the 
 liour, only sharing public attention with the Pere 
 Hilarion, a young and passionately earnest Dominican, 
 who was making a crusade against the world, in a noble 
 and entirely vain fervor, from the pulpits of all the 
 greatest churches on the Continent. It was " the thing" 
 to go and hear Pere Hilarion, weep with him and pray 
 with him, and then, coming out of the church doors, 
 to read Jenny Lea and talk of her. It is by these 
 admirable mixtures that Society manages to keep itself 
 alive. 
 
 The Pere Hilarion was breaking his great heart over 
 the vileness and the hopelessness of it all, as any one 
 who has any soul in him must be disposed to do. But 
 to Society the Pere Hilarion was only a sort of mental 
 liqueur, as Jenny Lea was an American " pick-me-up:" 
 that was all. Society took them Indifferently, one after 
 the other. Of the two, of course It preferred Jenny 
 Lea. 
 
 The Lady Hilda in supreme disgust went out in her 
 sables, as Mdlle. Jenny Lea in hers drove from the 
 door. 
 
 " What good things sumptuary laws must have 
 
 been ! " she thought. " If such creatures had to dress 
 
 all in yellow, now, as I think they had once (or was it 
 
 Jews ?), who would talk of them, who would look at 
 
 them, who would lose money about them ? Not a soul. 
 
 And to think that there have been eighty thousand 
 
 peo])le who have bought her book ! " 
 
 " Has anything offended you, madame ? Who or 
 G 13 K
 
 ]46 ' ^^' ^1 WINTER ciry. 
 
 what is so unhappy?" said the voice of Delia Kocca, 
 as she crossed the pavement of the court between the 
 lines of bowing hotel functionaries, who had bent their 
 spines double in just the same way to Mdlle. L^a three 
 minutes previously. 
 
 "Nothing in especial," she answered him, coldly. 
 '* Those baccarat people kept me awake half the night; 
 I wish the gendarmes had interfered. What wretched 
 Aveather it is !" 
 
 " It is a little cold ; but it is very bright," said Delia 
 Rocca, in some surprise, for the day, indeed, was mag- 
 nificent and seasonable. " I was coming in the hoj)e 
 that I might be admitted, though I know it is too early, 
 and not your day, and everything that it ought not to 
 be. But I was so unfortunate last night ; you were so 
 monopolized " 
 
 She deigned to smile a little, but she continued to 
 move to her brougham. 
 
 " Your climate is the very Harpagon of climates. I 
 have not seen one warm day yet. I am thinking of 
 returning to Paris." 
 
 He grew very pale. 
 
 " Is not that very sudden?" he asked her; there was 
 a great change in his voice. 
 
 "Oh, no ; I have my house there, as you know, and 
 Monsieur Odissot is painting the ball-room in frescoes. 
 X have quite a new idea for my drawing-rooms, too; 
 after all, furnishing is one of the fine arts; do you like 
 that young Odissot's talent? His drawing is perfec- 
 tion; he was a pupil of Hippolyte Flandriu. Good- 
 morning." 
 
 She was in her coupe by this time, and he Avas
 
 IN A WINTER cm'. 147 
 
 obliged to close the door on her; but he kejjc his hand 
 upon it. 
 
 "Since you are leaving us so soon and so cruelly, 
 madame, would you honor my own old chapel frescoes 
 as you promised ? — they might give you some ideas for 
 your ball-room." 
 
 Lady Hilda deigned to smile fairly and fully this 
 time. 
 
 " Is that a satire or a profanity, — or both together?" 
 
 " It is jealousy of Camille Odissot ! I will go to 
 Paris and paint your frescoes, madame, if you will let 
 me ; I can paint in fresco and in distemper ; I was a 
 student in the Academy of San Luca in my time." 
 
 His words were light, and his manner also, but his 
 eyes had an expression that made the Lady Hilda 
 color a little and look out of the other window of her 
 coupe. 
 
 " I must first call upon Olga ; I have promised," she 
 answered, irrelevantly. " But I will join you at your 
 palace in an hour ; perhaps she will come with me ; T 
 should not like to leave, certainly, without having seen 
 your chapel. Au revoir." 
 
 " If you do leave, madame, I follow ! — to paint the 
 ball-room." 
 
 He shut the carriage door, and stood bareheaded in 
 the wintry wind as the impatient horses dashed away. 
 When it had disappeared he put his hat on, lighted a 
 cigar, and strolled to his own house. 
 
 "She will not go to Paris," he said to himself. 
 
 He knew women well. 
 
 In an hour and a half she arrived at his own gates, 
 bringing the Princess Olga with her.
 
 X48 ^^^' ^ nixTER cirr. 
 
 She saw the grand old garden, the mighty staircases, 
 tlie courts that once hekl troops of armed men ; she 
 saw his own rooms, with their tapestries that Flemish 
 John Rosts had liad the doing of so many centuries 
 before; she saw the exquisite dim silent chapel, whose 
 walls, painted by the Memmi in one portion and con- 
 tinued by Masaccio, were among the famous things 
 of the city. She Avas moved and saddened ; softened 
 too; after all, the decay of a great race has an un- 
 utterable pathos ; it will touch even a vulgar mind ; 
 she, arrogant and fastidious as to birth, as though she 
 had been born before the '89, was touched by it to the 
 core. 
 
 She had heard, too, of how he lived ; Avithout debt, 
 yet with dignity, Avith the utmost simplicity and Avith- 
 out reproach ; there Avas something in his fortunes 
 which seemed to her worthier than all distinction and 
 success, something that stirred that more poetic side of 
 her nature Avhich the world had never allowed to aAvake, 
 but Avhich had been born Avith her nevertheless. She 
 was serious and dreaming as she lingered in the beau- 
 tiful old chapel, under Avhose mosaic pavement there 
 lay the dust of so many generations of his race. He 
 noticed her silence, and thought to himself, — 
 
 " Perhaps she is thinking hoAV base it is in a man as 
 poor as I to seek a woman so rich as herself;" but she 
 Avas not thinking that at all as she swept on in her 
 sables, with her delicate cheeks like the lovely Xiphetos 
 rose against the darkness of the fur. 
 
 That immortality Avhich she had been doubting in 
 the morning did not seem so absurdly impossible here. 
 There Avas religion in the place, a different one to Avhat
 
 7.V A WliXTEIi CITY. 149 
 
 she had known kneeling at the messe des jparesseiix in 
 the Madeleine; the sort of religion that a woman only 
 becomes aware of when she loves. 
 
 She started and seemed to wake from a dream when 
 Princess Olga suggested that it was time to go. Prin- 
 cess Olga was a person of innumerable engagements, 
 who was always racing after half an hour without ever 
 catching it, like the Minister-Duke of Newcastle, and 
 like ninety-nine people out of every hundred in the 
 nineteenth century. There was some bric-a-brac the 
 princess wanted somebody to cheapen for her ; she bade 
 him come and do it; he complied willingly enough. 
 They went all three to that bric-a-brac shop, and thence 
 to another, and yet another. Then Princess Olga, who 
 was used to a more brilliant part than that of the 
 " terza incommoda," left them to themselves over the 
 faience and marqueterie. 
 
 Lady Hilda, who, despite all her fashion, liked walk- 
 ing like every healthy woman, dismissed her horses, 
 and walked the length of the river-street, he with her. 
 People meeting them began to make conjectures, and 
 bets, harder than ever; and Italian ladies, looking out 
 of their carriage windows, wondered for the five-mil- 
 lionth time at the freedom of Englishwomen, — as indeed 
 ] talian ladies have good cause to do in far more repre- 
 hensible liberties. 
 
 They walked down to the park and back again. It 
 was growing dusk. She went home to her hotel, and 
 let him enter Avith her, and had some tea by the fire- 
 light ; all the while he made love to her with eyes and 
 gesture and word, as only an Italian can, and she 
 avoided explicit declaration of it and direct need to 
 
 13*
 
 150 J'-v A WjyrKii citv. 
 
 roj)ly to it, with all the consummate tact that ten years' 
 practice in such positions had polished in her. 
 
 It was a charming pastime, — were it nothing more 
 It was quite a pity when Madame Mila entered unsus- 
 jiecting, and full of new wrongs in the matter of the 
 INIuscadins and fresh gossip concerning some forty 
 people's marriages, divorces, debts, ignominies, and in- 
 famies. It is fortunate that there are so many wicked 
 people in Society ; for if there were not, what would 
 the good people have to talk about? they would die of 
 paralysis of the tongue. 
 
 "You will not leave us for Paris, yet?" he mur- 
 mured, as he rose, with a sigh, only heard by her ear. 
 
 She smiled, and balanced a Devoniensis tea-rose idly 
 in her hands. 
 
 "Not just yet, if your weather prove better." 
 
 He drew the tea-rose away from her tingers unseen 
 even by the quick, marmoset eyes of little INIadame 
 Mila, who as it chanced was busied making herself a 
 cup of tea. She let it go. 
 
 "You should have seen all the men looking: after 
 that horrible Lea," said Madame Mila, drinking her 
 compound of cream and sugar, as the door closed on 
 him. "They have eyes for nothing else, I do think; 
 and only fancy her having the very suite above mine — it 
 is atrocious ! They say the things at her sale fetched fab- 
 ulous sums. Little pomatum and rouge pots, five hun- 
 dred francs each ! They say she has fixed her mind on 
 young Sant' Andrea here; I suppose she has heard he 
 is enormously rich. Oh, did you know Gwendolen 
 Doncaster has come? She has lost all her money at 
 Monte Carlo, and she has dyed her hair a nice straw
 
 IN A WIXTER CITY. 151 
 
 color; she looks fifteen years younger, I do assure you. 
 Don is shooting in Dahnatia: of course she abuses him, 
 — poor old Don ! I wonder how we should have got 
 on if he had married me, as he wanted. Gwen told 
 me Lord Derbyshire has run off with Mrs. AYheel- 
 skaitte — what he Cfmsee in her! and those open scandals 
 are so stupid, where is the use of them ? Surely you 
 can do what you like without calling all the world in to 
 see you doing it. When a woman has an easy husband 
 she never need compromise herself, and Wheelskaitte 
 certainly always was that. Oh, you never would know 
 them, I remember, because they were new people ; she 
 was an odious creature, and very ugly, but they gave 
 very good parties in London, and their cottage was as 
 nice a one as you could go to for Ascot. You used to 
 like little Wroxeter, did not you? he was such a pretty 
 boy : he has just left Eton, and he is wild to marry a 
 girl out of a music-hall, so Gwen says. These crea- 
 tures get all the good marriages nowadays : — and two 
 liundred new debutantes waiting for the first Drawing- 
 room this month! Have you seen the new book, 'Con- 
 fessions d'un Feu-Follet'? Maurice has just brought 
 it to me. It is rivaling Jenny Lea; and they say it is 
 worse, — quite unmentionable ; everybody is talking 
 about it. It was out last week, and they have sold 
 five editions. The man called Bistrim in it is Bis- 
 marck. No; I don't know that it is witty. I don't 
 think things are witty nowadays. It is horrible and 
 infect; but you can't put it down till you've done it. 
 Old Lady IVIanlever is dying at the Pace Hotel here, 
 — of undigested scandal, Featherleigh says ; but I 
 believe it's gastritis. What a nasty old woman she
 
 152 !^' A WINTER CITV. 
 
 has always been! I liave just left a card with in- 
 quiries and regrets; I do hope she won't get better. 1 
 won ever so much at play last night. I forgot to tell 
 you so; I bought that rocaille necklace on the Jewelers' 
 Bridge ; it was only six thousand francs, and it really 
 did belong to the Comtesse d'Albanv. It's very pretty, 
 too " 
 
 So Madame Mila discoursed, greatly to her own satis- 
 faction. She loved so much to hear her own tono-ue, 
 that she always chose the stupidest and silliest of her 
 lovers for her chief favors: a clever man had always 
 ideas of his own, and was sure to want to express them 
 sometime or another. All she desired were listeners 
 and echoes. Discussion may be the salt of life to a few, 
 but listeners and echoes are the bonbons and cigarettes 
 that no woman can do without. 
 
 The Lady Hilda, sitting looking into the fire, with 
 her eyes nearly closed, murmured yes, and no, and in- 
 deed, in the proper places, and let her run on, hearing 
 not one word. Those fingers which had entangled them- 
 selves so softly with her own withdrawing the tea-rose, 
 had left a magnetic thrill upon her, — a dreamy, lulling 
 pleasure. 
 
 That evening the good Hubert received a second tele- 
 gram contradicting the first which had announced his 
 mistress's return, and putting oif that return indefinitely. 
 The good Hubert, who was driving her best horse.«, 
 drinking her best wines, drawing large checks for ac- 
 counts never examined, and generally enjoying his win- 
 ter, was much relieved, and hastened to communicate 
 the happy change to Monsieur Camille Odissot, whom 
 the first telegram had also cast into great consternation,
 
 IX A WINTER CITY. 153 
 
 since that clever but idle young gentleman, having been 
 prepaid half the sum agreed on for the fresco-painting, 
 had been spending it joyously after the tastes of young 
 artists, assisted by a pretty brown actress, of the Fclics 
 Marigny, and had not at that moment even begun to 
 touch the walls and the ceiling of the ball-room confided 
 to his genius. 
 
 "But you had better begin, though she is not coming 
 back," said the good Hubert, surveying the blank waste 
 of prepared plaster. "INIiladi is not often out of tem- 
 per, but when she is — ouf ! I would as soon serve a 
 Russian. Better begin; paint your best, because she 
 knows, — Miladi knows, and she is hard to please in 
 those things. Not but what I dare say as soon as you 
 have done it all she will take it into her head that it 
 looks too cold, or looks too warm, or will not compose 
 well, or something or other, and will cover it all up 
 with silk and satin. But that will not matter to 
 you." 
 
 "Not at all," said Monsieur Camille, who, though 
 he had been a pupil of Flandrin, had learned nothing 
 of that true master's conscientiousness in art, but was 
 a clever young man of a new generation, who drew 
 beautifully, as mechanically as a tailor stitches beauti- 
 fully, and was of the very wise opinion that money was 
 everything.
 
 151 Jy A WINTER CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER VIll. 
 
 The Postlche ball came off, and was a brilliant suc- 
 cess. Madame Mila announced the next morning when 
 she got up that she had never enjoyed anything better, 
 — not even at the Tuileries. 
 
 " And the hostess ?" said Lady Hilda. 
 
 " I didn't even see her, thank goodness," said Ma- 
 dame Mila, frankly. " I went late, you know, and 
 she'd been standing at the door four hours, and had 
 got tired, and had gone oif duty into the crowd some- 
 where. Of course it wasn't my business to go and look 
 for her." 
 
 " Of course not ; but you brought ofi' your cotillon 
 things?" 
 
 " Yes. There they are," said Madame INIila, uncon- 
 scious of any satire. " I never saw such luxe, — no, 
 not even in the dear old Emperor's time: the things 
 everybody got must have cost hundreds of thousands 
 of francs. Certainly little Dickie managed it beauti- 
 fully. He ordered the whole affair, you know." 
 
 " Little Dickie, or anybody else, could float Medea 
 lierself in society if she would brew cotillon toys of 
 a new sort in her caldron," said the Lady Hilda. 
 
 "Medea?" said Madame Mila, who knew about her 
 because she had seen Ristori so often. " Poor thing ! 
 it was that horrid Jason that deserved to be put out of 
 society, only men never do get put out of it for any- 
 thing they do; I don't know how it is, — we cut no
 
 IX A WINTER CITY. 155 
 
 end of women, but we never cut a man. AVell, I as- 
 sure you, my dear, the ball was charming, — charming, 
 tjjough you do look so contemptuous. We had all our 
 own [>eople, and saw nobody else, all night. I don't 
 think I need bow to the woman, do you? I'm not 
 supposed to have seen her, though I do know her by 
 sight, a little podgy sunburnt-looking fat creature, with 
 liveries for all the world like what the sheriffs have in 
 Enoland at assize-time. No : I'm sure I needn't bow 
 to her. I told Dickie beforehand I shouldn't." 
 
 " No doubt Dickie was delighted to have you on any 
 terms." 
 
 " Of course ; and I'll send a card to-day," said Ma- 
 dame Mila, with the magnanimous air of one who does 
 a very noble thing. 
 
 From that time thenceforward she would forget the 
 Joshua R. Postiches and everything concerning them 
 as absolutely as if she had never heard anything about 
 them; the woman's second ball, if she gave one, would 
 be nothing new, and no sort of fun whatever. 
 
 " You're always at me about Maurice," she said, 
 pursuing her own ideas. "Look at Olga with Carlo 
 Maremma ! — she did make him go last night, and he 
 was the only Italian there. You talk of Maurice: 
 Olga is twice as careless as I am " 
 
 "Olga is my friend; don't discuss her, please." 
 
 " Oh, that's very fine, — when you are always finding 
 fault with me about Maurice !" 
 
 "I should not let any third ])crson blame you." 
 
 " You are very strange, Hilda," said Madame Mila, 
 eying her with a curious wonder, and ruffling herself 
 up in her embroidered pink cashmere dressing-gown,
 
 ]-,n AV A WINTER CITY. 
 
 as if she were a little bird in the heart of a big rose. 
 " Why should you defend people behind their i)ack ? 
 Nobody ever does. We all say horrible things of one 
 another ; but we don't mean half of them^ so what 
 does it matter? I don't blame Olga, not in the least; 
 Schouvaloflf is a brute, and, besides, he knows it very 
 well, and he doesn't mind a bit; indeed, of course he's 
 glad enough " 
 
 " I do blame Olga ; but I can't see how you can," 
 said her cousin, coldly. 
 
 IMadame jSlila ruffled herself more, looking more and 
 more like a little angry bird in the middle of a pink 
 rose. 
 
 " I ? Pray what can anybody say of me? Spiridion 
 is always with me half the year at least. Spiridion is 
 extremely fond of Maurice, so are all the children. 
 He's at another hotel, right at the other end of the 
 place; really I can't see why I must rush out of a town 
 because a friend happens to come into it also " 
 
 " My dear Mila, pray don't talk that nonsense to 
 me," said her cousin, serenely. " I dare say ten years 
 lieuce you will marry your little Lili to M. des Gom- 
 meux ; people do do that sort of thing, thougli they find 
 fault with the plots of the old Greek plays ; I suppose 
 it ' saves society ;' at least it saves appearances. Olga 
 is imprudent, I know, and wrong ; but at least she lias 
 the courage of her opinions; she does not talk all that 
 paltry pusillanimous prurient absurdity about 'friend- 
 ship.'" 
 
 " Nobody can understand you, Hilda ; and I don't 
 know what you mean about Greek plays," muttered 
 Madame Mila. " Everybody lives in the same way :
 
 JX A WINTER CITY. 157 
 
 you talk as if it were only me ! Spiridion never says 
 a word to me ; what business have you ?" 
 
 " None in the least, dear ; only you will bring up 
 the subject. Qui s'excuse s'accuse. That is all. You 
 are not coming out this morning? Au revoir, then ; I 
 am going to see a newly-found San Cipriano il Mago 
 outside the gates ; they think it is by II Moretto. The 
 face and dress are Venetian, they say; but you care 
 nothing at all about that, do you ?" 
 
 " Nothing," said Madame Mila, with a yawn. " I 
 suppose if it tidvc your fancy you'll be buying the 
 whole church with it in, if you can't get it any other 
 way. I wish I'd your money : I wouldn't waste it 
 on old pictures, that only make a room dark ; and the 
 kind of light they want is horribly unbecoming to 
 people." 
 
 " I promise you I shall not hang an altar-piece in a 
 room," said the Lady Hilda. " I leave that for the 
 heretics and the bourgeoisie. Good-by, my dear." 
 
 "Who's going with you?" cried Madame Mila after 
 her. Lady Hilda hesitated a moment. 
 
 " Nina is, and the French artist who has discovered 
 the Moretto, and — M. della Rocca." 
 
 Madame Mila laughed, and took up a little mirror 
 to see if all the color on her face were quite right. One 
 horrible never-to-be-forgotten day, one eyebrow had 
 been higher than the other. 
 
 Lady Hilda, descending tiie hotel staircase, met the 
 faithful Maurice a.scending. That slender and indefati- 
 gable leader of cotillons swept his hat to the ground, 
 twisted the waxed ends of his small moustache, and 
 
 murmured that he svas about to inquire of the servants 
 
 U
 
 158 ^V A U'J.XTKR CITV. 
 
 if Madame la Coratesse were " tout a fait remise apr&s 
 Kes iatigues incroyables." 
 
 Lady Hilda, whom he feared very greatly, passed 
 him with a chilly salutation, and he Avent on up the 
 stairs, and in two minutes' time was assuring Madame 
 Mila that she was " fraiche comme la rosee du matin," 
 which did credit to his ready chivalry of compliments, 
 since he was aware of all the mysteries of those bright 
 cheeks and that small pomegranate-like mouth, and 
 had even, once or twice before great balls, given an 
 artistic touch or two to their completion, having gradu- 
 ated with much skill and success in such accomplish- 
 ments under the tuition of Mademoiselle Rose The, 
 and La Petite Boulotte. 
 
 The San Cipriano was to be found in a church some 
 five miles out of the city, — a lonely church set high on 
 a fragrant hill-side, with sheep among the olive-boughs, 
 and the ox-plow under the vines that were all about it, 
 and high hedges of wild roses and thickets of arbutus 
 rambling around its old walled grave-yard. 
 
 The paths close round it were too steep for the horses, 
 and the last half-mile had to be climbed on foot. 
 
