“On this particular night he was rather agitated when I made my salutations.  He whispered to me that madame the princess had that very day presented him with a son and heir.  Naturally I congratulated him.  His restlessness increased as the evening wore on.  At last he beckoned to me—­we were very old friends—­to follow him into his library.  There he hesitated.

“’I want you to do me a favour, an odd one; but as you are known to me so long I venture to ask it.  Do go upstairs and see my boy—­’ His tone was that of entreaty.  I smiled.

“’Dear prince, I am, as a priest, hardly a judge of children.  But if you wish it—­is there anything wrong with the little chap’s health?’

“‘God forbid!’ he ejaculated and piously crossed himself.  We went to the first etage of his palace—­he was gorgeously housed—­and there he said:—­

“’Madame is in another wing of our apartments—­go in here—­the child is attended by the nurse.’  With that he pushed me through a swinging door and left me standing in a semi-lighted chamber.  I was very near ill temper, I assure you, for my position was embarrassing.  The room was large and heavily hung with tapestries.  A nurse, a hag, a witch, a dark old gypsy creature, came over to me and asked me, in Russian:—­

“‘Do you wish to see his Royal Highness the King of Earth and Heaven?’ Thinking she was some stupid moujik’s wife, I nodded my head seriously, though amused by the exalted titles.  She put up a thin hand and I tiptoed to a cradle of gold and ivory—­it certainly seemed so to my inexperienced eyes—­the nurse parted the curtains, and there I saw—­I saw—­but my son, you will think I exaggerate—­I saw the most exquisite baby in the universe.  You laugh at an old bachelor’s rhapsody!  In reality I don’t care much for children.  But that child, that supreme morsel of humanity, was too much for me.  I stood and stared and stood and stared, and all the while the tiny angel was smiling in my eyes, oh! such a celestial smile.  From his large blue eyes, like flowers, he smiled into my very soul.  I was chained to the floor as if by lead.  Every fibre of my soul, heart, and brain went out to that little wanderer from the infinite.  It was a pathetic face, full of suppressed sorrow—­Dieu! but he was older than his father.  I found my mind beginning to wander as if hypnotized.  I tried to divert my gaze, but in vain.  Some subtle emanation from this extraordinary child entered my being, and then, as if a curtain were being slowly lowered, a mist encompassed my soul; I was ceding, I felt, the immortal part of me to another, and all the time I was smiling at the baby and the baby smiling back.  I remember his long blond hair, parted in the middle and falling over his shoulders; but even that remarkable trait for an infant a few hours old did not puzzle me, for my sanity was surely being undermined by the persistent gaze of the boy.  I vaguely recall passing my hand across my breast as if to stop the crevice through which my personality was filtering; I was certain that my soul was about to be stolen by that damnable child.  Then the nurse dropped something, and my thoughts came back,—­they were surely on the road to hell, for they were red and flaming when I got hold of them,—­and the spell, or whatever it was, snapped.