Once more the eyes of Princess Gulof flashed and twinkled, and she cried:  “An adventurer with green eyes!  Why, it is a superb match, and I find you hard to please.”

“You grieve me, princess,” said Mme. de Lorcy.  “I had promised myself that you would lend me the assistance of your judgment, your incomparable penetration, your experienced eye; that you would aid me in unmasking this Pole, in detecting in him some irremediable vice that would at once prove an insurmountable obstacle to the marriage.  Be good, for once in your life; may I present him to you?”

“I repeat to you that I am merely taking Paris in passing,” replied the princess, “and I am expected in England.  Besides, you do too much honour to my incomparable penetration.  I swear to you that I am no connoisseur in Larinskis; you may as well spare yourself the pains of presenting to me yours.  I am a good-natured woman, who has often been made a good dupe, and I do not complain of it.  The best reminiscences of my past are of sundry agreeable errors, and of men skilled in deception.  I have found it the wisest way to judge by the labels, and never to ask any one to show me the contents of his sack, for I long ago discovered that sacks are very apt to be empty or at best only poorly filled.  Let your goddaughter act according to her own head; if she deceives herself, it is because she wishes to be deceived, and she knows better than you what suits her. Eh! bon Dieu, what matters it if there be one more unhappy household under the broad canopy of heaven?  Besides, it is only fools who are unhappy, and who stupidly pause before a closed portal; others manage in some way to find a loop-hole of escape.  Marriage, my dear, is an institution worn threadbare.  Ten years hence there will be only free women and husbands on trial.  Ten years hence the Countess Larinski will be a liberated countess.  Let her serve her time as a galley-slave, and she will come out entirely cured of her follies.”

Just as Princess Gulof was finishing this remarkable declaration of her principles, the door opened and Mlle. Moriaz entered.  Whatever it might cost her to do so, the future Countess Larinski faithfully kept the promise she had made to her father.  Mme. de Lorcy was strictly on her guard; she hastened to meet her, held out both hands, kissed her on both cheeks, and reproached her, in the most affectionate tone in the world, for the rarity of her visits.  Then she presented her to the princess, who said:  “Come here, my beauty, that I may look at you; I have been told that you are adorable.”