 It was one of those spring days which often fall in 
 February; the ground was blue with violets, and the 
 grass golden with crocus and hepatica; there were 
 butterflies and bees on the air; the mavis and black- 
 bird were singing. 
 
 The San Cipriano hung over a side-altar in the dark, 
 desolate, grand old church, where no w^orshiper ever 
 came except a tired peasant, or a shepherd sheltering 
 from a storm. 
 
 Delia Itocca])ulled aside the moth-eaten curtains from
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. !-,<) 
 
 the adjacent window, and let the sunsliine in. Some 
 little children were sitting on the altar-steps, stringing 
 daisies and berries; the light made a halo about liioir 
 heads ; the deep Venetian colors of the forgotten pic- 
 ture glanced like jewels through the film of the dust of 
 ages. Its theme was a martyrdom of the Magi(;ian and 
 of St. Justina; beneath were the crowds of Nicomedia 
 and the guards of Diocletian, above were the heavens 
 opened and the hosts of waiting angels. It was a 
 great theme greatly treated. 
 
 "It is one of the most beautiful legends that we have, 
 to my thinking," said Delia Rocca, when they had stud- 
 ied it minutely and in all lights. *' It has been very 
 seldom selected by painters for treatment; one wonders 
 why ; perhaps because there is too much human passion 
 iu it for a sacred subject." 
 
 "Yes," said Lady Hilda, dreamily. "One can never 
 divest oneself of the idea that Santa Justina loved him 
 with an earthly love." 
 
 "Oh, Hilda! how pagan of you!" said the Marchesa 
 del Trasimene, a little aghast. 
 
 "Not at all. Why should we doubt it?" said Delia 
 Rocca, quickly. " Why should we deny that a pure love 
 would have power against the powers of the world?" 
 
 Lady Hilda looked at him, and a great softness came 
 into her face; then she stoo})ed to the little children 
 playing with the berries on the altar-steps, and ])nt 
 some money in their little brown hands. 
 
 "It is a very fine picture," she said, after a moment's 
 pause. " I do not think I have ever seen brown and 
 gold and crimson so beautifully managed, and fused in 
 BO deep a glow of color, save in Palnia Vecchio's Santa
 
 IgO ^^"^ ^ WINTER CI TV. 
 
 Barbara — you remember — in Santa ]\Iaria Formosa in 
 Venice ?" ' 
 
 "The portrait of Yiolante Pahua, — yes. But this 
 subject lias a deeper and warmer interest. Santa Bar- 
 bara with her tower and her cannon is too strong to 
 touch one very much. One cannot think that she ever 
 suffered." 
 
 " Yet Santa Barbara has a very wide popularity, if 
 one may use the word to a saint." 
 
 "All symbols of strength have; the people are weak ; 
 they love what will help them. It is very singular 
 what deep root and vast fame one saint has, and how 
 obscure remains another ; yet both equal in holiness of 
 life and courage of death. Perhaps the old painters 
 have done it by the frequency of their choice of certain 
 themes." 
 
 " Oh, no," said Lady Hilda ; " be sure the painters 
 rather followed the public preference than directed it. 
 Poets lead; painters only mirror. I like this San 
 Cipriano very much. They did not say too much of it. 
 It is left to dust and damp. Could I buy it, do you 
 think?" 
 
 "I dare say; I will inquire for you to-morrow. AYe 
 sell anything now. When the public debt is a little 
 heavier, and the salt tax is protested against, we shall 
 sell the Transfiguration. AVhy not ? — we have a copy 
 at St. Peter's. Indeed, why keep the St. Cecilia doing 
 nothing in a dark old church in Bologna, when its sale 
 ■with a few others might make a minister or a senator 
 well off for life?" 
 
 " Do not be so bitter, Paolo," said the Marchesa 
 Nina: " vou luiLrht have been a minister yourself."
 
 IX A WINTER CITY. \CA 
 
 "And rebuilt Palestrina out of my commission on 
 the tax on cabbages ! Yes, I have lost my opportuni- 
 ties." 
 
 The Lady Hilda was gazing at the clouds of angels 
 in tlie picture, who bore aloft the martyred souls in 
 their immortal union; and from them she glanced at 
 the little fair wondering faces of the peasant children. 
 She had never thought about children in any way, save 
 as little figures that composed well in Stothard's draw- 
 ings, in Sir Joshua's pictures, in Correggio's frescoes. 
 Now, for a second, the thought glanced through her 
 that women were happy who had those tender soft ties 
 with the future of the world. What future had she? 
 — You cannot make a future out of diamonds, china, 
 and M. Worth. 
 
 " You really wish to buy the San Clpriano ?" he 
 asked her, as they passed over the worn, damp pave- 
 ment towards the sunlight of the open door. 
 
 " Yes. You seem to think it sacrilege." 
 
 " No ; I think the moral decadence of feeling which 
 makes it possible for my nation to sell such things is a 
 sacrilege against our past, and a violation of the rights 
 of our posterity; but that is another matter, and no 
 fault of yours. What will you do with it when you 
 have it ?" 
 
 " I will put it in my oratory in Paris." 
 
 The answer jarred on him ; yet there was no other 
 which he could have expected. 
 
 "How naturally you think of buying all you see!" 
 
 he said, a little impatiently. " I suppose that power 
 
 of acquisition — that wand of possession — is very dear 
 
 to you." 
 
 14* L
 
 IQ2 ^A' '^ WISTKR CITV. 
 
 "AVhat do you mean? I do not know; it is a habit. 
 Yes; I suppose one likes it." 
 
 " No doubt. Your riches are to you as his magic 
 was to San Cipriano yonder, — the willingest of slaves.'* 
 
 " What !— an evil spirit, then ?" 
 
 " Not necessarily. But " 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 " A despot, though a slave ; one who holds your 
 soul ; as the powers of darkness held his, until a great 
 and spiritual love set him free." 
 
 They were passing out of the open doorway into the 
 calm golden light of the passing day. Through the 
 fine tracery of the olive-boughs the beautiful valley 
 shone like a summer sea. Before them, above the 
 southern mountains, the sun was going down. Her 
 eyes grew dan for a moment as she looked. His hand 
 had closed on hers ; she let it lie within his clasp ; it 
 was the first gesture of tenderness she had ever allowed 
 to him. Then at a sudden recollection she withdrew 
 it, and she smiled with her old serene indifference. 
 
 " You will talk to me in unknown tongues ! Santa 
 Justina was a holy woman ; I am not. I am not sure 
 that I ever did any unselfish thing in all my life. How 
 many violets there are ! — gather me some." 
 
 The others drew near ; he left her and gathered the 
 violets. They were countless; the old church was left 
 alone to perish ; no foot of priest or worshiper now evei 
 trod upon their purple glories. 
 
 She leaned over the low wall of the grave-yard, and 
 watched the setting sun. She felt that her eyes were 
 full of tears. 
 
 " If I had met him earlier " she thought.
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 1C3 
 
 They walked clown through the olive thickets, along 
 the grassy slopes of the hill, to the carriage, and drove 
 home in the now waning light. 
 
 She was capricious, contemptuous, ironical, arrogant, 
 in everything she said, lying back with the furs cover- 
 ing her from the chill evening winds. 
 
 " Does going to a church always make you so caustic, 
 cara mia ?" said the Marchesa Nina. 
 
 Delia Rocca was very silent. The French artist 
 kept up the ball of talk with her and the lovely 
 Marchesa, and played the gay game well. The sun 
 sank quite ; the brief twilight came ; then darkness ; 
 the horses took them down through the walled lanes 
 and the rose hedges into the narrow streets, where 
 here and there the lamps were twinkling, and the 
 glow of the wood fires shoiie through the grated case- 
 ments. 
 
 The carriage paused first at the Hotel Murat. 
 
 " I shall see you to-night at Princess Furstenberg's, 
 Hilda, of course ?" said the Marchesa. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said the Lady Hilda, as she descended, 
 drawing her sables closer around her. "You will be 
 there, I suppose?" she added, with a little change of 
 her voice, to Delia Rocca, as he held his arm for her to 
 alight. He looked straight down into her eyes. 
 
 " I think not," he said, simply. " Good-night, ma- 
 dame." 
 
 He stood with his head uncovered, whilst she went 
 up the steps of the hotel ; then, as the door closed on 
 her, he walked away to his own old house. 
 
 Lady Hilda went up to her own rooms ; she had a 
 knot of violets with her. Before she put them in water
 
 164 ^^" A WINTER CI TV. 
 
 she touched them with her lips, — as any girl of sixteen 
 or any peasant Gretchen might have clone. 
 
 That night at the Princess Furstenberg's — one of 
 the pleasantest houses of the winter city — men and 
 women both said to one another that they had never 
 teen her looking more beautiful, or more magnificent 
 in the blaze of her jewels, but they found her colder 
 and more difficult to converse with than ever, and were 
 more than ever hopelessly impressed with the sense of 
 their own absolute nullity in her eyes. 
 
 He was not there. 
 
 She stayed but a brief time, — long enough to chill 
 every one there like ice, which was the effect she always 
 produced in society when it was so unhappy as not to 
 please her; then, having frozen it, she left it, — the ladies 
 who remained breathing freer when her delicate loveli- 
 ness and her mighty emeralds had ceased to outshine 
 them. She sank back in her carriage with a great sigh. 
 
 The homeward streets led past the palace of the Delia 
 Rocca. She let the window down, and looked outward, 
 as she passed it. She saw a single casement alone lighted 
 in the great black mass of frowning stone, with its ma- 
 chicolated walls and iron stanchions. It was above the 
 entrance; she knew it was his favorite room, — where 
 his books were, and his old bronzes, and his favorite 
 weapons. 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears again as she looked up at 
 the solitary light. She felt for the little cluster of violets 
 that she had fastened under the great emeralds in her 
 bosom; his hand had gathered them. 
 
 "If any one had told me I would care!" she thought 
 to herself.
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 163 
 
 The tears on her lashes stole slowly down, and 
 dimmed the emeralds and refreshed the violets. 
 
 She was the most heartless creatnre in tlie world, — 
 the coldest and most self- en grossed of women, her friends 
 and aeqnaintances were saying, after her departure, in 
 the drawing-rooms of the Princess Furstenberg. Not 
 like her cousin ; dear little Madame Mila was all good 
 nature, all kindliness, all heart. 
 
 At the Fiera for the orphan children the week be- 
 fore, had not dear little Madame Mila slaved herself 
 to death, bustling about in tlie most bewitching costume, 
 whirling like a Japanese windmill, wearing the loveli- 
 est little muslin apron, with huge pockets, into which 
 thousands of francs were poured, turning the lottery- 
 wheel indefatigably for three days, and selling cigars 
 she had lighted, and lilies of the valley she had kissed, 
 at the most fabulous prices, for the good of the poor? 
 
 And had not Lady Hilda contemptuously refused to 
 have anything to do with the Fiera at all? 
 
 The almoner of the charities, indeed, had received 
 a fifty-thousand -franc note anonymously. But, then, 
 how could anybody divine that the Lady Hilda had 
 sent it because a chance word of Delia Rocca's had 
 sunk into her mind? Whereas everybody saw Madame 
 Mila whirling and saying so prettily, "Pour nos pau- 
 vres! — pour nos chers pauvres!"
 
 IGG -^^V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The next morning they brought her a note; it said 
 that he had inquired about the San Cipriano, but the 
 matter had to be referred to some authority absent in 
 Rome, and there could be no answer for a few days, 
 perhaps weeks. The note was signed with the assur- 
 ance of the highest consideration of the humblest of 
 her servants, — Paolo della Rocca. 
 
 The note might have been read from the house-top: 
 she had had letters from him of a different strain, charm- 
 ing little brief letters, about a flower, about an opera- 
 box, about a piece of ])ottery, — always about some 
 trifle, but making the trifle the medium of a delicately- 
 veiled homage and a softly-hinted tenderness. 
 
 She tossed the note into the fire, and saw his name 
 burn in the clear flame of a pine branch: why could he 
 not have called, instead of writing? 
 
 She was restless all day, and nothing pleased her, — 
 not even M. de St. Louis, who did call, and sat a long 
 time, and was in his most delightful humor, and full 
 of new anecdotes about everybody and everything ; but 
 he did not mention Della Rocca. 
 
 The Due found no topic that suited her. 
 
 It was the Corso di Gala that afternoon ; would she 
 not go ? 
 
 No : her horses hated masks, and she hated noise. 
 
 The Veglione on Sunday; would she not go to that? 
 
 No : those things were well enough in the days of
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 1G7 
 
 Philippe d'Orleans, who invented tliem, but they were 
 now only as stupid as they were vulgar ; anybody was 
 let in for five francs. 
 
 Did she like the new weekly journal that was electri- 
 fying Paris? 
 
 No: she could see nothing in it: there was no wit 
 nowadays, — only personalities, which grew more gross 
 every year. 
 
 The Due urged that personalities were as old as Cra- 
 tinus and Archilochus, and that five hundred years 
 before Christ the satires of Hipponax drove Bupalus 
 to hang himself. 
 
 She answered that a bad thing was not the better for 
 being old. 
 
 People were talking of a clever English novel trans- 
 lated everywhere, called "In a Hothouse," the hothouse 
 being Society: had she seen it? 
 
 No : what wa-s the use of reading novels of society 
 by people who never had been in it? The last English 
 "society" novel she had read had described a cabinet 
 minister in London as going to a Drawing-room in the 
 crowd with everybody else, instead of by the jae^ite 
 efniree ; they were always full of such blunders. 
 
 Had she read the new French story " Le Bal de 
 Mademoiselle Bibi"? 
 
 No : she had heard too much of it ; it made one 
 almost wish for a censorship of the press. 
 
 The Due agreed that literature was terribly but 
 truly described as " un tas d'ordures soigneusement eu- 
 velopp^." 
 
 She said that the "tas d'ordures" without the en- 
 velope was sufficient for popularity, but that the litera-
 
 168 J^"^ ^1 WINTER cirr. 
 
 ture of any age was not to be blamed ; it was only a 
 natural growth, like a mushroom : if the soil were 
 noxious, the fungus was bad. 
 
 The Due wondered what a censorship would let pa&s^ 
 if there were one. 
 
 She said that when there was one it had let pass Cre- 
 l)illon, the Chevalier Le Clos, and the " Bijoux Indis- 
 crets ;" it had proscribed Marmontel, Helvetius, and 
 Lanjuinais. She did not know how one man could bo 
 expected to be wiser than all his generation. 
 
 The Due admired some majolica she had purchased. 
 
 She said she began to think that majolica was a false 
 taste; the metallic lustre was fine, but how clumsy 
 often the forms ! one might be led astray by too great 
 love of old work. 
 
 The Due praised a magnificent Sevres panel, just 
 painted by Riocreux and Goupil, and given to her by 
 Princess Olga on the New Year. 
 
 She said it was well done, but what charm was there 
 in it? All their modern iron and zinc colors, and 
 hydrate of aluminum, and oxide of chromium, and 
 purple of Cassius, and all the rest of it, never gave 
 one-tenth the charm of those old painters who had only 
 green grays and dull blues and tawny yellows and 
 never could get any kind of red whatever ; Olga had 
 meant to please her, but she, for her part, would much 
 sooner have had a little panel of Abruzzi, with all the 
 holes and defects in the pottery, and a brown coutadina 
 for a Madonna; there wa.s some interest in that, — there 
 was no interest in that gorgeous landscape and those 
 bri 1 1 iant hunting-figures. 
 
 The Duo bore all the contradictious with imper-
 
 7.V A WINTER CITY. 1G9 
 
 turbable serenity and urbanity, smiled to himself, and 
 bowed himself out in perfect good liuraor. 
 
 "Tout va bien," he thought to himself; "Miladl 
 must be very much in love to be so cross." 
 
 The Due's personal experience among ladies had 
 made him of opinion that love did not improve the 
 temper. 
 
 " The carriage waits, Miladi," said her servant. 
 
 " I shall not drive to-day," said Lady Hilda. " Tell 
 them to saddle Said." 
 
 It was a brilliant day ; all the bells were pealing, 
 and the sunshine and the soft wind streaming in. She 
 thought a ten-mile stretch across the open country might 
 do her good ; at any rate, it would be better than sit- 
 ting at home, or pacing slowly in the procession of the 
 Corso di Gala, which was only a shade less stupid than 
 the pelting Corso. 
 
 Said was a swift, nervous, impetuous horse, — the 
 only sort of horse she cared to ride ; and he soon bore 
 her beyond the gates, leaving the carriages of her 
 friends to crush each other in the twisting streets, and 
 vie in state liveries and plumes and ribbons and 
 powdered servants, and amuse the good-natured, kindly, 
 orderly crowds of Floral ia, clustered on the steps of 
 churches and under the walls of palaces. 
 
 She rode against the wind, as straight as the state 
 of the roads would permit her, as wonderful a sight to 
 the astonished country-people as though she had been 
 Santa Margarita on her dragon. Said took a few 
 stone walls and sunken fences which put him on good 
 terms with himself. She was in no mood to spare 
 him, or avoid any risks it might amuse him to run; 
 H 15
 
 170 /-V A WINTER CirV. 
 
 and they had soon covered many more miles than she 
 knew. 
 
 "Where are we?" she asked her groom, when Said 
 slackened his j)ace at last. 
 
 The groom, who was a Scotchman, had no idea and 
 no power of asking. 
 
 " It does not matter," said his mistress, and rode on 
 again. 
 
 They were on a tolerably broad road, with a village 
 above them, on a steep green vine-clad hill ; there were 
 the usual olive-orchards everywhere, with here and 
 there pear- and plum-trees, which had not yet begun 
 to show their silver buds, and farther still all aronnd 
 the countless curves of the many mountain-spurs that 
 girdle the valley of Floralia. There was another stone 
 wall in front of them ; beyond it the turf looked green 
 and pleasant ; she put Said at it, but some one from a 
 distance called out to her in Italian, " For God's sake 
 stop the horse !" 
 
 On the other side of the wall the ground fell sud- 
 denly to a depth of twenty feet. 
 
 She caught up Said's head in time only by a moment; 
 he stood erect on his hind legs for a second, but she 
 kept her seat unshaken ; she thought he would lose his 
 balance and fall back on her ; but she stilled and con- 
 trolled him with the coolest nerve. As he descended 
 on his front feet, Delia Rocca came through a high iron 
 gate on the left, leaped a ditch, and sprang to the horse's 
 head. 
 
 " How can you do such mad things ?" he said, with 
 a quiver in his voice. " That gate was locked; I could 
 only shout to you. I thought I was too late "
 
 IN A WINTER crry. 171 
 
 His face was pale as death ; her color had not even 
 changed. She looked at him, and smiled a little. 
 
 "So many thanks! it is a silly habit, taking walls; 
 I learned to like it when I was a child and rode with 
 my brother. Sai'd is not frightened now ; you may let 
 him alone. Where are we?" 
 
 " On the ground of Palestrina." 
 
 " Palestrina ! I see nothing of your villa." 
 
 " We are eight miles from the villa. It lies beyond 
 those other hills; but all the ground here is mine. I 
 was visiting one of my farms. By heaven's mercy I 
 saw you " 
 
 His voice still faltered, and his face was pale with 
 strong emotion ; his hand had closed on hers, and 
 rested on her knee. 
 
 " You were behind that tall gate, then?" 
 
 " Yes ; I have the key of that gate, but the lock was 
 rusted. Come and rest a moment: you are a long way 
 from Floralia. There is an old farm-house here; they 
 are all my own people." 
 
 She dismounted, and threw the bridle to her groom. 
 
 " It terrifies you more than it did me," she said, with 
 a little laugh. 
 
 He took both her hands and kissed them; he did not 
 answer, neither did she rebuke him. 
 
 He led her through the iron gate down a grassy path 
 between the gray gnarled olive-trees and the maples 
 with their lithe red boughs; there wa.s a large old 
 house with clouds of pigeons round it; and great mul 
 berry-trees near, and sculptured shields and lions on 
 the walls; women ran to him delightedly, men left 
 their plows afar off and came, eager and bareheaded,
 
 172 J^' ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 to see if tliere was any cliauce to serve bira ; he wps 
 their prince, tlieir lord, their idol, their best friend ; as 
 their fathers had followed his to the death, so would 
 they have followed him. Half a dozen flew to do each 
 word of his bidding, — brought in the horse, brought 
 out an oaken settle for her in the sun, brought fresh 
 water from the spring, fresh lemons from the tree, fresh 
 violets from the hedges. 
 
 At a sign from him, one of the shepherd-boys, who 
 was famous for his singing, came and stood before them, 
 and sang to his guitar some of the love-songs of the 
 province in a sweet tenor voice, liquid as the singing 
 of nightingales. The green and gracious country was 
 around, the low sun made the skies of the west radiant, 
 the smell of the woods and fields rose fresh from the 
 earth. She drank the draught he made for her, and 
 listened to the singing, and watched the simple, pasto- 
 ral, old-world life around her, and felt her heart thrill 
 as she met the amorous worship of his eyes. 
 
 She had never thought of natural beauty, or of the 
 lives of the poor, save now and then when they had 
 been recalled to her by some silvery landscape of Corot 
 or some sad rural idyl of Millet ; as she sat here, she 
 felt as if she had passed all her life in some gorgeous 
 heated theatre, and had only now come out into the 
 open air and under the arch of heaven. 
 
 There was a wonderful, dreamy, lulling charm in 
 this olive-hidden solitude: she did not care to move, to 
 think, to analyze. He did not speak to her of love ; 
 they both avoided words, which, spoken, might break 
 the spell of their present peace and part them ; but 
 every now and then liis eyes looked into hers, and were
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 173 
 
 heavy with the languor of silent passion, and stirred 
 her heart to strange sweet tumult. 
 
