“To be as much alone with you in great Paris as if we were on a desert island in the Pacific—­in the midst of the crowd, yet having no part with it; spectators of its amusing doings, and yet unnoticed by it.  You all my world, and I yours—­what a sweet and perfect dream!” Thus Pilar as she went out in fine weather, thickly veiled, on Wilhelm’s arm into the crowded streets, and she did her utmost to prolong the charming delusion as far as possible.  She paid no visits, invited no one to the house, avoided every familiar face in the street.  Through the consul and Don Antonio, however, her more immediate circle got wind by degrees of her return to Paris, and visitors began to call at the little house on the Boulevard Pereire who would not submit to being sent away.  With the versatility of mind peculiar to her, Pilar soon adapted herself to the new position of affairs, and tried to make the best of it.  Of course it would have been infinitely more agreeable, she said to Wilhelm, to have been able to remain longer in their delicious seclusion, but, sooner or later, social life would have to be resumed, and it was best he should make a beginning now.  “Do not be afraid,” she added, “that I shall ask you to make the acquaintance of all the asses and parrots that have chattered and gesticulated round me for years.  You shall only know a really select few, who are fond of me, and who can offer you friendship and appreciation.”

And so the march past of the elect began, most of them being invited either to lunch or dinner.  Wilhelm found them very peculiar and uncongenial, and, on the whole, derived but little satisfaction from their acquaintance.  Pilar had a small weakness; according to her account, each one of her more intimate friends was a striking and original character, the possessor of the rarest qualities.  It was the only touch of snobbishness of which one could have accused her.  She announced the arrival of an old Spanish general, “a hero of quite the antique, classic type, one of the most remarkable figures in the history of modern warfare,” and there entered to them a little old man, shuffling in with the flurried, dragging gait of a paralytic, unable to lift his feet from the ground, stammering out a few commonplaces, who could not keep his gold eyeglasses on his nose, and who, when he was informed that Wilhelm had fought in the Franco-Prussian War, frankly admitted that, though he had commanded at many a grand review, he had never been in real action.

Another time a Great Thinker was to appear, a profound sage, with whom Wilhelm would be delighted, thoroughly versed in German philosophy, a critic of immense and independent spirit.  But what Wilhelm really saw was a slovenly, pock-marked man, with a very arrogant manner, who smoked cigarettes without intermission, and preserved an obstinate silence, behind which one was naturally free to imagine the profoundest thoughts, if one wished it; and who, when Pilar tried to lead