Etienne was a boy of fifteen, tall and plump, with a sharp face, deep-set bluish eyes, and very large hands and feet for his age.  Likewise he was awkward, and had a nervous, unpleasing voice.  Nevertheless he seemed very pleased with himself, and was, in my opinion, a boy who could well bear being beaten with rods.

For a long time we confronted one another without speaking as we took stock of each other.  When the flood of dresses had swept past I made shift to begin a conversation by asking him whether it had not been very close in the carriage.

“I don’t know,” he answered indifferently.  “I never ride inside it, for it makes me feel sick directly, and Mamma knows that.  Whenever we are driving anywhere at night-time I always sit on the box.  I like that, for then one sees everything.  Philip gives me the reins, and sometimes the whip too, and then the people inside get a regular—­well, you know,” he added with a significant gesture “It’s splendid then.”

“Master Etienne,” said a footman, entering the hall, “Philip wishes me to ask you where you put the whip.”

“Where I put it?  Why, I gave it back to him.”

“But he says that you did not.”

“Well, I laid it across the carriage-lamps!”

“No, sir, he says that you did not do that either.  You had better confess that you took it and lashed it to shreds.  I suppose poor Philip will have to make good your mischief out of his own pocket.”  The footman (who looked a grave and honest man) seemed much put out by the affair, and determined to sift it to the bottom on Philip’s behalf.

Out of delicacy I pretended to notice nothing and turned aside, but the other footmen present gathered round and looked approvingly at the old servant.

“Hm—­well, I did tear it in pieces,” at length confessed Etienne, shrinking from further explanations.  “However, I will pay for it.  Did you ever hear anything so absurd?” he added to me as he drew me towards the drawing-room.

“But excuse me, sir; how are you going to pay for it?  I know your ways of paying.  You have owed Maria Valericana twenty copecks these eight months now, and you have owed me something for two years, and Peter for—­”

“Hold your tongue, will you!” shouted the young fellow, pale with rage, “I shall report you for this.”

“Oh, you may do so,” said the footman.  “Yet it is not fair, your highness,” he added, with a peculiar stress on the title, as he departed with the ladies’ wraps to the cloak-room.  We ourselves entered the salon.

“Quite right, footman,” remarked someone approvingly from the ball behind us.

Grandmamma had a peculiar way of employing, now the second person singular, now the second person plural, in order to indicate her opinion of people.  When the young Prince Etienne went up to her she addressed him as “You,” and altogether looked at him with such an expression of contempt that, had I been in his place, I should have been utterly crestfallen.  Etienne, however, was evidently not a boy of that sort, for he not only took no notice of her reception of him, but none of her person either.  In fact, he bowed to the company at large in a way which, though not graceful, was at least free from embarrassment.