 When the boy sang the passionate, plaintive, love- 
 songs, then her face grew warm, and her eyelids fell : 
 it was no longer an unknown tongue to her. 
 
 She would not think of the future : she resigned her- 
 self to the charm of the hour. 
 
 So did he also. The night before, he had resolved 
 to avoid her, to cease to see her, to forget her. She had 
 wounded him, and he had told himself that it was best 
 to let the world have her, body and soul. Now chance 
 had overruled his resolve : he could not war with his 
 fate; he let it come as it might. He had found his 
 way to influence her ; he knew that he could move her 
 as no other could ; yet he hesitated to say to her what 
 must unite them or part them. 
 
 Besides, since this woman had grown dear to him 
 with a passion alike born out of her physical beauty 
 and his own sense of power on her and his insight into 
 the richer possibilities of her nature, the colder calcula- 
 tions which had occupied him at his first knowledge of 
 her seemed to him base and unworthy ; if he had not 
 loved her he would have pursued her with no pang of 
 conscience ; having grown to love her, to love her love- 
 liness, and her pride, and her variableness, and her in- 
 finite charm, and her arrogant faults, to love her in a 
 word, and to desire indescribably to lead her from the 
 rank miasma of the pleasures and pomps of the woild 
 into a clearer and higher spiritual atmosphere, he recoiled 
 more and more day by day from seeking her as the 
 medium of his own fortune, he checked himself more 
 and more in the utterance of a passion which could but 
 
 15*
 
 174 IN A WISTER CITV. 
 
 seem to her mingled at the least with the lowest of 
 motives. 
 
 He was her lover, he did not disguise it from himself 
 or her ; but he paused before doing that which would 
 make him win or lose it all; not because he feared his 
 fate, but because he could not bring himself to the 
 acceptance of it. 
 
 " Sing me something yourself," she said to him ; and 
 he took the boy's mandolin, and, leaning against the 
 porch of the house, touched a chord of it now and then, 
 and sang her every thing she would, while the sun shone 
 in the silver of the olives and the afternoon shadows 
 stole slowly down the side of the mountains. Then he 
 sat down on the steps at her feet, and talked to her of 
 his people, of his land, of his boyhood and his youth. 
 
 " I have lived very much in the great world," he 
 said, after a time, — " this world which you think is the 
 only one. But I am never so well content as when I 
 come back here under my olives. I suppose you cannot 
 understand that?" 
 
 "I am not sure: yes, perhaps. One grows tired of 
 everything." 
 
 "Everything that is artificial, you mean. People 
 think Horace's love of the rural life an affectation. I 
 believe it to be most sincere. After the strain of the 
 conventionality and the adulation of the Augustan 
 court, the natural existence of the country must have 
 been welcome to him. I know it is the fashion to 
 think that a love of Nature belongs only to the Mod- 
 erns ; but I do not think so. Into Pindar, Theocritus, 
 Meleager, the passion for Nature must have entered 
 very strongly ; what is modern is the more subjective,
 
 IX A WINTER CITY. 175 
 
 the more fanciful, feeling which makes Nature a 
 sounding-board to echo all the cries of man." 
 
 " But that is always a Northern feeling." 
 
 " Inevitably. With us Nature is too riante for us to 
 grow morbid about it. The sunshine that laughs about 
 us nine months of every year, the fruits that grow almost 
 without culture, the flowers that we throw to the oxen to 
 eat, the very stones that are sweet with myrtle, the very 
 sea-sand that is musical with bees in the rosemary, 
 everything we grow up among from infancy makes our 
 love of Nature only a kind of unconscious joy in it ; 
 but here even the peasant has that, and the songs of 
 the men that cannot read or write are full of it. If a 
 field-laborer sing to his love, he will sing of the nar- 
 cissus and the crocus, as Meleager sang to Heliodora 
 twenty centuries ago " 
 
 "And your wild narcissus is the true narcissus, — ■ 
 the Greek narcissus, with its many bells to one stem ?" 
 
 "Yes. In March and April it will be out every- 
 where in the fields and woods about here. I thought 
 once that you loved flowers as you loved art, merely as 
 a decoration of your salon. But I was wrong. They 
 are closer to your heart than that. Why do you deny 
 your emotions? Why do you mask yourself under 
 such cold phrases as those you used to me yesterday ?" 
 
 She smiled a little. 
 
 " How should I remember what I said so long back 
 as yesterday ?" 
 
 " That is hard ! — for those who hear may remember 
 for a lifetime. Your words kept me from where you 
 were last night." 
 
 " What I say at any time is worth but little thought.
 
 176 ^^^ ^ WINTER CI TV. 
 
 I fear you think too well of me always," she said, on 
 a sudden vague impulse and the first pang of humility 
 that she had ever known to smite the superb vanity 
 that had always enwrapped her. 
 
 With a soft grace of action he touched with his lips 
 the hem of her riding-skirt. 
 
 " No," he said simply, " you might indeed ' daze 
 one to blindness like the noonday sun.' But I am not 
 blind. I see in you many errors more against yourself 
 than others ; I see the discontent which always argues 
 high unsatisfied desire, and the caprice which is merely 
 the offshoot of too long indulgence of all passing fan- 
 cies; but what matter those? — your nature and the 
 nobility of it lie underneath them in a vein of gold 
 unworked. You have had the language of flattery 
 to nausea: I do not give it you; I say but what I 
 believe." 
 
 The tears sprang into her eyes, and the music of his 
 voice thrilled through her. 
 
 She did not care to wait for the words that she knew 
 would follow as his fingers stole and clasped hers close, 
 and she felt on her the gaze she did not dare to meet. 
 She rose, and glanced to the west. 
 
 " The sun is just gone behind the hills. I shall be 
 late. Will you tell them to bring me Said?" 
 
 He rose, too, and did not oppose her departure. 
 
 " I rode here myself, fortunately," he said. " You 
 must allow me to go Mdth you into Floralia ; the roads 
 are bad and hard to find." 
 
 They brought Said out of the great wooden sweet- 
 smelling outhouse, and he raised her in silence to her 
 saddle. He gave her a little knot of the fragrant leaf-
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 177 
 
 less calycanthus with a few sprays of myrtle ; she put 
 it in her bosom ; it was ah'eady dusk, and he saw the 
 softened dimness of her eyes. 
 
 They rode down together in the declining light 
 through the winding ways of the outlying country 
 into the town; it was quite dark when they reached 
 the gates; they had ridden fast and spoken scarcely 
 at all. 
 
 As he lifted her from Sai'd in the gloom within the 
 scarcely-lighted street, he pressed her softly for one 
 second in his arms, so that she felt the beating of his 
 heart. 
 
 " Dio te guarde," he murmured. 
 
 She left him in silence, and without rebuke. 
 
 "Is that you, Paolo?" said the voice of Madame 
 Mila in the darkness, as a carriage, gorgeous with 
 amber and gold liveries and with Carnival camellias 
 at the horses' heads, pulled up with great noise and 
 haste before the hotel door. 
 
 " Is that you, Paolo ? I am so glad ! I wanted to 
 speak to you. The Corso was horridly stupid. I don't 
 care a bit except for the pelting days: do you? I 
 sprained my arm last year in Rome with the pelting, 
 and I really blinded poor Solvario for a week. Why, 
 dear me, that's Said ! Have you and Hilda been riding 
 together?" 
 
 " I met your cousin, madame, by chance ; she had lost 
 her way. It is very easy to do so among our hills." 
 
 " How very fortunate that you met her !" said Madame 
 
 Mila, with a little saucy laugh. "She will kill herself 
 
 riding that horrid Said some day: — perhaps she will 
 
 listen to you if you tell her not. What was it I wanted 
 
 w* M
 
 178 I^ -^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 to say? — oh, T want a very good box for the VegHone. 
 You are one of the directors of the opera, are you not?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I thought so. AVell, mind I have one, — big enough 
 to hold the supper-table comfortably ; and see Maurice 
 about it, and dine witli me to-morrow, will you ? Nina 
 and Olga and the usual people. Dear me ! how these 
 horses do fidget ! How very nice that you should have 
 met dear Hilda just when she'd lost her way ! Good" 
 by ; but of course you'll be at the Roubleskoff's to- 
 night? I wish it wasn't costume. I'm embroidered 
 all over with Union Jacks. I'm England ; and I have 
 a little Khedive on a gold stick that keeps tumbling up 
 and down, and I carry a ship in full sail on the top of 
 my head. I assure you it's very trying to be a Naval 
 Power. How ever I shall be able to w^altz with that 
 ship !" 
 
 Delia Rocca rode away in the darkness, as the skirts 
 of Madame Mila vanished in the hotel door-way with 
 the gleam of golden-pheasant trimmings shining under 
 the gas-lamp. 
 
 He went home to his solitary dinner, and scarcely 
 touched it, and barely even noticed his dog. He sat 
 alone a long time, thinking, in the same room where, 
 four months before, he had pondered on the Due de St. 
 Louis's counsels, and had decided to himself that this 
 woman, beautiful though she was, was arrogant, unim- 
 pressionable, extravagantly capricious, and in every 
 way antagonistic to him. 
 
 Now he was passionately in love with her himself; 
 he knew that she was in love with him ; he believed 
 that he had only to ask and have.
 
 IN A WINTER CI TV. 179 
 
 And yet he hesitated. 
 
 It was the marriage of all other marriages for him ; 
 he had softened and subdued her in a manner which 
 eould not but intoxicate his vanity, though he had less 
 vanity than most men ; he did not distrust her char- 
 acter, because he believed that there was a vague lofty 
 nobility in it, and a latent, though untouched, tender- 
 ness ; of her caprices, of her changefulness, of her moods 
 of contempt and of impatience, he had no fear he would 
 substitute other emotions for them. And yet he hesi- 
 tated ; he was unresolved ; he was doubtful whether to 
 accept the empire he had obtained. 
 
 He would have concluded a marriage of interest as 
 coldly and tranquilly as any other man with a woman to 
 whom he was indifferent. But with this woman whose 
 mere touch thrilled him to the heart, and whose im- 
 perious eyes had only grown gentle for his sake ! — 
 never had he felt his poverty so painfully as in this 
 moment when supreme Fortune seemed to have stniled 
 upon him. 
 
 Though he loved her with passion, he almost wished 
 that he had never seen her face. 
 
 After all, though generous, she was arrogant : sooner 
 or later she might make him feel that the golden sceptre 
 was hers and not his. To his temper, which, although 
 gentle, was deeply ingrained with the pride which had 
 been transmitted to him from many generations of a 
 feudal nobility, such a possibility seemed unendurable. 
 He sat still lost in thought till his lamp grew low, and 
 the wind, rising lojd, shook the leaded panes of the 
 old high windows. 
 
 " I suppose when Fortune does smile at us we always
 
 180 ^^' ^ WINTER CI TV. 
 
 quarrel with her so," he thought, with some impatience 
 of his own irresohition. 
 
 After all, what other man in Europe would not have 
 been content? 
 
 He got up, caressed the dog, turned the lamp higher, 
 and went into his bed-chamber. 
 
 "G€t out the white mousquetaire dress," he said 
 to his old servant. " I will go to the Roubleskoff 
 ball." 
 
 All patrician Floralia was at the Roubleshoff ball, 
 one of the last great entertainments of the moribund 
 Carnival. In six more days there would come the Day 
 of Ashes ; and Floralia would repent her sins in sad- 
 ness, — that is, with only musical parties, a dinner here 
 and there, and no suppers at all : — perhaps a ball might 
 be squeezed in once or twice by grace of the Russian 
 calendar, but, then, if you took advantage of that you 
 were brouillS with all the codmi^ at once. 
 
 He reached the Roubleskoff villa late, not so late but 
 that he was in time to see the arrival of the woman who 
 had sat with him at her feet, and talked with him of 
 Meleager and the white narcissus flowers. 
 
 Lady Hilda entered like a sovereign, and drew all 
 eves on herself. 
 
 She was attired as Vittoria Colonna, and carried her 
 purples and cloth of gold with more than royal grace ; 
 the color on her cheek was heightened, her eyes had a 
 dewy brilliancy ; what they spoke to her she seemed 
 hardly to hear. 
 
 He M'as as her shadow all the evening. 
 
 * The old conservative parly is so termed in Italy, — codint.
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 181 
 
 They were both curiously happy; both curiously 
 troubled. Neither cared to look onward. 
 
 Society there assembled said that it was a great thing 
 for the Duca della Rocca ; and wondered whether they 
 would live most in Floralia or Paris. 
 
 " C'est moi qui a inspire cela," said the .''uc de Si. 
 Louis, with much self-complacency, sitting down to the 
 whist-table; he was quite sure that all was right; he 
 had seen the look in the eyes of both of them. 
 
 " She will compromise herself at last. Oh, what 
 a comfort it will be!" thought little Madame Mila, 
 carrying her frigate in full sail airily through the 
 mazes of the cotillon with a sleeveless bodice on, cut 
 so low that it was really as good — or as bad — as if 
 she had had nothing at all. She did not wish any 
 harm, of course, only, really, Hilda, with a lover like 
 other people, would be so much more natural and 
 agreeable. 
 
 " But they will marry, people say," suggested M. 
 des Gommeux, to whom alone she confided these ideas. 
 
 " When do people ever say anything that is true ?" 
 said Madame Mila, with ])rofound contempt, tossing 
 her little head till the Naval Power of England was in 
 jeopardy. She was irritated to hear Maurice even talk 
 about marriage; it was an improper thing for him even 
 to mention, considering his relation to herself. When 
 he approached any young girl or marriageable wom.in 
 of any sort, Madame Mila bristled like a little angry 
 terrier that sees a cat; on the whole, she was still more 
 exacting than Miles. Rose Th6 and Boulotte, and wnere- 
 as in society he could escape from them, he could in no 
 wise escape from her.
 
 182 ^^^ ^ WINTER CI TV. 
 
 If it had been a question of marriage for lier cousin, 
 indeed, Madame Mila Avould have opposed it tooth and 
 nail ; she had a feeling, a very acute one, that Delia 
 llocca did not approve of herself, and that he would 
 certainly never allow his wife, if he had one, to be very 
 intimate with her. But Madame Mila knew what other 
 people did not, — that there could be no question of such 
 a marriage for her cousin ; and so she smiled on Delia 
 Rocca, and was always engaging him to dinner; be- 
 cause Lady Hilda, with her lover about her, like any 
 one else, would be so much more humanized and nat- 
 ural, and would sympathize so much better with other 
 people. 
 
 That kind of virtue of Hilda's — if it were virtue — 
 was such an odd, chilly, unpleasant thing, she thought; 
 to live in that way, with hundreds of men seeking her, 
 and cold alike to them all, was something so very un- 
 natural ; it was almost as bad as being one of those 
 queer women who wouldn't tie their skirts back, or 
 wear high heels, or dresb their hair properly : — it was 
 so strange, too, in a person who in all other matters 
 was the very queen of fashion, the very head and front 
 of the most perfect worldliness. 
 
 It was very late, and daylight quite, when Lady 
 Hilda, contrary to her custom, left the ball; she had 
 been happy wdth a w^armth and feverishness of happi- 
 ness altogether new to her ; nothing more had passed 
 between them, but they had been together all the night, 
 although never alone. 
 
 She stood a moment in the door-way, facing the day- 
 light. Most women are ruined by such a test; she 
 looked but the more beautiful with the sunrise flush
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. ]83 
 
 touching her clieek, and the pearls in her bosom, and 
 the diamonds in her hair. 
 
 "I may come to you early?" he murmured, as she 
 paused that instant on the step. 
 
 "Yes, — no. No: I shall be tired. Wait till the 
 evening. You are coming to Mila." 
 
 The words were a denial ; but on her lips there was 
 sweetness, and in her eyes a soft emotion, as she moved 
 onward and downward to the carriajje. 
 
 He was not dissatisfied or dismayed. As he drew 
 the furs over her gold-laden skirts, his head bore 
 lower and lower, and his lips touched her hand and 
 her arm. 
 
 " The sun is up. I never am so late as this," she 
 said, as though she did not feel those kisses ; but, by 
 the clear light of the day-dawn, he saw the blood man- 
 tle over her throat and bosom, and the tremulous shadow 
 of a smile move her mouth. 
 
 The horses sprang forward ; he stood on the lower 
 step, grave and lost in thought. 
 
 "Is it too early to offer felicitations, my friend?" 
 said the Due de St. Louis, pausing for an instant as he 
 passed out to go homeward ; he had been playing whist 
 all night. 
 
 " I do not understand you," he answered, with the 
 tranquil falsehood of society. 
 
 The question annoyed him deeply. He loved this 
 woman with all the tenderness and passion of his 
 temperament, and loved her the more for the ascend- 
 ency he had gained over her and the faults that he 
 saw in her; he loved her generously, truly, and with 
 purer desire than most men. Yet what v.'ould his
 
 184 ^^ ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 love for her ever look to the world? — since he was 
 poor. 
 
 The Lady Hilda, with her foir hair tumbled about 
 her pillows, and her gorgeous cloth of gold lying >>n a 
 couch like a queen's robes abandoned, went home .lud 
 slept restlessly, yet with a smile on her face, some few 
 hours: when she awoke it was with a smile, and witii 
 that vague sweet sense of awakening to some great joy, 
 which is one of the most precious gifts of happiness , 
 a dreamful misty sense of expectation and recollections 
 blending in one, and making the light of day beautiful. 
 
 She lay still some time, awake, and yet dreaming 
 with half-closed eyelids, and her thick hair loosened 
 and covering her shoulders, and the sweet scent close 
 at hand of a glassful of calycanthus and myrtle, that 
 she had been very careful to tell them to set near her 
 bed. Lazily, after awhile, she rang a little bell, and 
 bade her maids open her shutters. The grand light of 
 the noonday poured into the chamber. 
 
 " Give me a mirror," she said to them. 
 
 When they gave her one, she looked at herself and 
 smiled again: she was one of those women wdio are 
 lovely when they wake : there are not many. 
 
 They brought her her chocolate, and she sipped a 
 little of it, and lay still, looking at the violets and 
 hearing the ringing of church-bells from across the 
 water : she was happy ; it seemed to her that all her 
 life before had not been happiness, after all ; only 
 pleasure. 
 
 An hour later her maid brought her a telegram. 
 She opened it with a little impatience. Why should 
 anything break in on her day-dream?
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 185 
 
 It merely said that her brother was in Paris, and 
 would come onward, and be with her that night. She 
 let the paper fall, as though she were stung by an 
 adder. 
 
 It recalled to her what she had forgotten.
 
 186 J^^ ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Lord Ci.airvaux arrived in time for Madame 
 Mila's dinner. He was an affectionate and snnny- 
 terapered m.in ; he did not notice that his sister did 
 not once say she was glad to see him, 
 
 Delia Rocca did notice it, with that delicate unerring 
 Italian perception, which is as fine as a needle and as 
 subtle as mercury. 
 
 He saw, too, that something had come over her, — 
 some cloud, some change ; she had lost much of her 
 proud serenity, and she looked at him now and then 
 with what seemed to him almost like contrition ; she 
 avoided being alone with him ; he was troubled at it, 
 l)ut not alarmed; he knew very well that she loved 
 him. He let her be. 
 
 An Italian has infinite passion, but he has also infi- 
 nite patience in matters o^^ love. Nor was he, now 
 that he was assured of his power over her, wholly 
 content to use it : if he married her, the world would 
 always say that it was for her wealth. That means of 
 raising his own fortunes, which had seemed to him so 
 material and legitimate all his life, now seemed to him 
 unworthy and unmanly since he had grown to care for 
 her. He knew that such riches as she possessed were 
 precisely those with which he had always intended to 
 rebuild the fallen greatness of his race ; but since he 
 had loved her it looked very different. 
 
 The charm of their intercourse to him was the as-
 
 7A^ A WINTER CITY. 187 
 
 cendency he had won over her, the power that he had 
 gained to lift her nature to a higher level : where would 
 his influence be when he had once stooped to enrich 
 himself by its means? 
 
 These fancies saddened him and checked him, and 
 made him not unwilling to linger on about her, in all 
 that indistinct sweetness of half-recognized and half- 
 unsjwken love. 
 
 The position, uncertain as it was, had its charm : he 
 felt that this woman, with all her insolence and indif- 
 ference and absorption by the world, was, in his hands, 
 only a creature of emotions and of passions, who would 
 flush at his touch and grow unnerved under his gaze ; 
 he knew that he was very dear to her, since had it not 
 been for the audacity of his caresses he would have been 
 driven out of her presence. 
 
 "Ama chi t'ama e lascia dir la gente," he said to 
 himself, in the wise burden of the people's love-song ; 
 and he let destiny go as it would. 
 
 Meanwhile, she, dissatisfied, with a conscience ill at 
 ease, and disinclined to look into the future, saw him 
 morning, noon, and night, but avoided seeing him alone, 
 and usually had her brother near. 
 
 Lord Clairvaux could only stay a week, and wa? 
 utterly unconscious that his presence was unwelcome ; 
 he was taken to see the two Arab mares of Delia Rocca; 
 he was taken to Palestrina ; he was taken to studios 
 and chapels, which had no more interest for him than 
 they would have had for a setter dog : but he was quite 
 ignorant of why he was taken. 
 
 He did what Lady Hilda told him to do; he always 
 did when he and she were together ; he was a simple,
 
 188 -^^^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 kindly, honest gentleman ; avIio regarded England as 
 the universe, and all the rest of the world as a mere 
 accident. His sister's contempt for her conntry and his 
 politics, her philosophy of indifferentism, her adoration 
 of primitive art, her variable disdain, and her intellec- 
 tual pharisaism had always seemed to him very wonder- 
 fill, and not altogether comfortable; but he admired 
 her in a hopeless kind of way, and it was not in his 
 temper to puzzle over people's differences of opinion or 
 character. 
 
