The princess manifested, in listening to him, an astonished curiosity; she concluded by saying to him, "Count, I admire you; but I believe only in physiology, and you are a little too much of a Pole for me." After they had left the table and repaired to the salon, several callers dropped in. It was like a deliverance to Samuel. If the society was not numerous enough for him to lose himself in it, at least it served him as a shield. He held it for a certainty that the princess had not recognized him; yet he did not cease feeling in her presence unutterably ill at ease. This Calmuck visage of hers recalled to him all the miseries, the shame, the hard grinding slavery of his youth; he could not look at her without feeling his brow burn as though it were being seared with a hot iron. He entered into conversation with a supercilious, haughty, and pedantic counselor-at-law, whose interminable monologues distilled ennui. This fine speaker seemed charming to Samuel, who found in him wit, knowledge, scholarship, and taste; he possessed the (in his eyes) meritorious quality of not knowing Samuel Brohl. For Samuel had come to divide the human race into two categories: the first comprehended those well-to-do, thriving people who did not know a certain Brohl; he placed in the second, old women who did know him. He interrogated the counselor with deference, he hung upon his words, he smiled with an air of approbation at all the absurdities which escaped him; he would have been willing to have his discourse last three hours by the watch; if this charming bore had shown symptoms of escaping him, he would have held him back by the button. Suddenly he heard a harsh voice saying to Madame de Lorcy, "Where is Count Larinski? Bring him to me; I want to have a discussion with him." He could not do otherwise than comply; he quitted his counselor with regret, went over and took a seat in the arm-chair that Madame de Lorcy drew up for him at the side of the princess, and which had for him the effect of a stool of repentance. Madame de Lorcy moved away, and he was left _tete-a-tete_ with Princess Gulof, who said to him, "I have been told that congratulations are due you, and I must make them at once--although we are enemies." "By what right are we enemies, princess?" he asked, with a slightly troubled feeling, which quickly passed away as she answered, "I am a Russian and you are a Pole; but we shall have no time for fighting: I leave for London to-morrow morning at seven o'clock." He was on the point of casting himself at her feet and tenderly kissing her two hands in testimony of his gratitude. "To-morrow at seven o'clock," he mentally ejaculated. "I have slandered her: she has some good in her."