In matters such as these, Madame Steynlin was the reverse of the Duchess.  True to her ideal of La Pompadour, that lady did not mind how many men danced attendance on her—­the more the merrier.  Nor did she bother about their ages; for all she cared, they might be, and often were, the veriest crocks.  She was rather particular, however, about stiff collars and things; the appearance and conversation of her retinue, she avowed, should be of the kind to pass muster in good society.  Madame Steynlin liked to have not more than one man escorting her at a time, and he should be young, healthy-looking, and full of life.  In regard to minor matters she preferred, if anything, Byronic collars to starched ones; troubling little, for the rest, what costume her cavalier was wearing or what opinions he expressed.  In fact, she liked youngsters to be frank, impetuous, extravagant in their views and out of the common rut.  The two ladies had been likened to Divine and Earthly Love, or to Venus Urania and Venus Pandemos—­a comparison which was manifestly unfair to both of them.

It was during this summer bathing that Madame Steynlin had made acquaintance of what was, at the time, the Master’s favourite disciple.  His name happened to be Peter—­Peter Arsenievitch Krasnojabkin.  He was a fine son of earth—­a strapping young giant who threw himself into eating, drinking, and other joys of life with enviable barbaric zest.  There was not an ounce of piety in his composition.  He had donned the scarlet blouse because he wanted to see Nepenthe and, like the Christians of old, had no money.  Driven by that roving spirit which is the Muscovite’s heritage and by the desire of all sensible men to taste new lands, new wine, new women, he professed himself a Little White Cow.  It was quite the regular thing to do.  It brought you to the notice of that secret committee of enthusiasts who paid your travel expenses; it gave you a free trip to the sunny south.  Everyone wondered how he had managed to rise so rapidly in the Master’s graces.  Madame Steynlin now stepped between them.  She grew fond of Peter, and marked him for her own.  He fulfilled every one of her conditions as to age, costume and opinions.  Besides, he was always so gloriously hungry!  She invited him to take luncheon once or twice and then began to take Russian lessons from him.  “He is only a boy,” she would say.

Conversing, as best she could, with this child of nature, it dawned upon her that she had hitherto been mistaken in her estimate of the Russian character.  She began to understand the inward sense of that brotherly love, that apostolic spirit, which binds together every class of the immense Empire—­to revere their simplicity of soul and calm god-like faith.  She revised her former narrow Lutheran views and openly confessed that she was quite wrong in declaring, as she once did, that what the Little White Cows needed was “more soap and less salvation.”  The magic of love!  It softened, not for the first