 " Hilda thinks all the old dead fellows were gods, 
 and she thinks all of us asses," he would say, humbly. 
 " I don't know, you know : she's awfully clever. I 
 never was. It may be so; only I never will believe 
 that England is used up, as she says; and I like the 
 east wind myself; and what she can see in those saints 
 she's just bought, painted on their ti])toes, or in those 
 old crooked pots ; — but if she'd stayed in the country, 
 and hunted twice a week all winter, you know she 
 would not have been like that." 
 
 " It would have been a great pity had Miladi been 
 anything save what she is," said Delia Rocca, to whom 
 he expressed himself in this manner, in such French 
 as he could command, and who was amused and aston- 
 ished by him, and who took him a day's wild-fowl- 
 shooting in the marshes, and a day's wild-boar-hunting 
 in the next province, and wondered constantly why so 
 kindly and gallant a gentleman should have been made 
 by the good God so very stupid. 
 
 " Oh, you think so ; I don't," said Lord Clairvaux. 
 "Hilda isn't my idea of a happy woman. I don't 
 believe she is hapj<y. She spends half her life think-
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 189 
 
 ing how she will dress herself; and why will they dress 
 now like the ruffs and things of Queen Elizabeth, and 
 the effigies on the tombstones ? and the other half she 
 spends buying things she never looks at, and ordering 
 things she dislikes when they're done, and reading 
 books that make her think her own countrymen are a 
 mere lot of blockheads and barbarians. Not that I 
 pretend to understand her ; I never did ; only I think 
 if she didn't think everybody else such a fool she'd be 
 more comfortable." 
 
 Delia Rocca smiled. 
 
 " Pardon me, you will disturb the birds." 
 
 Lord Clairvaux recollected that he ought not to talk 
 of his sister to a stranger, and, bringing his gun to his 
 shoulder, fired into a covey of wild ducks. 
 
 " What a handsome fellow that is ! — like an old pic- 
 ture," he thought to himself, as he looked at Delia 
 Rocca, who sat in the prow of the boat; but he did not 
 connect him in his thoughts with Lady Hilda in any 
 way : for ten years he had got so tired of vainly won- 
 dering why this man and that did not please her, and 
 had been made so vexed and perplexed by her rejection 
 of the Prince of Deutschland, that he had ceased to 
 think of her as a woman who could possibly ever care 
 for anybody. 
 
 One night, however, when he had been there five days, 
 he was walked about in the crowd of the Veglione by 
 little Madame Mila, masked, and draped as black as a 
 little beetle; and Madame Mila, who was getting tired 
 of things standing still, and could no more help putting 
 her tiny finger into all kinds of pasties, and making 
 mischief in a kittenish way, than she could help going
 
 190 J^^ ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 on enameling since she had once begun it, laughed at 
 him, teased him, and told him what startled him. 
 
 "But she isn't here, and he is!" he gasped, feebly, in 
 protest at what he had heard, gazing over the motley 
 tTowd. 
 
 " What a goose you are ! — as if that showed an) thing I 
 They can meet much better than in this place," said 
 Madame Mila, with a saucy laugh. 
 
 He turned on her with a heavy frown. 
 
 "Hang it, Mila! you don't dare to mean " 
 
 Madame Mila was frightened in an instant. 
 
 "Oh, dear, no; of course not; only I do assure you 
 they've been always together ever since I've been in 
 Floral ia. I thought you knew " 
 
 " Damn it, no ! " he muttered. " I beg your pardon ; 
 I never see anything; I mean, I'm quite sure there's 
 nothing to see." 
 
 "Well, ask her," said Madame Mila: then she 
 added, sweetly, " You know I'm so fond of dear Hilda; 
 and people do talk so horridly here for nothing at all ; 
 and Italians are not so scrupulous as we are." 
 
 He went home in haste, and was told that Miladi 
 had retired to bed full two hours before. In the morn- 
 ing he sent to ask when he could see her. She sent back 
 word that she should be happy to see him at breakfast 
 at twelve. At ten he received a telegram from his wife 
 asking him to return, because his eldest boy, Cheviot, 
 was unwell, and they feared typhoid fever. 
 
 "Damn it all, what a worry!" said Lord Clair- 
 vaux to himself, and then went out and smoked on 
 the bank of the river, and looked over the stone para- 
 pet moodily.
 
 7 A' A WiyTEli CITY. 191 
 
 "Bon-jonr, monsieur," a soft and melodious voice 
 said, passing him. 
 
 Delia Rocca was driving past with a fiery little horse 
 on his way to Palestrina. Lord Clairvaux felt inclined 
 to stop the horse; but what could he say if he did? 
 
 What a nuisance it was, he thought; but what could 
 go right in a country where they shot their foxes, and 
 called their brushes tails, and hung them under the ears 
 of cart-mules and ponies? — a country where they 
 treated the foxes as they did, to say nothing of the Holy 
 Father, must be a land of malediction. 
 
 He smoked through two great cigars, and Avalked 
 about the town unhappily, and when it was noon went 
 up-stairs to his sister. He did not dare to go a mo- 
 ment before the time. 
 
 "Dear Freddie, is it you?" said the Lady Hilda, 
 listlessly ; she looked very lovely and very languid, in 
 a white cashmere morning gown, with a quantity of 
 lace about it, and her hair all thrown back loosely and 
 tied like the Venere alia Spina's. 
 
 "I have to go away by the night train. Poor little 
 Cheviot's ill," he said, disconsolately, as he took her 
 hand ; he never ventured on kissing her ; years before 
 she had taught him that such endearments were very 
 ridiculous and disagreeable. 
 
 " Dear me ! I am very sorry. Will you have coffee, 
 or tea, or wine ?" she asked, absently, as she went to 
 the table where the breakfast was. 
 
 " Chevy's very ill," said Lord Clairvaux, who 
 thought she showed small sympathy. " You used to 
 like Chevy." 
 
 "He was a pretty little child. I hate boys."
 
 192 IN A WINTER CITV. 
 
 " You wouldn't if you had them of your own," said 
 Lord Clairvaux, and grumbled inaudibly as he took 
 some cutlets. 
 
 Lady Hilda colored a little. 
 
 " I have really not imagination enough to follow you. 
 Will you have coffee ? I hope it's nothing serious with 
 Cheviot?" 
 
 " Fever, his mother thinks : any way, I must go. I 
 saw your friend the Duca della Rocca this morning : 
 he was out early." 
 
 He thought this was approaching the subject in a 
 masterly manner. 
 
 " Italians always rise early," said the Lady Hilda, 
 giving him his cup. 
 
 "And he was at the Veglione last night " 
 
 " All Italians go to the Veglione." 
 
 " You have seen a great deal of him, haven't you ?" 
 asked Lord Clairvaux, looking at her across the table, 
 And thinking how pretty all that white was which she 
 had on, and what a difficult person she was to begin 
 anything with ; he had never felt so nervous since the 
 time when he had been called on as a young man to 
 move the Address when Parliament opened. 
 
 " One sees a great deal of everybody in a small society 
 like this." 
 
 '^ Because, you know, people talk about you and him : 
 60 they say, at least." 
 
 "They are very good, whoever they are: who are 
 they?" 
 
 " AVho?— Oh, I don't know; I heard so." 
 
 " How very nice of you to discuss me with other 
 po()])le I"
 
 7.V A WINTER CITV. J 93 
 
 Lord Clairvaux cast a glance at her, and was very 
 much friglitened at the oifense he saw in her contempt- 
 uous face. How pale she was looking, too, now he 
 thought of it ! and slie had shadows underneath her 
 pyes quite new to her. 
 
 " What sort of a fellow is he ?" he muttered. " He 
 seemed a duffer to me about his fields, — such plows, by 
 heavens ! — and such waste in the stack-yards / never 
 saw. But it isn't farming here at all ; it's letting things 
 go wild just anyhow " 
 
 " It is not being wiser than Nature, and sacrificing 
 all loveliness to greed, — if you mean that,^' said Lady 
 Hilda, with coldest disdain, " The life here has still 
 the old Theocritan idyllic beauty, thank heaven." 
 
 " Theocritus ? Oh, I know ; I never could construe 
 him ; but I do know a straight furrow and decently- 
 kept land when I see it. But I say, you know, I don't 
 wish to be officious or anything, but do you think it's 
 wise to see so very much of him ? You know he's an 
 Italian, and I dare say hasn't a bit of principle, nor a 
 penny in his pocket." 
 
 The hazel eyes of the Lady Hilda flashed golden 
 beams of wrath. 
 
 " How very grateful of you ! — when he has enter- 
 tained you to the best of his al)ility, and went out of 
 his way to find sport for you, very little to his own 
 pleasure, moreover, for I can assure you his soul does 
 not lie in his gun-barrel !" 
 
 " I don't want to say anything against him," mur- 
 mured Lord Clairvaux, who was the most grateful and 
 most just of mortals. " He was very kind and cour- 
 teous, and all that; and I don't say he's a bad shot, — 
 I 17 N
 
 194 ^^' A WINTER CITV. 
 
 though he's a bad farmer ; and he is an awfully good- 
 looking fellow, like an old picture, and all that. Only 
 I must go to-night, Hilda, and I do want to speak to 
 you." 
 
 " You are speaking all this time, I believe," sai<l 
 Laly Hilda, icily, looking across at him with the cold- 
 est challenge in her darkening eyes. 
 
 " I never could think why you didn't take Deutsch- 
 land," he muttered, reverting to an old grievance. 
 
 "He didn't please me. Is that all you wanted to 
 say?" 
 
 " But I thought you'd have cared to be a reigning 
 sovereign ?" 
 
 " Of a small State ?" said the Lady Hilda, with au 
 eloquent lift of her eyebrows. 
 
 " Well, there was De Ribeaupierre ; he was every- 
 thing anybody could want; Vienna, too. I used to 
 think an Ambassadress's life would just suit you." 
 
 " Always calling on people, and writing notes? No 
 life on earth more tiresome." 
 
 " I suppose you want to be an Empress ?" 
 
 "Oh, dear, no," answered his sister. "I have known 
 two Empresses intimately ; and it is a career of great 
 tedium : you can never do what you like." 
 
 "Then I suppose you are content as you are?" 
 
 " I suppose so, if anybody ever is. I don't think 
 any one is. I never met anybody Avho was. They say 
 pigs are; but one sees so little of pigs that one can't 
 make much psychological study of them." 
 
 Lord Clairvaux grumbled, sighed, and took his cour- 
 age d. deux mains. 
 
 "Well, never mind the other men, — they are past
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. I95 
 
 and gone, poor wretches: what do you mean to do 
 about this one?" 
 
 " This what ?" said Lady Hilda, looking languidly 
 at him through the flowers on the breakfast- table. 
 She knew quite well what he meant. 
 
 "What do you mean to do with him?" repeated 
 Tiord Clairvaux, solemnly, pushing his plate away. 
 " It's all very pretty, I dare say, — Romeo, and moon- 
 light, and poetry, and all that sort of thing ; Italians 
 are the deuce and all for that : only I shouldn't have 
 thought you'd have cared for it ; and, besides, you 
 know it can't go on : — the man's a gentleman, that I 
 grant; and, by heaven, that's a great deal nowadays, 
 such blackguards as Ave're getting, — three card scan- 
 dals in the clubs already this very winter, and George 
 Orme's was regular sharping, just what any cad might 
 do, by Jove ! But you know you can't go on with it ; 
 you can't possibly mean it seriously : now, do you ?" 
 
 Lady Hilda laughed that little, cold, contemptuous 
 laughter which her brother always shivered under, and 
 which Delia Rocca had never heard. 
 
 " I don't seriously mean to cheat at cards ! My dear 
 Frederic, you must say what you mean, if you mean 
 anything at all, a little more clearly, please. Why will 
 all Englishmen get their talk into such odd confusion ? 
 I suppose it comes of never learning grammar at Eton." 
 
 " Well, hang it, then, I'll say it clearly," retorted 
 Clairvaux, with some indignation. "Mila tells me you 
 and this Italian that's always after you have taken a 
 liking to one another: is it true? — and what do you 
 mean to do with him ? There !" 
 
 He was horribly frightened when he had said it, but
 
 196 I^' ^ WTSTI'JIi CITV. 
 
 what he thought was his duty, that he did : and he 
 conceived it to be his duty to speak. 
 
 All the blood leaped into the fair face of the Lady 
 Hilda, her nostrils dilated in a fine anger, her lips 
 grew pale. 
 
 " Mila is a little wretch !" she said, with strong pas- 
 sion ; then was still ; she was too generous to quote 
 her own generosity, or urge her past gifts as present 
 claims. " She is a little fool !" she added, with bitter 
 disdain. " And how can you cheapen my name by 
 listening to her chattering folly ? Besides, what have 
 you to do with me? — or what has she? I am not 
 used to dictation, nor to interference." 
 
 " Oh, I Know," said her brother, humbly. " And 
 I beg your pardon, I am sure, and all that; — only, 
 just tell me, how Avill it end?" 
 
 " How will what end ?" 
 
 " This fancy of yours." 
 
 Lady Hilda grew very pale. 
 
 " My dear Clairvaux," she said, with chilliest con- 
 tempt, " you are not my keeper, nor my husband, nor 
 anything else, except one of my trustees. I do not 
 know that being a trustee gives you a title to be imper- 
 tinent. You really talk as you might to your game- 
 keeper's daughter if you thought you saw the girl 
 Agoing wrong.' What M. Delia Rocca feels for me, 
 or I for him, is merely sympathy in views and tastes. 
 But if it were anything else, whose business would it 
 be?" 
 
 Lord Clairvaux laughed. 
 
 " Yes ! — ^you are a likely creature to inspire friend- 
 ship ! As if there were ever a woman worth looking
 
 JN A WINTER CITV. I97 
 
 at who could keep a man at that ! — Don't let us fence 
 about it, Hilda. Perhaps I haven't any right to say 
 anything ; you're your own mistress, and all that, and 
 answerable to nobody. Only, can you deny that I am 
 your brother ?" 
 
 " I have always understood you were. I confess you 
 make me regret the circumstance." 
 
 " Now, that's ill-natured, very ill-natured," lie mur- 
 mured, pathetically. " But you won't make me quarrel. 
 There must be two to quarrel, and I won't be one. We 
 have always been good friends, more than good friends. 
 I thought I was the only j)erson on earth you did 
 like " 
 
 " And, like every one else, you consider that the 
 liking you inspire confers a privilege to be imperti- 
 nent," said his sister, with all that disdainful anger 
 flashing from her languid eyes, which none of her 
 family ever cared very much to meet. 
 
 She had risen from her chair, and was moving to 
 and fro with a restless controlled impatience. She 
 remained very pale. Clairvaux kept his position on 
 the hearth-rug, with a dogged good humor and an un- 
 easy confusion blended together which, at any other 
 time, would have diverted her. 
 
 " Perhaps I may be impertinent," he said, humbly, 
 "though hang me if I can see that that's a natural 
 sort of word to be used between a brother and sister. 
 I know you're a mighty great lady, and ^a law to 
 yourself,' as some poet says, and never listen to any- 
 body, and always go your own ways, and all that ; but 
 still, if you never speak to me afterwards, I must say 
 
 what I want to say. This man is in love with you ; 
 
 17*
 
 198 ^-^' ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 it's my belief you're in love with him, — Mila saj'H so, 
 and she knows. Now, granted that it is so (if it isn't, 
 there's nothing to be angiy about), — what I say is, 
 how do you mean it to end? Will you marry him?" 
 
 Her face changed, flushed, and then grew pale again. 
 
 "Of course not! You know it is impossible!" 
 
 " Does he know why it is impossible ?" 
 
 " No : why should he ? Really, you do not know 
 what you are talking about. You are interfering in 
 the most uncalled-for manner where there is not the 
 slightest necessity for any interference." 
 
 " Then you are letting him fall in love with you in 
 the dark, and when you have had enough of the sport 
 will throw him over?" 
 
 " You grow very coarse, Clairvaux. Oblige me by 
 drop|)ing the subject." 
 
 " I didn't know I was coarse. That is what you are 
 going to do. You accept all his court now, and then 
 you'll turn round on him some fine morning and say 
 you've had enough of it. At least, I can't see what 
 else you will do, — since you cannot marry him. You'll 
 hardly lower yourself to Mila's level and all the other 
 women's, — by heavens, if I thought you would, if I 
 thought you had done, I'd soon see if this fellow were 
 as fine a swordsman as they say !" 
 
 Lady Hilda turned her face full on him. 
 
 "So my brother is the first person that ever dared to 
 insult me ?" she said, with utmost coldness, as she rose 
 from the breakfast-table and swept his feet in passing 
 with the lace that fringed the hem of her cashmere 
 robes. 
 
 She gave him one parting look, and left the chamber.
 
 jy A WINTER VITV. 199 
 
 He stood cowed by the golden fire of those superb 
 imperious hazel eyes. He was nervous at what he had 
 done, and unhappy and perplexed. He stood alone, 
 pulling at his fair beard, in troubled repentance. He 
 knew what her wrath would be. She was not a won.au 
 who quickly forgave. 
 
 " I've blundered ; I always do blunder," he thought 
 sadly to himself. " She must care awfully about him, 
 to be so angry." 
 
 He waited all alone many minutes. He was sincerely 
 sorry; perhaps he had been coarse; he had not meant 
 to be; only, the idea of her talked about, and with 
 lovers ! — -just like all those other women whom their 
 husbands or brothers ought to strangle: it was only fash- 
 ion, they said, only the way of the world, all that 
 immorality; — "Damn the world," he said to himself, 
 ruffling his beard in sad bewilderment. 
 
 He scribbled a trite, rough, penitent note, and sent it 
 to her by her maid. They brought him a closed envel- 
 ope : when he opened it he found only his own note in- 
 side, — sent back without any word. 
 
 Honest Clairvaux's eyes filled with tears. 
 
 "She'll never see me again before I go to-night," he 
 thought to himself, tossing his poor little rejected mor- 
 sel into the wood fire. "And I must go to-night, 
 because of poor little Chevy. How horrid it is! — I 
 couldn't be angry like that with her!" 
 
 He stood some moments more, knitting his fair fresh 
 forehead, and wishing that he M'ere less stupid in man- 
 aging things; he had never in his life before presumed 
 to condemn and counsel his sister; and this was the 
 result !
 
 200 -'^'V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Suddenly an idea struck liim, and he rose. 
 
 " I will tell him," he thought. " I will tell him him- 
 self. And then I shall see what sort of stuff he is 
 made of; — I can fight him afterwards if he don't sat- 
 i'jfy me; — I'll tell him as if I suspected nothing; — I can 
 make an excuse, but when he hears it he'll show what 
 he's made of. Oh, Lord, if it were only an Englishman 
 she'd taken a liking to ! — and to think that she's treated 
 half the best men in Europe as if they were only so 
 many stones under her feet !" 
 
 With a groan, Lord Clairvaux took up his hat, and 
 went forth towards the Palazzo della Rocca. 
 
 At six o'clock that evening ho had to take his de- 
 parture without seeing his sister again. He went away 
 with a heavy heart. 
 
 " How extraordinary she is !" he thought. " Never 
 even to ask me if I told the man anything or not. 
 And never to bid one good-by ! Well, I've done it for 
 the best : I can't help it. She'll be sorry if poor little 
 Chevy should die." 
 
 But the boy did not die ; so that his father never 
 learned whether that event would have touched the 
 heart of Lady Hilda or not. 
 
 All the following day she shut herself up in her 
 rooms. She said she was ill ; and, in truth, she felt 
 so. Della Rocca called three times in the day, but she 
 did not see him ; he sent up a great bouquet of the pale 
 yellow tea-rose of which she was so fond ; he had fas- 
 tened the flowers together with an antique silver zone on 
 which was the Greek Love in relief, — the Love of the 
 early Hellenic poets, without wings and with a mighty 
 Kword, tlic Ijovc of Anacrcoii, which forges the soul as
 
 JN A WINTER CITY. 201 
 
 a smith his iron, and steeps it in icy waters, after many 
 blows. 
 
 She understood the message of the Love, but she 
 sent no message back. 
 
 It was a lovely day ; underneath the windows the 
 carriages were rolling; there was the smile of spring 
 on the air as the fleecy clouds went sailing past ; she 
 could see the golden reaches of the river and the hya- 
 cinth-hued hills where Palestrina lay ; her heart was 
 heavy ; her pulse was quick ; her conscience was ill at 
 ease; her thoughts were restless and perturbed. Soli- 
 tude and reflection were so new to her ; they appalled 
 her. AVhen she had been unwell before, which had 
 been but seldom, she had always beguiled herself by 
 looking over the jewels in their cases, sorting rare old 
 Marcantonios and Morghens, skimming French feuille- 
 tons, or planning new confections for her vast stores of 
 old laces. But now none of these distractions were pos- 
 sible to her; she sat doing nothing, weary, feverish, 
 and full of a passionate pain. 
 
 The fact which her brother had told to Delia Rocca 
 was, that if she married again all her riches would pass 
 away from her. 
 
