It is easy to believe, then, that the prince lived from choice in Courland, and it was precisely his liking for the active and honorable life he led there that made him think one day of taking a wife. The hospitality of the Olsdorfs was a tradition. He told his wish to General Podoi, who had been one of his father's friends, and the middle-aged lover of the Countess Barineff naturally thought at once of making Lise the mistress of Pampeln. She was, he thought, just the wife for Peter the Silent, as he liked to call his young friend. Lise was serious, well-taught, and not given to frivolity, as most of the young girls of the Russian nobility were. He spoke of her to the prince, who came to St. Petersburg. After meeting the daughter of the Countess Barineff two or three times, being struck by her beauty and the look of distinction about her, he was soon convinced that he could make no better choice. He asked for her hand, and, as we have seen, he was accepted. The aim of the ex-comedienne having been thus far attained, things followed their regular course. Though he held no post at the court, Prince Olsdorf, through deference and in accordance with tradition, asked for the approval of the emperor to his marriage. The consent was readily given, and Pierre hastened to hand over his mansion at St. Petersburg, deserted for so many years, to the upholsterers. At this time the countess won a second victory. Sure of her exquisite taste, the prince begged her to take the matter in hand, so that nothing was done in the house of the future bride and bridegroom except by her orders. Her satisfaction while she was thus engaged was troubled only by a letter that she received from Paris in reply to that which she had addressed to her old comrade, Dumesnil. Less reserved than his friend, the actor at the Odéon Theatre had written to her: "MY DEAR MADELEINE,--I am very happy and very proud at Lise's marriage. I do not regret now the sacrifice I made, when you became the Countess Barineff, in allowing this dear child to be acknowledged by him who gave you his name. I wished above all things to secure the future of our daughter. Afterward, sacrificing my own future, I did not rejoin you in Russia, where, it may be, fortune and glory awaited me." The old comedian continued his letter with a lamentation on the decadence of the theater, the want of taste in the public, and the isolation to which he was condemned. He concluded by charging his former mistress to kiss, for an old friend, her whom he might not kiss as a father. The letter recalled to the Countess Barineff a crowd of disagreeable memories, and she rather regretted having written to Dumesnil, while she felt that it would have been difficult not to do so, for she had every reason to praise the conduct of this good fellow.