The 'small drawing-room' was a very large, and very brilliantly-furnished apartment, which, in spite of landscapes by Corot, in spite of gold-woven Japanese hangings, old inlaid cabinets and a thousand articles of value, produced a dreary in-harmonious impression. It was evident that nothing here was devised for the pleasure and comfort of the inmates of the house, but that everything was arranged with a view of impressing visitors. It almost seemed as if millions run mad had tossed all these splendours together aimlessly, insanely shouting, "something more costly, something more costly still!" Here sat the Contessa busied with some fancy work. She appeared well-bred, but shy, and embarrassed by her wealth, as she advanced a few steps to welcome the baroness, made a few conventional remarks, and then begged with a sigh to be excused for going on with her work, which work consisted in cutting all sorts of flowers and birds out of a piece of cretonne in order to sew them on a piece of satin. She devoted several hours a day to this occupation, and since her own rooms, as well as those of her acquaintances, were far too splendidly furnished to have any place in them for this sort of work, the result of her diligence was bestowed every year upon some charity-bazaar. Zoe Melkweyser thought the Contessa unusually depressed. Excited voices were heard in the next room, and every time that there was a particularly loud explosion the mistress of the mansion winced. "Can the 300,000 francs which the Duke of Larothiere lost last night be a bitter pill for even King Midas?" Zoe asked herself. This supposition proved, however to be erroneous. Madame Capriani moved her chair rather nearer to Zoe, and whispered, "My husband is terribly agitated,--my poor son--that article in _Figaro_,--you saw it of course ...." "I? I have not seen _Figaro_ to-day," Zoe reassured her. It was true, she had not seen _Figaro_ but she had heard of the article to which the countess alluded; the excitement in the _casa_ Capriani was quite intelligible to her now. No, Capriani never even pulled a wry face at the sums lost at play by his son-in-law; he enjoyed smiling away such losses; everything was allowable in the duke. For the comparatively petty extravagances of his own son he had much less forbearance, in fact he showed very little tenderness for this scion of his, whose name was Arthur, and who was far from satisfactory to his father. The Croesus could forgive his son's noble scorn of everything relating to business, for positively refusing to have a desk in his father's counting-room and for devoting his entire existence to sport,--but it drove him frantic to have Arthur held up to ridicule by the sporting world. Hitherto Arthur's grandest achievements in the sporting world had culminated in a couple of broken collar-bones and a quantity of lost wagers,--today their number had been increased by a trifling _fiasco_.