 At the time of her marriage her father had been 
 deeply involved in debt; gambling, racing, and debts 
 of every other kind had been about him like spiders' 
 webs ; the great capitalist, Vorarlberg, had freed him 
 on condition of receiving the hand of his young daugh- 
 ter in exchange. She was allowed to know nothing of 
 these matters; but under such circumstances it was im- 
 possible for the family to be exacting as regarded settle- 
 ments: she was abandoned entirely to the old man's 
 I*
 
 202 ^^"^^ ^ WJ\TEn cJTi'. 
 
 power. Fortunately for lierself, lie was taken ill on 
 the very day of the nuptials, and, after a lingering 
 period of suffering, died, leaving her mistress of half 
 of one of the finest fortunes in Europe. By birth he 
 was a Wallachian Jew, brought up in London and 
 Paris, but he had been naturalized in England, when a 
 youth, for commercial objects, and the disposition of 
 his property lay under his own control. A year or 
 two after his death a later testament was found by his 
 lawyers, still leaving her the same wealth, but decree- 
 ing that in the event of her second marriage everj'thing 
 should pass away from her to the public charities, save 
 alone her jewels, her horses, all things she might have 
 purchased, the house in Paris, which had been a gift, 
 and some eight hundred a year ah-eady secured to her. 
 The new ^\ill was proved, and she was informed that 
 she would enjoy her foi'tune only by this tenure. She 
 was indifferent. She was quite sure that she would 
 never wish to marry any one. She loved her wealth 
 and spent it magnificently ; and when men whose own 
 position would have made the loss of her own money 
 of no moment sued at her feet, she still repulsed 
 them, thinking always, "Le mieux est I'ennemi du 
 bien." 
 
 The fact of this later will was scarcely known be- 
 yond the precincts of the law and the circle of their own 
 family; but since she had met Delia Pocca, the remem- 
 brance of it had kept her awake many a night, and 
 broken roughly many a day-dream. 
 
 To surrender her fortune to become his wife never 
 once occurred to her as possible. Ten years' enjoy- 
 ment of her (i\'cry whim had made it seem so inalienably
 
 IX A WIXTKR CITV. 203 
 
 hers. She couki no more face the loss of her fortune 
 than she could have done that of her beauty. 
 
 She had entered so early into her great possessiiins 
 that they had grown to be a very part of her. The old 
 man who had been her husband but in name was but a 
 mere ghostly shadow to her. The freedom and the 
 self-indulgence she had so long enjoyed had becom^^ 
 necessary to her as the air she breathed. 
 
 It was not the mere vulgar vaunt or ostentation of 
 wealth that had attraction for her ; it was all the su- 
 premacy, the ease, the patronage, the habits, that great 
 wealth alone makes possible; it was the reign which she 
 liad held throughout Europe ; it was the charm of pei-- 
 fectly irresponsible power. To give up these and hear 
 the cackle of all the fools she had eclipsed mo(!king at 
 her weakness ! It would be beyond all endurance. 
 
 What was she to do ? 
 
 The lax moralities of the women of her time were 
 impossible to her proud and loftier character ; arul, be- 
 sides, she felt that a woman who preferred the world 
 to him would not find in Delia Eocca a forgiving or 
 a submissive lover. When he knew, what would he 
 say? 
 
 She turned sick at the thought. After all, she had 
 played with him and deceived him: he would have just 
 cause of passionate reproach against her. His love had 
 no wings, but it had a sword. 
 
 " Will Miladi be able to dine?" her maid asked her, 
 vaguely alarmed at her strange stillness and the great 
 paleness of her face. 
 
 " Was I to dine anywhere ?" she said, wearily. 
 
 She was to dine at the Archduchess Anna's. The
 
 204 J^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Archduchess Anna was passing through Floralia after 
 three months at Palermo for health, and was staying in 
 strict incognita, and infinite glee, as the Countess Von 
 Feffers, at the Hotel del Re ; enjoying herself endlessly, 
 as the gay-hearted lady that she was, even indulging 
 once in the su])reme delight of driving in a cab, and 
 with no other recognition of her great rank than con- 
 sisted in the attendance upon her of the handsomest of 
 the king's chamberlains. 
 
 "Dress me, then," said Lady Hilda, with a sigh. 
 She could not excuse herself to the archduchess, whom 
 she had known intimately for years, and who was to 
 leave Floralia in a week. 
 
 " What dress does Madame select?" asked her maid. 
 
 " Give me any you like," she answered them. 
 
 She did not care how she would look ; she would not 
 meet him ; she knew that he had no acquaintance with 
 the imperial lady. 
 
 The maids, left to themselves, gave her the last new 
 one from Worth, — only six days arrived ; a dress en- 
 tirely white, with knots of purple velvet, exactly copied 
 from a picture of Boucher's, and with all the grace of 
 dead Versailles in its folds. She put a rococo necklace 
 on, with a portrait of Maria Theresa in it, and went 
 listlessly to the dinner ; she was not thinking about her 
 appearance that night, or she would have said that she 
 was too pale to wear all that white. 
 
 " Goodness me, Hilda, how ill you do look !" said 
 Madame Mila, meeting her on the stairs, and who was 
 going also. 
 
 " No, thanks, I won't drive with you ; two women 
 can't go in a carriage without one being chiffonnee.
 
 7iV A WINTER CITY. 205 
 
 That's an exquisite toilette ; that white brocade is de- 
 licious, — stamped with the lilies of France, — very 
 pretty ; only you're too pale for it to-night, and it's a 
 pity to wear it only for the archduchess. She never 
 knows what anybody's got on their backs. Is anything 
 the matter, dear?" 
 
 " Nothing in the world." 
 
 " Then you must have got a headache. You cer- 
 tainly do look very ill. I do so hope we shall get away 
 in time for the Veglione. It's the very last night, you 
 know. I had such fun last time. I intrlgue'd heaps 
 of people, and Doggendorff I drove wild ; I told him 
 everything about his wife and Lelio Castelpucci, and 
 all against himself that she'd ever told me. It was 
 such fun : he'd not an idea who I was, for Avhen we 
 were at supper he came running in breathless to tell us 
 of a horrible little mask with a voice like a macaw's ; 
 — ^you know I'd put a pebble under my tongue." 
 
 " Very dangerous pastime, and a very vulgar one," 
 said the Lady Hilda, descending the staircase. " How 
 can you go down into that horrible screeching mob, 
 Mila ? It is so very low." 
 
 " My dear, I go anywhere to amuse myself, and 
 Maurice was always near me, you know, so if I had 
 l)een insulted There's eight o'clock striking." 
 
 The Hotel del Ee was but ten minutes' drive along 
 
 the famous river-street, which has such an Arabian- 
 
 Nights-like beauty when the lamps are lighted, and 
 
 gleam in long lines adown each shore, and mirror 
 
 themselves in the water, whilst dome and bell-tower 
 
 and palace-roof raise themselves darkly against the 
 
 steel-blue sky of the night. 
 
 18
 
 20G J^ ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 The archduchess had been spending a long day in 
 the galleries, studying art under the guidance of the 
 handsome chamberlain ; she was hungry, happy, and 
 full of the heartiest spirits ; she was a very merry and 
 good-natured person, about five-and-forty years old, fat 
 and fair, very badly dressed, and very agreeable, with 
 a frank laugh, and a strong love of humor ; she had 
 had more escapades than any princess in Europe, and 
 had smoked more cigars than a French newspaper- 
 writer, and had married more daughters to German 
 cousins than anybody else in the Almanach de Gotha. 
 
 Had she been any lesser being. Society would have 
 turned its back on her ; but, being Avho she was, her 
 nod was elevation, and her cigar ash honor ; — and, to 
 do her justice, she was one of the most amiable crea- 
 tures in all creation. 
 
 " Ma chere, you are lovelier than ever ! — and how 
 do you like this place? — and is the dear little pug alive? 
 I lost my sweet Zaliote of asthma in Palermo," said 
 the archduchess, welcoming the Lady Hilda, as she did 
 everything, with ardor. 
 
 Lady Hilda, answering, felt her colorless cheeks 
 grow warm : in the circle standing round she recog- 
 nized Delia Rocca. The archduchess had taken a 
 fancy to the look of him in the street, and had bidden 
 the chamberlain present him, and then had told him to 
 come to dinner : she liked to surround herself with 
 handsome men. From Madame Mila he had learned 
 in the morning that her cousin would dine there at 
 night. 
 
 Madame Mila concluded in her own mind that 
 Freddie had had a row with his sister upon the matter,
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 207 
 
 but that Delia Rocea had had nothing said to hira 
 about it by either of them. Madame Mila concluded 
 also that Hilda had grown sensible, and was doing like 
 other women ; though why she looked so ill about it, 
 Madame Mila could not imagine. Madame Mila did 
 not comprehend scruples. 
 
 It was very painful, for instance, to be allied to any 
 one of the Greek Church, and a great grief to the Holy 
 Father ; but still it was very nice to be married to a 
 schismatic, because it enabled you to go to balls a fort- 
 night longer: if it was still your husband's carnival, 
 you know, nobody could say anything. 
 
 Madame Mila thought you should always do your 
 best to please everybody, but then you should take care 
 that you pleased yourself first most of all. The world 
 was easy enough to live in if you did not worry : tliere 
 were always unpaid bills to be sure, and they were 
 odious. But then Hilda never had any unpaid bills ; 
 so she never could have anything to annoy her. 
 
 Apropos of bills, she hoped Delia Rocca would not 
 use his influence with her cousin so as to prevent her 
 paying other people's bills. Of course he wouldn't do 
 this just as present ; but when men had been lovers a 
 little while, they always turned the poetry into prose, 
 and grew very nearly as bad as husbands. 
 
 Madame Mila watched them narrowly all through 
 dinner. 
 
 " If I thought he'd make her stingy, I'd make her 
 jealous of Giulia Malatesta to-morrow," she thought 
 to herself Madame Mila on occasion had helped or 
 hindered circumstance among her friends and enemies 
 with many ingenious little devices, and lucky little
 
 208 I^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 anonymous notes, and other innocent sliifits and strat- 
 agems. It was no use being in the world at all unless 
 you interfered with the way it went : to be a mere 
 puppet in the hands of Fate, with the strings of acci- 
 dent dangling to and fro, seemed to her clever little 
 brain quite unworthy the intelligence of woman. 
 
 She never meant to do any harm, — oh, never; only 
 she liked things to go as she wished them. Who does 
 not ? If a few men and women had been made wretched 
 for life, and people who loved one another devotedly 
 had been parted forever, and suspicion and hatred crept 
 into the place of trust and tenderness in certain house- 
 holds, Madame Mila could not help that, any more 
 than one can help other people being splashed with 
 mud when one drives down a lane in bad weather. And 
 nobody ever thought Madame Mila could do any harm, 
 — pretty, good-natured, loquacious little Madame Mila, 
 running about with her little rose-buds at fancy fairs, 
 and saying, so sweetly, "Pour nos pauvres, — pour nos 
 chers pauvres !" 
 
 " The best little woman in the world," as everybody 
 said, — Madame Mila would kiss her female enemies on 
 both cheeks wherever she met them, and when she had 
 sent an anonymous letter (for fun), always sent an in- 
 vitation to dinner just after it, to the same direction. 
 
 " I wish I knew how it is really between them," she 
 thought at the archduchess's dinner-table, divided be- 
 tween her natural desire to see her cousin let fall that 
 "white flower of a blameless life," which stinks as 
 garlic in the nostrils of those who have it not, and her 
 equally natural apprehension that Paolo della Rocca 
 as ? lover would not let his mistress pay other per-
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 209 
 
 sons' debts, and Avould also be sure to see all her 
 letters. 
 
 "She'll tell him everything about everybody," thought 
 Madame INIila, uncomfortably ; for Delia Rocca had a 
 look in his eyes of assured happiness, which, to the 
 astute experience of Madame Mila, suggested volumes. 
 
 Meantime she was also harassed by the apprehension 
 that she would not be able to withdraw in time for the 
 Veglione, where Maurice, a baignoir, and a supper- 
 table awaited her. If the archduchess should sit down 
 to play of any sort, hope was over, escape would be im- 
 possible till daydawn ; and Madame Mila hated play- 
 ing with the archduchess ; she was afraid to cheat, and 
 was obliged to pay. 
 
 With all the ingenuity, therefore, of which she was 
 mistress, she introduced the idea of the Veglione into 
 the mind of her hostess, and so contrived to fascinate 
 her with the idea that the archduchess, who had gone 
 in her time to five hundred public masked balls, was 
 as hotly animated into a desire to go to this one as 
 though she had been just let out of a convent at 
 eighteen years old. 
 
 Madame Mila delightedly placed her baignoir at the 
 disposition of her imperial highness, and her imperial 
 highness invited all her guests to accompany her. Such 
 invitations are not optional ; and Lady Hilda, who 
 hated noise as her horses hated masks, was borne oif 
 by the mirthful, chattering, and gay -hearted lady, who 
 had no objection to noise, and loved fun and riot like a 
 street-boy. 
 
 Lady Hilda thought a veglione, and a liking for it, 
 both beneath contempt; yet she was not unwilling to 
 
 18*
 
 210 ^^ ^1 WINTER CITY. 
 
 avoid all chance of being alone with Delia Rocca even 
 for a moment. She knew what he would say : his eyes 
 Jiad said it all the evening a thousand times. 
 
 The Archduchess Anna and Madame Mila were both 
 in the very highest spirits ; they had taken a good deal 
 of champagne, as ladies will, and had smoked a good 
 deal and got thirsty, and had more champagne with 
 some seltzer water, and the result was the highest of 
 high spirits. Nothing could be more appropriate to a 
 veglione. 
 
 As no reasonable being could stay by choice in one 
 for an hour, it is strongly advisable that reason should 
 be a little dethroned by a very dry wine before entering 
 the dingy paradise. Of course nobody ever sees great 
 ladies " the worse for wine :" they are only the better, 
 as a Stilton cheese is. 
 
 Happy and hilarious, shrouded and masked beyond 
 all possibility of identification, and ready for any ad- 
 venture, the Archduchess Anna was no sooner in the 
 box than she was out of it, and declared her intention 
 of going down into the crowd. Madame Mila, only 
 too glad, went with her, and some half-dozen men 
 formed their escort. Lady Hilda excused herself on 
 the plea of a headache, — a plea not untrue, — and, alone 
 with the Due de St. Louis, awaited the return of her 
 hostess. She had only put on her mask for entry, and 
 had now laid it beside her ; she threw aside her domino, 
 for the heat of the box was stifling, and the whiteness 
 of her dress shone as lilies do at moonlight. She leaned 
 her cheek on her hand, and looked down on to the 
 romping, screaming, many-colored throng. 
 
 "You are not well to-night, madame?" said the Due,
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 211 
 
 with the affectionate solicitude that he felt for all pretty 
 women. 
 
 He was puzzled as to how her relations could stand 
 with Delia Rocca : the previous night he had thought 
 everything settled, but now he did not feel quite so 
 sure. 
 
 " The archduchess is so noisy ; it always gives me a 
 headache to dine with her," said Lady Hilda. " She is 
 very good-natured, but her talking is !" 
 
 " She is an admirable heavy dragoon, maiique," said 
 the Due. " Most good-natured, as you say, but trying 
 to the tympanum and the taste. So Clairvaux left last 
 night?" 
 
 " Yes : Cheviot was taken ill." 
 
 "I should have thought it M'as a racer taken ill, by 
 the consternation he seemed to be in. I saw him for a 
 moment only." 
 
 She was silent, watching the whirling of the pierrots, 
 harlequins, scaramouches, and dominoes, who were 
 shrieking and yelling in the throng below. 
 
 "I think he liked his shooting with Paolo?" said 
 the Due, at a hazard. 
 
 " He likes shooting anywhere." 
 
 " Certainly there is something wrong," thought the 
 Due, stooping a little to look at her brocaded white 
 lilies. " What an exquisite toilette ! — is one permitted 
 to say so ?" 
 
 " Oh, dear, no !" said the Lady Hilda, petulantly. 
 " The incessant talk about dreas is so tiresome and so 
 vulgar: the women who want their costumes praised 
 are women who have only just begun to dress tolerably 
 and are still not (piite sure of the effects."
 
 212 /^V A WINTER CITV. 
 
 " You are right, as always," said tlie Due, with a 
 little bow and a little smile. " But now and then per- 
 fection surprises us into involuntary indiscretion. You 
 must not be too severe." 
 
 " Somebody should be severe," she said, contemptu- 
 ously. " Society is a Battle of the Frogs, for rivality 
 in dress and debt." 
 
 The Due laughed. 
 
 " What do you know about it, madame, — you who 
 are as above rivals as above debts ? By the way, you 
 told me you wanted some old Pesaro vases. I found 
 some yesterday at Biangini's shop that might please 
 you ; they come out of an old pharmacy in Verona, — 
 perhaps the very jiharmacy of Romeo's apothecary; 
 and tiiere are some fine old pots too " 
 
 " I am tired of buying things." 
 
 "The weariness of empire! — nothing new. You 
 must take to keeping hens and chickens, as the Em- 
 peror John Vatices did. How does Camille Odissot 
 succeed with your ball-room frescoes?" 
 
 " I have no idea. Very ill, I dare say." 
 
 "Yes, it is a curious thing that we do not succeed in 
 fresco. The grace is gone out of it ; modern painters 
 liave not the lightness of touch necessary; they are 
 used to masses of color, and they use the palette-knife 
 as a mason the trowel. The art, too, like the literature 
 of our time, is all detail : the grand suggestive vague- 
 ness of the Greek drama and of the Umbrian frescoes 
 is lost to us under a crowd of elaborated trivialities ; 
 perhaps it is because art has ceased to be spiritual or 
 tragic, and is merely domestic or melodramatic; the 
 Greeks knew neither domesticity nor melodrama, and
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 213 
 
 the early Italian painters were imbued Avith a faith 
 which, if not so virile as the worship of the Phidian 
 Zeus, yet absorbed them and elevated them in a degree 
 impossible in the tawdry Sadduceeism of our own day. 
 By the way, when the weather is milder you must go 
 to Orvieto ; you have never been tliere, I think ; it is 
 the Prosodion of Signorelli. What a fine Pagan he 
 was at heart ! He admired masculine beauty like a 
 Greek ; he must have been a singularly happy man, — 
 few more happy " 
 
 The Due paused as the handle of the door turned ; 
 he was only talking because he saw that she was too 
 weary or too languid to talk herself; the door opened, 
 and Delia Pocca entered the box again, having escaped 
 from the archduchess. 
 
 " We were sjieaking of Orvieto ; you know more of 
 it than I do. I was telling Miladi that she must go 
 there about Easter-time," said the Due, hunting for his 
 crush hat beneath the chair. " Take my seat, mon cher, 
 for a moment ; I see Salvareo in the crowd, and I must 
 speak to him about her imperialissima's supper. I shall 
 be back in an instant." 
 
 He departed, with no intention of returning, and 
 was assailed in the corridor by a party of masks, who 
 bore him off gayly between them down the staircase 
 into the laughing, screaming, and capering multi- 
 tude. 
 
 Delia Rocca did not take his chair, but sank into 
 the seat behind her, while his hand closed on hers. 
 
 " Will you not even look at me?" he murmured. 
 
 She drew her hand away, and put her mask on, slip- 
 ping its elastic round her delicate cars.
 
 214 -^^V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Plow the crowd yells !" she said, impatiently. " Will 
 the archduchess stay there long, do you think?" 
 
 With gentlest audacity and softest skill he had slipped 
 off the mask and had laid it behind him before she had 
 realized what he was doing. His hand had touched her 
 as lightly as though a feather brushed a rose. 
 
 She rose in amazed anger, and turned on him coldly. 
 
 " M. della Rocca ! how dare you presume so far ? 
 Give me ray mask at once " 
 
 " No," he said, softly, and he took hold of her hands 
 and drew her towards the back of the box, where no 
 eyes could reach them, and knelt down before her as 
 she sat there in the dusky shadow of the dark-red 
 draperies. 
 
 "Oh, my love — my love!" he murmured; that was 
 all ; but his arms stole about her, and his head drooped 
 till his forehead rested on her knees. 
 
 For the moment she did not repulse him ; she did 
 not stir nor speak ; she yielded herself to the embrace, 
 mute and very pale, and moved to a strange tumult of 
 emotion, whether of anger or of gladness she scarcely 
 knew. 
 
 He lifted his head, and his eyes looked into hers till 
 her own could look no longer. 
 
 "You love me?" he whispered to her, whilst his 
 arms still held her imprisoned. 
 
 She was silent; under the purple knot of velvet at 
 her breast, he saw her heart heave, her breath come 
 and go; a hot color flushed over all her face, then 
 faded, and left her again pale as marble. 
 
 " It were of no use if — if, I did," she muttered, 
 " You forget yourself. Leave me."
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 215 
 
 But he knelt there, looking at her till the look 
 seemed to burn her like flame; yet she did not rise, 
 — she, the very hem of whose garment no man before 
 him had ever dared to touch. 
 
 '•You love me!" he murmured, and said the samo 
 thing again and again and again, in all the various 
 eloquence of passion. She trembled a little under his 
 close caress ; the dusky red of the box whirled around 
 her ; the shouting of the multitude below beat like the 
 sound of a distant sea on her ears. 
 
 As he kneeled at her feet she touched his forehead 
 one moment with her hand in a gesture of involuntary 
 tenderness. 
 
 " It is of no use," she said, faintly, again. " You 
 ^o not understand ; you do not know." 
 
 "Yes, I do know," he answered her. 
 
 *'Y^ouknow!" 
 
 " Yes : your brother told rae." 
 
 "And yet?" 
 
 " Since Ave love one another, is not that enough ?" 
 
 She breathed like a person suffocated; she loosened 
 herself from his arms, and drew away from him, and 
 rose. 
 
 " It makes no change in you, tlien ! " she said, won- 
 deringly, and looked at him through a blinding mist, 
 and felt sick and weary and bewildered, as she had 
 never thought it possible to feel. 
 
