She welcomed me with great propriety--while the old man kept screaming as if possessed. "Iolanthe--girl--where are you hiding? A bachelor's here--a suitor--a----" "Krakow!" I said, completely taken aback. "Don't joke that way about an old blade like me." And the Baroness saved me by saying very neatly: "Don't worry, Baron. We mothers gave you up as hopeless years ago." "But the girl can come in at any rate," screamed the old fellow. And finally she came. Gentlemen, take off your hats! I stood there as if somebody had knocked me on the head. A thoroughbred, gentlemen, a thoroughbred! A figure like a young queen's, her hair loose, in a thousand wavelets and ringlets, golden brown, like the mane of a Barbary steed. Her throat full, white and voluptuous. Her bosom not too high, and broad and curving at the sides. In a horse, we call it a lion's chest. And when she breathed, her whole body seemed to breathe along with her lungs, so strongly did the air pulsate through that glorious young body. Gentlemen, you don't have to go in for breeding animals as a passionate pursuit to know how much toil and effort it costs to produce a perfect specimen, no matter of what species. And I'm not a woman connoisseur, and one doesn't have to be, to fold one's hands at the sight of so perfect a creature and pray, "O Lord, I thank Thee for allowing such a thing to walk the earth. For as long as such bodies are created we need have no fear for our souls." The one thing I did not quite like at first was her eyes. Too pale a blue, too languishing for such an abundance of life. They seemed to be soaring towards heaven, and yet, when they narrowed, a searching, lowering look came into them, the sort of look surly dogs get from being beaten too often. Old Krakow caught her by both shoulders and began to brag outrageously. "This is _my_ work--this is what I brought into being--I'm the father of this," and so on. She tried to shake him off and turned scarlet. Aha, ashamed of him. Then the ladies got the table ready for coffee. Fresh brown waffles, preserves after the Russian fashion, gleaming damask, knives and spoons with buckhorn handles, the fine blue smoke of charcoal puffing up from the chimney of the brass coffee machine, making everything still cosier. We sat there drinking our coffee. Old Krakow blustered, the Baroness smiled a fine melancholy smile, and Iolanthe made eyes at me. Yes, gentlemen, made eyes at me. You may be at the time of life when that sort of thing happens to you none too rarely. But just you get to be well on in your forties, conscious to the very depths of your soul of your fatness and baldness, and you'll see how grateful you'll be even to a housemaid or a barmaid for taking the trouble to ogle you. And a thousand times more so if she happens to be one of the elite like this one, a creature allowed to walk this earth by God's grace.