“Time was,” he said, “when one met here the cream of Parisian wit and fashion:  the great Flaubert, a noisy fellow at times, I vow; Dumas fils; Cabanel, Gerome, Duran; ever-winning Carolus—­ah, what men!  Now we get Polish pianists, crazy Belgians, anarchistic poets, and Neo-impressionists.  I have warned the princess again and again.”

“Becasse!” interrupted the lady herself.  “Monsieur Rajewski has consented to play a Chopin nocturne.  And here are my two painters, Miss Adams—­Messieurs Bla and Maugre.  They hate each other like the Jesuits and Jansenists of the good old days of Pascal.”

“She likes to display her learning,” grumbled the marquis to Mrs. Sheldam.  “That younger man, Bla, swears by divided tones; his neighbour, Maugre, paints in dots.  One is always to be recognized a half-mile away by his vibrating waterscapes—­he calls them Symphonies of the Wet; the other goes in for turkeys in the grass, fowls that are cobalt-blue daubs, with grass a scarlet.  It’s awful on the optic nerves. Pointillisme, Maugre names his stuff.  Now, give me Corot—­”

“Hush, hush!” came in energetic sibilants from the princess, who rapped with her Japanese walking-stick for silence.  Mr. Sheldam woke up and fumbled the pictures as Rajewski, slowly bending his gold-dust aureole until it almost grazed the keyboard, began with deliberate accents a nocturne.  Miss Adams knew his playing well, but its poetry was not for her this evening; rather did the veiled tones of the instrument form a misty background to the human tableau.  So must Chopin have woven his magic last century, and in a salon like this—­the wax candles burning with majestic steadiness in the sculptured sconces; the huge fireplace, monumental in design, with its dull brass garnishing; the subdued richness of the decoration into which fitted, as figures in a frame, the various guests.  Even the waxed floor seemed to take on new reverberations as the pianoforte sounded the sweet despair of the Pole.  To her dismay Ermentrude caught herself drifting away from the moment’s hazy charm to thoughts of her poet.  It annoyed her, she sharply reminded herself, that she could not absolutely saturate herself with the music and the manifold souvenirs of the old hotel; perhaps this may have been the spell of Rajewski’s playing....

The music ceased.  A dry voice whispered in her ear:—­

“Great artist, that chap Rajewski.  Had to leave Russia once because he wouldn’t play the Russian national hymn for the Czar.  Bless me, but he was almost sent to Siberia—­and in irons too.  Told me here in this very room that he was much frightened.  They lighted fires in Poland to honour his patriotism.  He acknowledged that he would have played twenty national hymns, but he couldn’t remember the Russian one, or never knew it—­anyhow, he was christened a patriot, and all by a slip of the memory.  Now, that’s luck, isn’t it?”

She began to dislike this cynical old man with his depreciating tales of genius.  She knew that her idols often tottered on clay feet, but she hated to be reminded of that disagreeable reality.  She went to Monsieur Rajewski and thanked him prettily in her cool new voice, and again the princess nodded approval.