 "Chano;e in me? What change? save that I am 
 freer to seek you, — tbat is all. Oh, my empress, my 
 angel! — is not love enough? Has your life without 
 love contented you so well that you fear to face love 
 alone?"
 
 216 I^' A WINTER CITV. 
 
 He still knelt at her feet, and kissed her hands and 
 her dress, as he spoke; he looked upward at the pale 
 beauty of her face. 
 
 She shivered a little, as with cold. 
 
 "That is folly," she muttered. "You must know it 
 is of no use. I could not live — poor." 
 
 The word stung him: he rose to his feet; he was si- 
 lent. After all, what had he to offer her? he loved her : 
 that was all. 
 
 She loosened the chain about her throat, and looked 
 away beyond him at the lights of the theatre. AVith 
 an effort she recovered her old indifferent cold manner. 
 
 "You have forgotten yourself : it is all folly: you 
 must know that: you surprised me into — weakness — 
 for a moment. But it is over now. Give me my 
 mask, and take me to the carriage." 
 
 "]v^o!" He leaned against the door, and looketl 
 
 down on her: all the rapture of expectancy and of tri- 
 umph had faded from his face; the pallor and suffering 
 of a great passion were on it; he had knoAvn that she 
 loved the things of the world, but he had believed that 
 she loved him more. 
 
 He was undeceived. He looked at this beautiful 
 woman, with the gold chain loosed about her throat, 
 and the white brocaded lilies gleaming in the gloom, 
 and only by a supreme effort did he subdue the bitterness 
 and brutality which lie underneath all strong passions. 
 
 "One moment!" he said, as she moved to reach the 
 door. "Can you say you have no love for me?" 
 
 Her color varied. 
 
 "What is the use? Give me my mask." 
 
 "Can you say you do not love me?"
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 217 
 
 She hesitated; she wished to lie, and could not. 
 
 "I did not say that," she murmured. "Perhaps if 
 things were different But as it is — it is no use." 
 
 The half-confession sufficed : it loosened his lips to 
 passionate appeal ; M'ith all the eloquence natural to 
 him and to his language, he poured out on her all the 
 supplication, all the entreaty, all the persuasion, that 
 he was master of; he lavished every amorous endear- 
 ment that his language held; he painted the joys of 
 great and mutual love with a fervor and a force that 
 shook her like a whirlwind ; he upbraided her with her 
 caprices, with her coldness, with her selfishness, till the 
 words cut her like sharp stripes; he besought her by the 
 love with which he loved her, till the voluptuous sweet- 
 ness of it stole over all her senses, and held her silent 
 and enthralled. 
 
 He knelt at her feet, and held her hands in his. 
 
 " Does your life content you ?" he said at the last. 
 " Can greatness of any sort content a woman without 
 love? Can any eminence, or power, or possession 
 make her happiness without love? Say that I am 
 poor, — that coming to me you would come to what in 
 your sight were poverty : is wealth so great a thing 
 measured against the measureless strength of passion ? 
 Are not the real joys of our lives things unpurchasable? 
 Oh, my love, my love ! If you had no preference for 
 me, I were the vainest fool to urge you ; but, as it is, 
 does the world that tires you, the society that wearies 
 you, the men and women who fatigue you, the adula- 
 tion that nauseates you, the expenditure that after all is 
 but a vulgarity in your sight, the acquisition that has 
 lost its charm for you with long habit, like the toys of
 
 218 I^^ ^ WINTER ciTr. 
 
 a child, — are all those tilings so supreme with you that 
 you can sond me from you for their sake? Is not one 
 hour of mutual love worth all the world can give ?" 
 
 His arms held her close, he drew her down to him 
 nearer and nearer till his head rested on her breast and 
 lie felt the tumultuous throbbing of her heart. For one 
 moment of scarce conscious weakness she did not resist 
 or repulse him, but surrendered herself to the spell of 
 his power. He moved her as no mortal creature had 
 ever had strength to do; a whole world unknown 
 opened to her with his touch and his gaze ; she loved 
 him. For one moment she forgot all else. J< 
 
 But all the while, even in the temporary oblivion to 
 which she had yielded, she never dreamed of granting 
 what he prayed. 
 
 The serenity and pride in her were shaken to their 
 wots; she was humbled in her own sight; she was 
 ashamed of the momentary delirium to which she had 
 abandoned herself; she strove in vain to regain com- 
 posure and indiiference : come what would, he was near 
 to her as no other man had ever been. 
 
 She drew her domino about her with a shudder, 
 thouo-h the blood coursed like fever in her veins. 
 
 " You must hate me, — or forget me," she murmured, 
 as she tried to take her mask from his hand. " You 
 know it is no use. I could not live — poor. Perhaps 
 you are right ; all those things are habits, follies, ego- 
 tisms, — oh, perhaps. But, such as they are, -such a. I 
 am, — I could never live without them." 
 
 He stood erect, and his face grew cold. 
 
 " That is your last word, madame ?" 
 
 " Yes. AVhat else should I say ? No other"— her
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 219 
 
 voice faltered a moment, and grew very weak, "no 
 other man will ever be anything to me, if that content 
 you. But more is impossible." 
 
 He bowed low in silence, and gave her up her mask. 
 
 She felt afraid to look up at his face. 
 
 The door opened on them noisily; the archduchess 
 and Madame Mila were returning to refresh themselves 
 with their supper ere descending again to fresh diver- 
 sions. Behind them came the Due de St. Louis and 
 all the men of their party, and their servants with the 
 trestles for the setting of the table in their box. 
 
 They were fuller than ever of laughter, mirth, high 
 spirits, and riotous good humor ; their white teeth 
 shone under the lace of their loups, and their eyes 
 sparkled through the slits. They had frightened some 
 people, and teased more, and had been mistaken for two 
 low actresses and jested with accordingly, and were as 
 much flattered as the actresses would have been had 
 they been taken for princesses. 
 
 The Lady Hilda prayed of the archduchess's good- 
 ness to be excused from awaiting the supper ; she had 
 been ill all day; and her headache was very severe. 
 
 The archduchess was in too high spirits to listen very 
 nuich, or to care who went or who stayed. 
 
 '* Take me to the carriage. Due," said Lady Hilda, 
 putting her hand on the arm of M. de St. Louis. 
 
 Delia Rocca held the door open for her. He bowed 
 very low, once more, as she passed him.
 
 220 -^^ ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The next day was Ash Wednesday. 
 
 Madame Mila awoke too late for mass, and with a 
 feverish throbbing in her temples. She and the arch- 
 duchess had only left the Veglione as the morning sun 
 came up bright and tranquil over the shining waters 
 of the river from behind the eastern hills. 
 
 Madame Mila yawned and yawned again a score of 
 times, drank a little green tea to waken herself, thought 
 how horrid Lent was, and ran over in her mind how 
 much she would confess at confession. 
 
 She determined to repent her sins very penitently. 
 She would only go to musical parties, she would wear 
 no low bodices, she would eat fish twice a week, — the 
 red mullets were really very nice, — and she would go 
 for all Holy Week en retniite: if she did all that, the 
 most severe monitor could not require her to give up 
 Maurice. 
 
 Poor Maurice ! she smiled to herself, in the middle 
 of a yawn ; how devoted he was ! — he only lived on 
 lier breath, and if she dismissed him would kill him- 
 self with absinthe. She really believed it. She did 
 not dream that Maurice, submissive slave though he 
 was, had his consolations for slavery, and was at that 
 moment looking into the eyes of the prettiest artist's 
 model in Floralia. 
 
 It was the Day of Ashes, as all the bells of the city 
 nad tolled out far and wide ; and INIadame Mila, over
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 221 
 
 her green tea, really felt penitent. For the post had 
 brought her three terribly thick letters, and the letters 
 were bills ; and the sum total that was wanted imme- 
 diately was some sixty thousand francs ; and how could 
 a poor dear little woman who had spent all her money 
 send that, or a tenth of it? and Spiridion wouldn't, — 
 he had too many bills of Blanche Souris' to pay ; and 
 poor Maurice couldn't, — he invariably lost at play 
 much more than he possessed, after the manner of his 
 generation. 
 
 Madame Mila really cried about it, and felt ready 
 to promise any amount of repentance if she could get 
 those sixty thousand francs this Lent. 
 
 " And to think of me running myself off my feet in 
 that muslin apron collecting for the poor !" she thought, 
 with a sense that heaven behaved very ill to her in 
 return for her charities. " I suppose I must ask Hilda," 
 she reflected : " she always does give when you ask her, 
 — if that man don't prevent her now." 
 
 For the champagne and the mask and the great joy- 
 ousness of her soul had prevented Madame Mila from 
 observing any difference between her cousin and Delia 
 Eocca, and, as he had left the box immediately after 
 her cousin, she had supposed that they had gone away 
 together : why shouldn't they ? 
 
 " I must ask Hilda to lend it me," she said to her- 
 self. 
 
 To say " lend" was agreeable to her feelings, — not, 
 
 of course, that there was any serious necessity to repay 
 
 between such near relatives; and she sent her maid 
 
 across the corridor to inquire when she could come into 
 
 her cousin's room. 
 
 19*
 
 222 I^ A. WINTER CITY. 
 
 The maid returned with a little unsealed note which 
 the Lady Hilda had desired should be given to Madame 
 Mila when she should awake. The note only said, " I 
 am gone to Rome for some few weeks, dear : write to 
 me at the lies Britanniques if you want anything." 
 
 " Good gracious ! what can have happened ?" said 
 Madame Mila, in utter amaze. "They must have 
 quarreled last night." And she proceeded to cross- 
 examine all the hotel people. 
 
 Lady Hilda had left by the morning train, and had 
 not taken her carriage-horses Avith her, only the riding- 
 horses, and had kept on her rooms at the Murat: that 
 was all they knew. 
 
 "She is very uncertain and imcomfortable to have to 
 do with," thought INIadame Mila, in vague irritation. 
 " Anybody else would have asked me to go with her." 
 
 A sudden idea occurred to her, and she sent her maid 
 to find out if the Duca della Rocca were in Floralia. 
 
 At his palace they said that he was. 
 
 " Dear me ! perhaps he'll go after her," thought 
 Madame Mila. "But I don't know why she's so secret 
 about it, and takes such precautions. Nobody'd cut 
 her for anything she might do so long as she's all ■'.hat 
 money ; and so long as she don't marry she can't lose 
 it." 
 
 Madame Mila didn't understand it at all. Her ex- 
 perience in the world assured her that her cousin might 
 have Delia Rocca, or anybody else, constantly beside 
 her whenever she liked, and nobody would say any- 
 thing, — so long as she had all that money. 
 
 She felt that she was badly treated, that there was 
 something not confided to her, and also she certainly
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 223 
 
 ought to have been asked to go to Rome at her cousin's 
 expense. She was snlky and irritated. 
 
 " Hilda is so queer and so selfish," she said to her- 
 self, and began a letter to the lies Britanniques with 
 many tender endearments and m(ich pathos, and the 
 most gracefully-worded appeal possible for the loan of 
 the sixty thousand francs. 
 
 She would have gone to Rome herself, being well 
 aware that written demands are much more easily 
 repulsed than spoken ones. But she had no money at 
 all. She had lost a quarter's income at play since she 
 had been in the town, and she could not pay the hotel- 
 people till her husband should send her more money, 
 and he was hunting bears on the Pic du Midi with 
 Blanche Souris, established at Pau, and when that crea- 
 ture was with him he was always very tardy in answer- 
 ing letters for money, bears or no bears, and of course 
 he would make the bears his excuse now. 
 
 Fairly overwhelmed, poor little Madame Mila had a 
 long fit of hysterics, and her maids had to send in great 
 haste for ether and the Vicomte des Gommeux. 
 
 She rallied by dinner-time enough to eat two dozen 
 oysters, some lobster croquettes, and some prawn soup, 
 with a nice little bottle of Veuve Cliquot's sweetest 
 *vine ; but still things were very dreadful, and on the 
 vvhole she was in the proper frame of mind for the Day 
 )f Ashes, and in the confessional next morning sobbed 
 !0 much that her confessor was really touched, and Avas 
 act too severe with her about her Maurice.
 
 224 ^^ ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 In three weeks' time Lady Hilda returned from 
 Rome. 
 
 She had been aifectionately received by the Holy 
 Father ; she had been the idol of the nobles of the 
 Black; she had bought a quantity of pictures and 
 marbles, and bronzes, and Castelani jewelry ; she had 
 gone to early mass every day, and ridden hard every 
 day; she had thought Totila would have been more 
 bearable than Signor Roso, and she had shuddered at 
 the scraped walls of the Colosseum and the crimson 
 bedaubings of the Palace of the Caesars. 
 
 She returned contemptuous, disgusted, tired of the 
 age she lived in, and regretful that she had not spared 
 herself the sight of so much desecration. She con- 
 ceived that Genseric or the Constable de Bourbon must 
 have been much less painful than a syndicate and an 
 army of bricklayers. She refused to go out anywhere, 
 on the score of its being Lent, and she meditated going 
 to London for the season to that very big house in 
 Eaton Square, which she honored for about three 
 months in as many years. She hated London, and its 
 society was a mob, and its atmosphere was thickened 
 soda-water, and no other place had such horrible end- 
 less dinner-parties. Still, she was going. When ? — 
 oh, to-morrow or next week. 
 
 But to-morrow became yesterday, and next w^ek 
 became last week, and her black-and-white liveries
 
 IN A WINTER CITr. 225 
 
 were still airing themselves on the steps of the Murat, 
 and her black horses still were trotting to and fro the 
 stones of Floralia, bearing little Madame Mila hither 
 and thither. 
 
 Theii own mistress stirred out but little; it was 
 damp weather, and she coughed, and she shut herself 
 ui» with millions of hyacinths and narcissi, and painted 
 a St. Ursula on wood for her chapel in Paris. 
 
 She painted well, but the St. Ursula progressed but 
 slowly. 
 
 When she was alone she would let her palette fall to 
 her side, and sit thinking; and the bells would ring 
 across the waters till she hated them. 
 
 What was the use of painting a St. Ursula? St. 
 Ursula did not want to be painted ; and all art was 
 nothing but repetition : nobody had found out anything 
 in color really, since Giotto, though to be sure he could 
 not paint transparencies or reflections. And she would 
 leave her St. Ursula impatiently, and read Cavalcaselle 
 and Zugler and Winckelmann and Rumohr and Pas- 
 savant, and when she did go out would go to some little 
 remote unvisited chapel and sit for hours before some 
 dim disputed fresco. 
 
 She would be in London next week, in its blaze of 
 gas, jewels, luxury, and political discussion. She said 
 that she liked these calm, dusky, silent places, alone 
 with St. Louis and St. Giles and St. Jerome. 
 
 Madame Mila puzzled over her conduct in vain. 
 She did not dare to ask anything, because there were 
 those sixty thousand francs, and her cousin had helped 
 her about them, and you cannot say very intrusive or 
 impertinent things to a person who is lending you
 
 226 J^ ^ WINTER CITF. 
 
 money; but it was very odd, thought Madame MiLj 
 incessantly, because she evidently was unhappy about 
 the man, and wanted him, and yet must have sent him 
 away. Of course she couldn't have married him ; but 
 still there were ways of managing everything; and in 
 Hilda's position she really could do as she liked, and 
 nobody ever would even have said a word. 
 
 "She must have refused him," the Due de St. Loui? 
 said to her more than once, harassed by chagrin at the 
 failure of his project, and by a curiosity which his 
 good breeding forbade him to seek to satisfy at the 
 fountain-head. 
 
 " Oh, I dare say she did," said Madame Mila. " Of 
 course she did. But, if she cares for him, why shouUl 
 she send him away ? — il y a des moyens pour tout." 
 
 Of course she would not have married him ; that 
 Madame Mila knew ; but Society would have made no 
 objection to his being about her always like her courier 
 and her pug and the rest of her following, and if 
 Society doesn't object to a thing, why on earth should 
 you not do it ? 
 
 II ne faut pas etre plus roayliste que le roi : there 
 cannot be the slightest necessity to be more scrupulous 
 than the people that are round you ; indeed, to attempt 
 to be more so is to be disagreeable and tacitly imperti- 
 nent to others. 
 
 There is a certain latitude, which, taken, makes you 
 look nmch more amiable. Madame Mila was kissed 
 on both cheeks really with sin(;erity by many ladies in 
 many cities, merely because her nice management of 
 her Maurice made their Maurices easier for them, and 
 tlieir j)lcasant consciousness of her frailty was the one
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 227 
 
 touch -which made them all akin. Polyandry made 
 easy is a great charm in Society; there is no horrid 
 scandal for any one, and no fuss at all. Monsieur is 
 content and Madame enjoys herself, everybody goes 
 everywhere, and everything is as it should be. 
 
 "If that old man had lived, Hilda would have been 
 glad to be like every one else," Madame Mila thought, 
 with much impatience. " Of course, because she is 
 quite free, she don't care a bit to use her freedom." 
 
 Madame Mila herself felt that although her passion 
 for Maurice was tlie fifty-sixth })assion of her soul, and 
 the most ardent of all her existence, even Maurice him- 
 self would have lost some of his attraction if he had 
 lost the pleasant savor of incorrectness that attached to 
 him, and if she had not had to take all those precau- 
 tions about his going to another hotel, etc., etc., which 
 enabled her to hold her place in courts and embassies 
 and made her friends all able to say with clear con- 
 sciences, " Nothing in it, oh, dear ! nothing in it what- 
 ever!" Not that she cared about any one believing that; 
 she did not even wish anybody to believe it ; she only 
 wanted it said, — that was all ; because, whilst it can be 
 said a woman "goes everywhere" still, and though 
 Heloise or Francesca may be willing to "lose the world 
 for love," the Femme Galante has no notion of doing 
 anything of the sort. 
 
 " They are brouilles^ that is certain," Madame IMila 
 responded to the conjectures of M. do St. Louis. " Oh, 
 yes, — certain ! He Avas here when Hilda came back, 
 and we passed him one day in the street, and he took 
 off his hat and bowed, and looked very cold and j)ale 
 and went onwards. Now, you know, he is gone to the
 
 228 J^ ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 Marshes, and after that, they say, he is going into 
 Sicily to see after that brigand Pibro. It is not like 
 an Italian to be so soon repulsed." 
 
 " It is very like an Italian to be too proud to ask 
 twic(i," said the Due, and added, with a little smile, 
 " He never said anything to me. Only once lately he 
 said that he was sure that Miladi would be a very dif- 
 ferent creature if she had home interests and children !" 
 
 " Good gracious !" said Madame Mila, " she was quite 
 right to have nothing to do with him if he have that 
 kind of ideas. How little he knows her, too ! Hilda 
 is quite unnatural about children, — quite horrid; she 
 never speaks to them ; and when she saw my dear little 
 Lili dressed as Madame I'Archiduc for the babies' fancy 
 ball at the Elysee, what do you think she said ? She 
 told me that I polluted the child's brain before it could 
 distinguish right from wrong, and that a mixture of 
 Judic and Fashion at five years old was disgusting. 
 And Lili looked lovely ! — she was so prettily rouged, 
 and Maurice had given her a necklace of pink pearls. 
 But Hilda has no human feeling at all." 
 
 " Delia Rocca did not think so," said the Due. 
 
 " Delia Rocca was in love," said Madame Mila, 
 scornfully, " with the beaux yeaux de sa cassette too, 
 as well. They may only have quarreled, you know. 
 Hilda is very disagreeable and difficult. By ihe way, 
 Deutschland went after her to Rome, and proposed to 
 her again." 
 
 " Indeed ! and she refused him again ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes. She refuses them all. I did fancy she 
 was touched by Delia Rocca, but, you see, it came to 
 nothing ; she is as cold as a crystal. She likes to know
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 229 
 
 that heaps of men are wretched about her, and she likes 
 to study those dingy old paintings, and that is all she 
 does like, or ever will like. She will be very unhappy 
 as she grows older, and I dare say she will be quite 
 capable of leaving all her money away from her family 
 to build a cathedral or found a School of Art." 
 
 And Madame Mila, impatient, nodded to the Due, 
 and dashed away in the victoria behind the white-and- 
 black liveries. She was managing to enjoy her Lent 
 after all ; her mind being at rest about those sixty thou- 
 sand francs, there was no occasion to be so very rigid ; 
 low bodices she did not wear, because she was a woman 
 of her word ; but then she had half a hundred divine 
 confections, cut square, or adorned with ruifs, or open 
 en coeur, with loveliest lace and big bouquets of roses, 
 to make that form of renunciation simpler ; there was 
 plenty going on, and little " sauteries," which nobody 
 would call balls, and pleasant gatherings, quite harmless, 
 because only summoned for " music," and altogether, 
 what with the oasis of Careme, and the prolongation 
 of the Carnival in Russian houses, life was very endur- 
 able ; and there were Neapolitan oysters to fast upon 
 comfortably. Heaven tempers the wind to the shorn 
 lamb ; and it would be hard if society did not soften 
 penitence to the Femme Galante. 
 
 The Lady Hilda did keep her Lent, and kept it 
 fetrictly, and was never seen at the sauteries, and rarely 
 a» the musical parties. But then every one knew that 
 she was devote (when she was not slightly Voltairean), 
 and it could not be expected that a woman going to 
 reign in the vast world of I^ondon would put herself 
 out to be amiable in Floralia. Yet, had they only
 
 230 -f-V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 known it, she loved Floralia in lier own heart, as she 
 had never loved any other place upon earth. The 
 beautiful small city set along its shining Avaters, with 
 all the grace of its classic descent, its repose of contem- 
 plative art, its sanctity of imperishable greatness, had 
 a hold upon her that no other spot under the sun could 
 ev'er gain. If she thought others unworthy of it, she 
 thought herself no less unworthy. It seemed to her 
 that to be worthy to dwell in it, one needed to be wise 
 and pure and half divine, even as St. Ursula herself. 
 
 And all the pride in her was shaken to the roots : 
 she was full of a restless, dissatisfied humility ; there 
 were times when she hated herself and was weary of 
 herself to utter impatience. She shut herself up with 
 her art studies and the old frescoes, because they pained 
 her less than any other thing. She was passionately 
 unhappy: though to other people she only seemed a 
 trifle more cynical and more contemptuous than before, 
 — no more. 
 
 The easy morality with which her cousin would have 
 solved all difficulty was not possible to her. She would 
 not have cheated the old dead man from whom her 
 riches came, by evading him in the spirit of his will 
 whilst adhering to the letter. Unless she gave up 
 her riches, her lover could be nothing to her; and 
 the thought of giving them up never even occurred 
 to her as possible. She did not know it, because she 
 was so very tired of so many things; but the great 
 world she had always lived in was very necessary to 
 her, and had absolute dominion over her; it became 
 tiresome, as the trammels of empire do to a mon- 
 arch ; but to lay down her sceptre would have been
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 231 
 
 an abdication, and an abnegation impossible to her. 
 And she despised lierself because they were impossi- 
 ble; despised herself because to his generosity she 
 had only responded with what at best was but a vul- 
 gar egotism; despised herself because she had been 
 6o weak that she had permitted his familiarities and 
 his caresses unrebuked; despised herself for every- 
 thing with that self-scorn of a proud woman, which 
 is far more intense and bitter than any scorn that she 
 has ever dealt out upon others. 
 
 She had lived all her life on a height of unconscious, 
 but no less absorbing, self-admiration. She had looked 
 down on all the aims and objects and attainments and 
 possessions of all other persons with a bland and su- 
 perb vanity ; she had been accustomed to regard herself 
 as perfect, as otliers all united to tell her that she was ; 
 and her immunity from mean frailties and puerile emo- 
 tions had given her a belief that she was lifted high 
 above the passions and the follies of humankind; now, 
 all of a sudden, she had dropped to the lowest depths 
 of weakness and of selfishness ; passion had touched 
 her, yet had left her without its courage. 
 
 In those long, lonely, studious days in Lent, study- 
 ing her religious art with wandering thoughts, she grew 
 to hate herself; yet to resign her empire for another's 
 Bake never even distantly appeared to her as possible. 
 
 One day, in a little private chapel, where there were 
 some fine dim workes en tempera, only to be seen by 
 earliest morning light, she was startled by seeing him 
 near her. He was coming from the sacristy on business 
 of the church. He looked at her quickly, and would 
 have passed on A\ith a silent salutation, but she ap-
 
 232 IN A WINTER CITV. 
 
 proaclied him on an impulse which a moment later she 
 regretted. 
 
 "Need you avoid me?" she said, hurriedly. "Surely 
 — I go from here so soon — we might still be friends? 
 People Avould talk less " 
 
 He looked down on her with a cold severity whith 
 chilled her like the passing of an icy wind. 
 
 " Madame," he answered her, with a fleeting smile, 
 "your Northern lovers, perhaps, may have been con- 
 tent to accept such a position : I am, I confess, thank- 
 less. I thought you too proud to heed what ' people 
 said'; but, if that trouble you, I go myself to Sicily 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Then he bowed very low once more, and, with his 
 salutation to the altar, went on his way through the 
 dusky shadows of the little chapel out into the morn- 
 ing sunshine of the street. 
 
 Her eyes grew blind with tears, and she sank down 
 before a wooden bench upon her knees ; yet could not 
 pray tliere, for the bitterness and the tumult of her 
 heart. 
 
 She found her master in him. 
 
 His passionless, unpardoning gaze sank into her very 
 soul, and seemed like a ruthless light, that showed her 
 all the wretchedness of pride and self-love and vainest 
 ostentations, which she had harbored there and set up 
 as her gods. 
 
 No amorous extolling, no feverish pursuit, of her. 
 She comprehended tliat she had wronged him, and that 
 he would not forgive. After all, — knowing what she 
 knew, knowing that she could never and would never 
 marry him, — she had had no right to deal with him as
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 233 
 
 she had done. She had allowed him to bask in the 
 sun of a fool's paradise, and then had awakened hira 
 rudely and had sent him adrift. She had been un- 
 generous : she saw it, and hated her own fault with the 
 repentance of a generous temper. 
 
 She had gone through the world with but little hetd 
 for the pain of others ; but his pain smote her con- 
 science. After all, he had a title to upbraid her pas- 
 sionately ; that he refrained from doing so made her 
 own self-reproach the keener. There had been so 
 many moments when with justice \te might have felt 
 certain that she loved him ; and how could he guess 
 the rest? She knew that she had wronged hira; and 
 she was humbled in her own sight; she had lost her 
 own self-respect, and her own motives seemed to her 
 but poor, and almost base, ones. 
 
 Nothing had ever moved her so intensely as that 
 silent condemnation, as that contemptuous rejection of 
 her poor half-hearted overture of peace. 
 
 He would be all, or nothing. 
 
 When she left the chapel she loved him as she had 
 never done before ; yet it never occurred to her to 
 abandon her riches for his sake. The habits and the 
 ways of the world were too close about her; its artificial 
 needs and imperious demands were too much her second 
 nature ; its admiration was too necessary to her, and 
 her custom of deference to its conventional laws too 
 much an instinct ; she had been too long accustomed 
 to regard the impulses of the heart as insane follies, 
 and poverty of life as pain and madness. 
 
 The same evening he did leave the town for Sicily, 
 
 where he had lands \^hich, though beautiful, were 
 
 20*
 
 234 ^^^^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 utterly unproductive, and constantly harried by the 
 system of brigandage, which paralyzed the district. 
 
 "Paolo will get shot most likely. He has declared 
 that he will not return without having captured Pibro," 
 said an Italian in her hearing, at a musical gathering, 
 dedicated to the music of Pergolese. 
 
 Pibro was a notorious Sicilian robber. The sweet 
 chords sounded very harsh and jangled in her ears j 
 she left early, and went home and took a heavy dose 
 of chloral, which only gave her dark and dreary dreams. 
 
 " What miserable creatures we are !" she thought, 
 wearily. " We cannot even sleep naturally : poor peo- 
 ple can sleep ; they lie on hard benches, and dream 
 with smiles on their faces." 
 
 She got up, and looked out at the moonlight on the 
 river, and walked to and fro in her chamber, with the 
 great braids of her hair flying over her shoulders, — a 
 lofty, slender, white figure in the pale gleam of the 
 lamp-rays. 
 
 A passionate, feverish, disordered pain consumed her. 
 It terrified her. Would it be thus weeks, months, years, 
 —all her life? 
 
 " Perhaps it is the chloral that unnerves one," she 
 thought. "I will not take it any more." 
 
 "Only fancy, ma chere," said Madame Mila to hei 
 next morning, with the pretty cat-like cruelty of the 
 Mila species, "only fancy, — that poor dear Delia Rocca 
 is gone to his death in Sicily ! So they say. There is 
 a horrid brigand who has been swinging some of his 
 farmers there to trees, and burning their cottages, — 
 Delia Rocca's farmers, you know ; and he is gone to 
 Bee about it, and to capture the wretched creature, as if
 
 IX A WISTER CITY. 235 
 
 he could when all the soldiers and all the police have 
 failed! He will be quite certain to be shot. Isn't it 
 a i)ity ? He is so handsome, and if he would marry 
 that little American Spiffler girl with all her millions 
 he might be very hapjiy. That little Spiffler is really 
 not unpresentable, — rather mignonne, don't you think? 
 — and her people will give the largest dot ever heard of 
 in Europe if they can get one of the very old titles : 
 and she is only seventeen : he might send her to the 
 Sacre Cceur for a year or two." 
 
 " If he be gone to be shot, what use would the Spiffler 
 dot be? " said Lady Hilda, with the coolest calm, as on 
 a subject not even of most remote interest; and she 
 went on glazing a corner of the draperies of her St. 
 Ursula with carmine. 
 
 " The Spiffler marriage was proposed to him," con- 
 tinued Madame Mila, unheeding. "The Featherleighs 
 undertook it, but he refused point blank. 'Je ne me 
 vends pas," was all he said. It was very rude, and 
 really that little Spiffler might be made something of; 
 those very tiny creatures never look vulgar, and are so 
 easy to dress; as it is, I dare say Furstenberg will take 
 her; it is on the tapis, and Delia Rocca won't come back 
 alive, I suppose — isn't it a hare-brained thing to do? — 
 there are gendarmes to look after the brigands, but it 
 seems he has some fancy because they were his own 
 people that suffered — but no doubt he told you all about 
 it, as you and he are sucu friends?" 
 
 "He merely said he was going to Sicily," said the 
 Lady Hilda, languidly, still glazing her St. Ursula. 
 
 Madame Mila eyed her curiously. 
 
 "You look very pale, dear; I think you paiut too
 
 •23G J-^' ^ WINTER cirv. 
 
 much, and read too much," she said, affectionately. "I 
 wish you had tried to persuade him into this Spiffler 
 affair; it would be just the marriage for him, and a 
 girl of seventeen may be drilled into anything, especially 
 when she has small bones and little color and good 
 teeth; if Furstenberg gets her he will soon train her 
 into good form, — only he will gamble away all her 
 money, let them tie it up as they may; and they can't 
 tie it up very much if they want to make a high mar- 
 riage. Good men won't sacrifice themselves unless they 
 get some control of the fortune. They wouldn't have 
 tied it at all with Delia Rocca. Wouldn't the little 
 Spiffler have been better for him than Sicily?" 
 
 "It depends upon taste," said the Lady Hilda, 
 changing her brushes. 
 
 "Very odd taste," said Madame Mila. "They say 
 Pibro always cuts the heads off the men he takes, and 
 sends them into Palermo — the heads, you know — with 
 lemons in their mouths, like boars. Isn't it horrible? 
 And Delia Pocca intends going up after the monster in 
 his very fastnesses upon the mountains! Fancy that 
 
 beautiful head of his ! Really, dear, you do look 
 
 very ill: when will you go to London?" 
 
 " Oh, some time next week." 
 
 She went to the window and opened it; the room 
 Bwam round her, the sounds of the streets grew dull 
 upon her ears. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't go till after the races," said 
 Madame Mila, placidly. "I mean to stay. The place 
 is really very nice, though one does see the same people 
 too often. Fancy poor Paolo ending like John the 
 Baptist, — the head in the charger, you know. I won-
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 237 
 
 der you let him go, for you had a great deal of influ- 
 ence over him ; and, say what you like, the Spiffler 
 girl would have been better. How can you keep that 
 window open, with the tramontana blowing? — thanks 
 
 so much for lending me the horses Goodness! what 
 
 is the matter." 
 
 Madame Mila paused, frightened ; for the first time 
 in all her life, Lady Hilda, leaning against the strong 
 north wind, had lost her consciousness and had fainted. 
 
 " How very strange people are !" thought Madame 
 Mila, when an hour later her cousin had recovered her- 
 self, and had attributed her weakness to the chloral at 
 night and the scent of her oil paints. " If she cared 
 for him like that, why didn't she keep him when she 
 had got him? — she might have hung him to her skirt 
 like her chatelaine ; nobody would ever have said any- 
 thing. I do begin to think that, with all her taste, 
 and all her cleverness, she has after all not so very 
 much savoir-faire." 
 
 No one had much savoir-faire to Madame Mila's 
 mind who did not manage always to enjoy themselves 
 without scruples and also without scenes. 
 
 The house in London was ordered to be kept ready 
 night and day, but no one went to occupy it. M. 
 Camille Odissot, stimulated by dread of his patroness's 
 daily arrival in Paris, worked marvels of celerity upon 
 the ball-room walls, and drew with most exquisite pre- 
 cision bands of Greek youths and maidens in the linked 
 mazes of the dance, but none went to admire his efforts 
 and execution. No fashionable newspapers announced 
 the Lady Hilda's arrival in cither city; she stayed ou 
 and on in Floralia.
 
 238 i^ ^ WINTER cirr. 
 
 " When I know that he is safe out of Sicily I will 
 go," she said to herself, and let the piles of letters and 
 invitation-cards lie and accumulate as they Avould. 
 
 She ceased to paint, and left the St. Ursula unfin- 
 ished : he had sketched it out for her on the panri, and 
 had first tinted it en grisaille. She had not the cour- 
 age to go on with it; she changed her mode of life, and 
 rode or drove all the day long in the sweet fresh spring 
 weather. When she was not in the open air she felt 
 suffocated. The danger which he ran was no mere ex- 
 aggeration of her cousin's malicious inventiveness, hut 
 was a fact, true and ghastly enough ; no one heard of or 
 from him, but his friends said that it was the most fatal 
 madness that had led him to risk his life in the fast- 
 nesses of the Sicilian thieves. 
 
 "It is sheer suicide," they said around her. "What 
 had he to do there ? — if the law cannot enforce itself, 
 leave it alone in its impotency. But he had some idea 
 that because his own villagers were among those who 
 suffered most, it was his place to go there and do what 
 the law cannot do : — he was always Quixotic, poor 
 Paolo." 
 
 She went out into society as Easter came, and heard 
 all that they said, and gave no sign of what she sufltied. 
 Worth sent her new marvels of the spring, and she 
 wore them, and was endlessly courted and envied and 
 quoted and wondered at. She was a little chillier and 
 more cynical than ever, and women observed with 
 pleasure that she was looking ill and growing too thin, 
 which would spoil her beauty. That was all. But she 
 had never thought such pain possible in life as she en- 
 dured now.
 
 IN A wiyriiR ciTV. 239 
 
 " If he die it is I who will have killed him." s^he 
 said in her own heart night and day. 
 
 Once she found herself in her long lonely rides near 
 Palestrina, and met the old steward, and recognized 
 him, and went into the sad, silent, deserted house, and 
 listened to the old man's stories of his beloved h.rd'.s 
 boyhood and manhood, and of the people's clinging 
 feudal attachment to him, and of his devotion to them 
 in the time of the cholera pestilence. 
 
 " There is not an old charcoal-burner or a little goat- 
 herd on the estates that would not give his life for 
 Prince Paolo," the steward said to her, crying like a 
 child because there w'as no news from Sicily. 
 
 The same evening she went to a great Pasqua ball at 
 the Roubleskoff villa. As they fastened the diamonds 
 over her hair and in her bosom, she felt to hate the 
 shining, senseless, soulless stones : they were the emblem 
 of the things for which she had lost him ; and at that 
 very hour, for aught they knew, he might be lying dead 
 on some solitary shore by the fair blue sea of Theo- 
 critus ! 
 
 With a heart sick with terror and uncertainty, she 
 went to the brilliant crowds of the Russian house, — to 
 the talk that was so frivolous and tedious, to the dances 
 she never joined in, to the homage she was so tired of, 
 to the monotonies and personalities and trivialities that 
 make up society. 
 
 M. de St. Louis hurried up to her : 
 
 *' JNIadame, quelle chance ! — our new Herakles has 
 slain his Dragon. Maremma has just had telegrams 
 from Palermo. Delia Rocca has positively captured 
 the brigand Pibro, and taken him into the city, much
 
 240 ^^v ^ WINTER crrr. 
 
 wountled, but alive, and in the king's jail by this time. 
 A fine thing to have done, is it not? Of course ^ve 
 shall all praise it, since it has succeeded ; although, in 
 truth, a madder exploit never was attempted. Paolo 
 was ten days in the mountains, living on a few beans 
 and berries : he has received no hurt whatever ; I should 
 think they will give him the Grand Cross of Italy. 
 It is really a superb thing to have done. The monster 
 has been the terror of that district for ten years. Pa- 
 lermo went utterly mad with joy. It is quite a pity 
 there is no Ariosto to celebrate such a feat. It is very 
 Ariosto-like. Indeed, all the best Italians are so. 
 Englishmen have long ceased to be in any manner 
 Shakspearian ; but Italians remain like their poets." 
 
 The Due wandered away into the subtlest and most 
 discursive analysis of the Ariostan school and of the 
 national characteristics which it displayed and was nur- 
 tured on ; but she had no ear to hear it. 
 
 Outwardly she sat indifferent and calm, but her brain 
 and her heart were in tumult with the sweetest, loftiest, 
 grandest pride that she had ever known, — pride without 
 egotism, without vanity, without a thought of self; true 
 pride, exultant in heroism, not the arrogant pride of self- 
 culture, of self-worship, of self-love, not the paltry pride 
 of rank and acquisition and physical perfection, not the 
 pride of which all the while she had been half contemj)t- 
 uous herself. And then — his life was safe ! 
 
 Yet, had he stood before her then she must have 
 given him the same answer : at least, she thought so. 
 
 "What a fine thing to have done!" said Madame 
 Mila, pausing by her in the middle of a waltz, with 
 her brocade train ablaze with gold. "And now he
 
 IN A WINTER CITF. 241 
 
 can come back and many the Spiffler girl. What do 
 you say, Due?" 
 
 " He will never marry la petite Spiffler," said the 
 Due, "nor any one else/' with a glance of meaning 
 at Lady Hilda. 
 
 All eyes turned upon her. She played idly Nsith 
 her fan, — one painted long ago by Watteau. 
 
 "M. della Rocca has succeeded, so it is heroism," 
 she said, calmly. " Had he failed, I suppose it would 
 have been foolhardiness." 
 
 "Of course," said the Due. " Surely, . raadame, 
 Failure cannot expect to use the same dictionary as 
 Success ?" 
 
 " He must have the Grand Cordon, and marry the 
 big Spiffler dot,'' said Madame Mila. 
 
 The Due smiled. 
 
 "Nay, Comtesse, that were bathos indeed. Any- 
 how, let us rejoice that he is living, and that the old 
 Latin race is still productive of heroes. I suppose we 
 shall have details the day after to-morrow." 
 
 "What ever could he do it for?" said Madame 
 Mila, as she whirled away again in the encircling 
 arm of her Maurice: to Madame Mila such trifles as 
 duty, patriotism, or self-sacrifice could not possibly be 
 any motive power among rational creatures. "What 
 ever could he do it for? — I suppose to soften Hilda. 
 But he must know very little about her: she hates 
 anything romantic; you heard she called it foolhardy. 
 He neve?' will be anything to her, not if he try for ten 
 years. She cares about him after her fashion, but she 
 cares much more about herself." 
 
 Ijady Hilda did not sleep tliat night. 
 L 21 Q
 
 242 I^' A WINTER CITV. 
 
 She did not even lie down ; dry-eyed and Avitli fevei 
 in her veins, she sat by the window, watching the bright 
 pale gold of the morning widen over the skies, and the 
 sea-green depths of the river catch the first sue rqys 
 and mirror them. 
 
 She was so proud of him, — ah, heaven, so proud ! 
 The courage of her temper ansAvered to the courage 
 of his action. It was Heraklean, — it was Homeric, — 
 that going forth single-handed to do wdiat the law 
 could not or would not do, and set free from tyranny 
 of brute force those poor tillers of the soil who could 
 not help themselves. The very folly and madness of 
 that utter disregard of })eril moved her to reverence, 
 — she who had all her life been environed with the 
 cool, calm, cautious, and circumspect customs of the 
 world. 
 
 For one moment it seemed to her possible to renounce 
 everything for his sake. For one moment her own 
 passion for the mere gauds and pomps and possessions 
 of the world looked to her beside the simplicity and 
 self-sacrifice of his own life so poor and mean that she 
 shrank from it in disgust. For one moment she said 
 to herself, " Love was enough." 
 
 He had been ready to give up his life for a few poor 
 laborers, who had no other claim on him than that they 
 lived upon the soil he owned ; and she who loved him 
 had not the courage to renounce mere worldly riches for 
 his sake. She hated herself, and yet she could not 
 change herself. She cared for power, for supremacy, 
 for indulgence, for extravagance; she thought she heard 
 the tittering mockery of the women she had eclipsed so 
 long at all her present weakness; it was all so poor, so
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 24?J 
 
 base, so unworthy, yet it enchained her : the world had 
 been her religion ; no one casts oiF a creed long held 
 without hard and cruel strife. 
 
 " Oh, my love, how far beneath you I am !" she 
 thought, she whose pride had been a by-word, and 
 whose superb vanity had been an invulnerable armor. 
 
 She could have kneeled down and kissed his hands 
 for very humility ; yet she could not resolve to yield. 
 
 " I might see him once more, before I go," she 
 thought, and so, coward like, she put the hour of 
 decision from her. They must part, but she might see 
 him once more first. 
 
 She would go away, of course, and her life in the 
 winter city would be with the things of the past, and 
 she would grow used to the pain of dead passion, and 
 feel it less with time. Other women did, and why not 
 she? 
 
 So she said to herself; and yet at moments a sort of 
 despair appalled her : what would her future be ? Only 
 one long empty void, in whose hollowness the "pleas- 
 ures" of the world would rattle like dead bones. She 
 began to understand that for a great love there is no 
 deatn possible. It is like Ahasuerus the Jew : it must 
 live on in torment forever. 
 
 And how she had smiled at all these things when, 
 others had spoken of them ! 
 
 The days passed slowly one by one; the beautiful 
 city was in its spring glory, and ran over with the 
 blossoms of flowers, as though it were the casket that 
 Persephone let fall. The news-slieets were full of this 
 deed which he had done in Sicily; she bought them 
 all, down to the tawdriest little sheet that held his
 
 244 ^-'^' ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 name, and read the well-known story again and again 
 a hundred and ten hundred times. His friends ex- 
 pected him to arrive in the town each day, but no one 
 heard anything direct from himself. 
 
 " It is strange he writes to none of us," said Ma- 
 renima. " Can anything have happened ?" 
 
 " Oh, no ; the pa2)ers would know it," said the Due 
 de St. Louis. 
 
 She overheard them, and listened with dry lips and 
 a beating heart. 
 
 Why did he write to no one ? The news-sheets had 
 announced that he had left Palermo for Floralia. 
 
 " He may be coming back by the marshes," some one 
 else suggested : " he is reclaiming land there." 
 
 Perhaps he stayed away, she thought, because he had 
 heard that she still remained in his native city. 
 
 It was mid April. 
 
 Madame Mila was organizing picnias under old 
 Etrurian walls, and al fresco dinners in villa gardens, 
 and she and her kind were driving out on the tops 
 of drags and playing baccarat upon anemone-studded 
 lawns by moonlight, and driving in again at or after 
 midnight, singing Offenbach choruses, and going to the 
 big cafe in the town for supper and champagne. Be it 
 in winter or summer, spring or autumn, town or country, 
 youth or middle age, Madame Mila and her kind con- 
 trive to make no difference in their manner of life 
 whatever : they would sing Schneider's songs in the 
 Tombs of the Prophets, they would eat lobster salad 
 on Mount Olivet, and they would scatter their cigar- 
 ash over Vauclusc, Marathon, the Campo Santo, or the 
 grave at Ravenna with equal indifference; they are
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 24t» 
 
 always amused, and defy alike the seasons and the 
 sanctities to stop them in their amusement. 
 
 It was mid April, and with the beginning of May 
 would come the races, and with the races the Winter 
 City would become the Summer City; and then the 
 winter fashion always fled with one bound to fresh 
 fields and pastures new, and left the town to silence, 
 sunshine, roses, fruits, its own populace with their 
 summer songs and summer skies, and perhaps here and 
 there an artist or a poet, or some such foolish person, 
 who loved it best so in its solitude. 
 
 " Do come with us, Hilda," said Madame Mila, one 
 mid-April morning. 
 
 Madame Mila was attired in the simplest morning 
 costume of cream-hued sicilienne covered with ecru 
 lace, and she had a simple country Dorothy hat of 
 cream-colored velvet, lined bleu-de-ciel, with wreaths 
 of delicate nemophilse and convolvuli and floating 
 feathers, set on one side of her head ; Lancret might 
 have painted her on a fan, or Fragonard on a cabinet ; 
 she was just going to drive out with five carriages full 
 of her friends to a picnic at Guido Salvareo's villa ; 
 they were to dine there, play lansquenet there, and come 
 back in the small hours ; they had all postilions, de 
 Lonjumeau, powdered, and with ribboned straw hats; 
 the horses were belled, and the bells were jingling in 
 the street; Madame Mila was in the most radiant 
 spirits ; sJie had won five hundred napoleons the night 
 before, and had them all to adventure over again to- 
 night. 
 
 " Do come with us, Hilda," she urged. " You do 
 
 nothing but go those stupid long drives by yourself j 
 
 21*
 
 24G ^^' ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 it is very bad for you ; and it will be charming to-day ; 
 Sah'areo has such taste ; it is really quite romantic to 
 sit upon those anemones, and have the goats come and 
 Btare at you ; and he always does things so well, and 
 his cook is so good. Do come with us ; I am sure it 
 would do you good." 
 
 Lady Hilda looked up from the St. Ursula, which 
 she was finishing : 
 
 "My dear Mila, you know perfectly well how I detest 
 that kind of thing. Teresa's songs, drag-seats, and 
 eager efforts to imitate the worst kind of women ! — go 
 to it, if it amuse you ; but, with all gratitude, allow 
 me to decline." 
 
 " How disagreeable you are !" said Madame Mila, 
 pettishly. "One must do something with oneself all 
 these long days. If it w^ere Palestrina, I suppose you 
 would go." 
 
 Lady Hilda deigned to give no reply. She touched 
 in the gold background of her saint. INIadame Mila 
 looked at her with irritation : no one likes to be de- 
 spised, and she knew that her cousin did very nearly 
 despise her, and all the ways and means of enjoyment 
 in which her heart delighted. 
 
 Lady Hilda, tranquilly painting there, annoyed her 
 inexpressibly. Why should any woman be above the 
 box-seats of drags, and all their concomitant attrac- 
 tions ? 
 
 She took her revenge. 
 
 " Do as you like, of course ; but you always do do 
 Uiat," she said, carelessly. " There are two seats vacant. 
 St. Louis and Carlo Maremma were to have gone w^ith 
 us, but they went to Delia Rocca instead. Oh, didu't
 
 IN A WINTER CITV. 247 
 
 you know it? — he reached Palestrina two clays ago, 
 very ill with marsh fever. It is fever and cholera and 
 ague and all sorts of dreadful thino-s tos^ether. Isn't 
 it odd? — to have escaped all that danger in Sicily, and 
 then get this in the swamps coming back? Nobody 
 knew it till late last night, when his steward got fright- 
 ened and sent in for the physicians. He is very bad, 
 I believe, — not likely to live. You know they go 
 down under that — sometimes — in twenty-four hours." 
 
 Lady Hilda seemed to reach her at a single step, 
 though the distance of the room was between them 
 
 " Is that true? — or is it some jest?" 
 
 Madame Mila, appalled, looked up into her face. 
 
 "It is true, — quite true. Oh, Hilda, take your hand 
 off! you hurt me. How could I tell you would care 
 about it like that ?" 
 
 "Is it true?" muttered her cousin, again. 
 
 " Indeed, indeed it is," she whimpered, trembling. 
 " Oh, let me go ; you spoil my lace. If you cared foi 
 the man like that, why didn't you keep him when you 
 had got him? I know you could not have married 
 him ; but nobody would have said anything." 
 
 Lady Hilda put her out into the corridor, and closed 
 the door and locked it within. 
 
 Madame Mila, frightened, astonished, and outraged, 
 went down to her Maurice, and the drag, and the 
 ribboned and powdered postilions, and the horses with 
 their jingling bells and plaited tails ; the gay cavalcade 
 i-attled off along the river-street towards the city gates 
 as the clocks tolled three. 
 
 Ijady Hilda and St. Ursula were left alone. 
 
 Within less than half an hour the black horses were
 
 248 J^' ^ WINTER CITY. 
 
 harnessed and bore their mistress toAvarcb Falestrina. 
 Never before moved by impulse, impulse alone governed 
 her now, — the impulse oi" des})air and remorse. She 
 cared nothing who saw her or Avho knew ; for once she 
 had forgotten herself. 
 
 The long drive seemed eternity ; she thought the 
 steep winding mountain roads would never end ; when 
 Palestrina came in sight, pale and stately against its 
 dark background of forest trees, she felt as if her 
 heart would break. He had gone through all those 
 perils afar off, only to be dying there ! 
 
 It was five o'clock by the convent chimes Avhen they 
 reached the crest of the hill on which the old place 
 stood. The lovely hillside was covered with the blue 
 and white of the wild hyacinths and gold of the wild 
 daffodils. The lofty stone pines spread their dark- 
 green roofs above her head. Flocks of birds Avere 
 singing, in the myrtle thickets, their sweet shrill even- 
 song. The shining valley lay below like a cloud of 
 amber light. The surpassing loveliness, the intense 
 stillness of it all made the anguish within her unbear- 
 able. What she had missed all her life long ! 
 
 There was a chapel not far from the louse, set in the 
 midst of the pines, with the cross on if j summit touch- 
 ing the branches, and its doorway still hung round with 
 the evergreens and flowers of its passed Easter feasts. 
 There were men and women and children standing 
 about on the turf in front of it; they were most of 
 them crying bitterly. 
 
 She stopped her horses there, and called a woman to 
 her, but her lips would not frame any question. The 
 woman guessed it.
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 249 
 
 "Yes, my beautiful lady," she said, with many tears. 
 " We have been praying for Prince Paolo. He is very 
 ill, up yonder. The marsh-sickness has got him. INIay 
 the dear Mother of God save him to us! But he is 
 dying, they say " 
 
 "We would die in his stead, if the good angels 
 would let us," said one of the men, drawing near : the 
 others sobbed aloud. 
 
 She put out her hand to the man, — the slender proud 
 hand that she had refused to princes. Wondering, he 
 fell on his knee and would have kissed her hand. She 
 drew back in horror. 
 
 "Do not kneel to me! I have killed him!" she 
 muttered ; and she urged her panting horses forward 
 to the house. 
 
 She bade them tell the Due de St. Louis to come to 
 her upon the terrace. She leaned there tearless, white 
 as death, still as marble, the beautiful, tranquil spring- 
 time all around, and the valley shining like gold in the 
 light of the descending sun. It seemed to her that 
 ages passed before the soft step of her old friend 
 sounded near her : he was surprised and startled, but 
 he did not show it. 
 
 "There is still ho])e," he hastened to say, ere she 
 could speak. "Within the last hour he is slightly 
 better: they give him quinine constantly. If the 
 chills and shivering do not return, it is just possible 
 that he may live. But " 
 
 His voice faltered in its serenity, and he turned his 
 head away. 
 
 "It is not likely?" 
 
 Her own voice had scarcely any sound of its natural
 
 250 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 tone left in it, yet long habit was so strong with her 
 that she spoke calmly. 
 
 " It is not likely. This deadly marsh-poison is short 
 and fierce. After the fatigue and fasting in Sicily it 
 has taken fearful hold on him. But in an hour or two 
 they will know, — one way or the other." 
 
 " I will stay here. Come and tell me, — often. And 
 if — if the worst come, — let me see him. Leave me 
 now." 
 
 He looked at her, hesitated, then left her as she 
 asked. He guessed all that passed in her thoughts, 
 all that had gone before ; and he knew that she was 
 not a woman who would bear pity, and that she was 
 best left thus in solitude. 
 
 Like a caged animal she paced to and fro the long 
 length of the stone terrace. 
 
 She was all alone. 
 
 The golden radiance of the declining day shone 
 everywhere around, the birds sang, the dreamy bells 
 rang in the Ave Maria from hill to hill, all was so 
 still, so peaceful, so beautiful ; yet, with the setting of 
 the sun, his life might go out in darkness. 
 
 In her great misery, her soul was purified. The fire 
 that consumed her burned away the dross of the world, 
 Ihe alloy of selfishness and habit and vain passions. 
 "Oh, heaven! give me his life, and I will give him 
 mine !" she cried in her heart, all through those terri- 
 ble hours, and yet recoiled in terror from the useless- 
 ness and daring of her prayer. What had she ever 
 done, that she could merit its fulfillment? 
 
 He might have been hers, all hers ; and she had loved 
 the base things of a worldly greatness better than him-
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 251 
 
 sellf. And now lie lay dying there, as tlie sun dropped 
 westward and nitrlit came. 
 
 She felt no chill of evening. She felt neither hnn- 
 ger nor thirst. Crowds of weeping people hnng about 
 in the gardens below. She heard nothing that passed 
 rouni her, save the lew words of her old friend ^\ii^\i 
 from time to time he came and told her that theit was 
 no change. 
 
 The moon rose, and its light fell on the stone of tlio 
 terrace, and through the vast deserted chambers opening 
 from it, — on the gray worn marbles of the statues, and 
 on the pale angels of the frescoes. 
 
 It was nine o'clock: the chimes of the convent above 
 on the mountains told every hour. Unceasingly she 
 paced to and fro, to and fro, like some mad or wounded 
 creature. The silence and serenity of the night, the 
 balmy fragrance of it, and the silvery light, were so 
 much mockery of her wretchedness. She had never 
 
 thought that there could be agony like this and 
 
 yet from God no sign. 
 
 Nearly another hour had passed before her friend 
 approached her again. Siie caught the sound of his 
 step in the darkness; her heart stood still; her blood 
 was changed to ice, frozen with the deadliness of the 
 most deadly fear on earth; she could only loo^ at him 
 with wide-opened, strained, blind eyes. 
 
 For the first time, he smiled. 
 
 "Take comfort," he said, softly. "He has fallen 
 asleep; he is less exhausted; they say that he may live. 
 How cold you are! — this night will kill you " 
 
 She fell upon her knees on the stone pavement, and 
 all her bowed frame was shaken by convulsive weeping.
 
 252 J^ ^ WINTER CITV. 
 
 He drew aside in reverence, and left her alone in the 
 light of the moon. 
 
 When midnight came, hope was certain. 
 
 The sleep still lasted ; the fever had abated, the cold 
 f.liills had not returned. 
 
 She called her old friend to her out into the terrace. 
 
 "I will go now. Send to me at daybreak; and keep 
 'uy secret." 
 
 "May I tell him nothing?" 
 
 " Tell him to come to me, — when he is able." 
 
 "Nothing more?" 
 
 "No; nothing. He will know " 
 
 ''But " 
 
 She turned her face to him in the full moonlight, 
 with the tears of her joy coursing down her cheeks, and 
 he started at the change in her that this one night of 
 suffering had wrought. 
 
 "No, say nothing more. But — but — you shall see 
 what my atonement shall be, and my thankfulness." 
 
 Then she went away from him softly in the darkness 
 and the fragrance of the April night. The Due looked 
 after the lights of her carriage with a mist over his own 
 eyes, but he shrugged his shoulders with a sigh. 
 
 " Who can ever say that he knows a woman? Who 
 can ever predict what she will not say or will not do or 
 will not be?" he murmured, as he turned and went 
 within to watch beside the bed of his friend, as the 
 stars grew clearer and the dawn approached.
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 253 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A MONTH later Paolo della Rocca led his wife 
 through what had once been his mother's chambers at 
 Palestriua, and which were now prepared for her witii 
 all their wide windows unclosed and looking out to the 
 golden afternoon glories of the bright southwest. 
 
 In the little oratory which opened out of the bed- 
 chamber, there was hung an altar-picture; it was the 
 picture of San Cipriano il Mago. 
 
 " Take it as my marriage gift," he murmured to her. 
 " You threw away your magic wand and renounced the 
 world for me, — oh, my love, my love ; God grant you 
 the saint's reward !" 
 
 She laid her hands upon his heart and leaned her 
 cheek upon them. 
 
 " My reward is here." 
 
 " And you will never repent ?" 
 
 " Did Cyprian repent when he broke his earthly 
 bonds and gained eternal life? Once I was blind; 
 but now I see. The world is nothing ; Love is enough."
 
 254 ^-^ ^1 wi.xTEii crrr 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " C'est etoniiant !" murmured the Due de St. Louis 
 softly to himself, the same evening, standing on the 
 steps of the Hotel Murat, after assisting in the morning 
 at those various civil ceremonies and impediments with 
 which our beloved Italy, in her new character as a 
 nation of Free Thought, does her best to impede and 
 deter all such as cling to so old-world and pedantic a 
 prejudice as marriage. 
 
 The denouement of the drama which he himself had 
 first set in action had fallen upon him like a thunder- 
 bolt. He had had no conception of Avhat would hap- 
 pen. He had thought to enrich his friend by one of the 
 finest fortunes in Europe, and lo ! — the Due renmined 
 in an amazement and a sense of humiliation from which 
 he could not recover. 
 
 " C'est ^tonnant !" he murmured, again and again. 
 " Who would ever have believed that Miladi was a 
 woman to beggar herself and play the romance of the 
 ' world lost for love' ? If I had only imagined ! — if I 
 liad only dreamed ! I will never propose a marriage 
 to any living being again ; never." 
 
 " You have nothing to be so remorseful about, Due," 
 said Lord Clairvaux, with a sigh, himself utterly ex- 
 hausted by all the law work that he had been obliged to 
 go through. " It is very funny, certainly, — she of all 
 women in the world ! But they are liapi)y enough, and 
 he really is the only living creature that ever could
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 1:55 
 
 manage her. If anybody had ever told me that any 
 man would change Hilda like that!" 
 
 " Happy !" echoed M. de St. Louis, with his iiL 
 sourire. He was a man who had no delusions ; there 
 were no marriages that were happy; some were calm, 
 that was the uttermost, and to remain calm required 
 an inmiense income; money alone was harmony. 
 
 Lord Clairvaux lighted a very big cigar, and grum- 
 bled that it had been horrible to have to leave England 
 in the Epsom month, but that he thanked goodness that 
 it was the last of her caprices that he would be worried 
 with ; and he hoped that this Italian would like them 
 when he had had a year or two of them. 
 
 " I don't know, though, but what it is the only sen- 
 sible caprice she ever had in her life ; eh ?" he added ; 
 " except buying Escargot and giving him to me after 
 the races, — you remember? Hang it, I've never seen 
 such a Chantilly before or since as that was !" 
 
 " We never do see such a race as the one that we 
 happen to win," murmured ]\I. de St. Louis. 
 
 "Of course it's an awful cropper to take, and all 
 that; but I'm not sure but what she's done a wise 
 thing, though all the women are howling at her like 
 mad," continued Lord Clairvaux; "a woman can't live 
 forever on chiffons, you see." 
 
 " Most women can — admirably. They buy at eighty 
 as much white hair, the coiffeurs tell me, as they buy 
 blonde or black at twenty." 
 
 " Ah, but they can't, if they have a bit of heart or 
 mind in them. Hilda has both." 
 
 " The case is so rare I could not prescribe for it : let 
 us hope Miladi's own prescription will suit her," said
 
 256 /^V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 the Due, whose serene good humor was still slightly 
 ruffled. 
 
 " AVoll, she always was all extremes and contraries," 
 said Lord Clairvaux. "You never could say one min- 
 ute what she wouldn't do the next. By George ! you 
 know there is nothing too odd for her to go in for ; I 
 should not wonder an atom if when we come here two 
 or three years hence, Ave find her worshiping a curly 
 Paolino, seeing to the silkworms, and studying wine- 
 making: she's really tried everything else, you know." 
 
 "Everything except happiness? Well, very few of 
 us get any chance of tryiug that, or would appreciate 
 it if we did get it. Hajipiness," pursued the Due, pen- 
 sively, " must, after all, be almost as monotonous as 
 discontent, — when one is used to it. It is comforthig 
 to think so; for there is very little of it. I cannot 
 realize Miladi among the babies and the wine-presses j 
 but you may be right." 
 
 " Well, you know she's tried everything else," repeated 
 Lord Clairvaux. " It will be like Julius Caesar and 
 his cabbage-garden." 
 
 " You mean Diocletian," said the Due. " Do you 
 leave to-night? We may as well go as far as Paris 
 together." 
 
 And he turned back into the hotel to bid farewell to 
 Madame Mila. 
 
 Madame Mila, who had made the religious and civil 
 ceremonies gorgeous in the last new anomalous anach- 
 ronisms, with a classic clinging dress, quite Greek in its 
 cut, covered all over with the eyes out of peacocks' 
 feathers, and a cotte-de-maille bodice, stiff as paste- 
 board with gold and silver oinl)roideries, and who was
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 257 
 
 now on the point of departure across the Mont Cenis, 
 covered up in the most wonderful of hooded cloaks 
 trimmed with the feathers of the Russian diver and the 
 grebe ; about one hundred and fifty birds, happy, peace- 
 ful, and innocent under their native skies, had died to 
 trim the wrap, and it would probably be worn about 
 half a dozen times ; for feathers are so very soon chif- 
 fonn^s, as everybody knows. 
 
 "They are quite mad, both of them!" said the Count- 
 ess, giving her small fingers in adieu, and turning to 
 see that Maurice had all the things she wanted and 
 was duly hooking them on to her ceinture of oxidized 
 silver. 
 
 " Perhaps, madame," said the Due, who indeed 
 thought so himself. " But if a few people were not 
 mad occasionally there would be no chance for the 
 sanity of the world." 
 
 "Well, they will repent horribly, that is one com- 
 fort ; she most of all," said Madame Mila, with asper- 
 ity. " She ought to have been prevented ; treated for 
 lunacy, you know ; in France they would have managed 
 it at once with a conseil de famille. Maurice, you are 
 screwing the top of that flacon on all wrong : do take 
 more care ! She will repent horribly, but she don't see 
 it now. Of course if she had had to lose the jewels 
 they would have brought her to reason. As it is, she 
 don't in the least realize the horrible thing that she has 
 done, — not in the least, not in the least. When I said 
 to her that she wouldn't be able even to afford Worth, 
 she laughed, and answered that she would have one dress 
 from him every year for old friendship's sake for the 
 contadini's vintage balls, and that he would be sure to 
 
 22* R
 
 258 ^^ A WINTER CITY. 
 
 embroider her the loveliest Bacchic symbolisms and put 
 the cone of the thyrsus for buttons ! — only fancy ! She 
 could actually jest about that ! How miserable she will 
 be in three months when she has come back to her 
 senses ; and how miserable she will make him !" 
 
 " Chfere Comtesse," said the Due, taking up his hat 
 and cane, " everybody repents everything. It is a law 
 of Fate. The only difference is that some people repent 
 pleasantly and some unpleasantly. Let us hope that 
 our beautiful Duchess will repent pleasantly. Madame, 
 j'ai I'honneur de vous saluer — Bon voyage; au revoir." 
 
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 wisdom or her own ' views.' " — New York World. 
 
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 tion." — Min7ieapolis Tribune. 
 
 A Faithful Traitor. 
 
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 out. The circumstances are those wherein friendship, man for man, is put to its 
 severest test ; and loyalty to duty and prmciple, woman for woman, is exemplified 
 to a martyr-like degree." — Boston Courier. 
 
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