The heat was frightful. One could hardly endure it in the rooms, and we spent our days and took our meals (consisting of mutton, mutton, mutton) on a wooden balcony which ran around the house over the court. After two days our Armenian took his departure, and a third messenger came to be our guardian and protector. This time it was a family friend of the Dadianis, an old French nobleman _de vieille roche_, with the fine manners _de l’ancien régime_. His name was Comte de Rosmorduc. Born in Bretagne, he had come to the Caucasus some twenty-five years before (for what reason I do not know) and had settled down there for good. He had married a Mingrelian woman, and owned a house which he had himself built at Zugdidi. He was a welcome associate of the princess and her children, and later became a dear friend of ours also. He now did us the honors of Kutais. He introduced us at the home of General Zeretelli, the foremost house in the city. The Zeretellis were Caucasians and relatives of the Dadianis. They showed themselves very obliging, even arranging for a great reception in our honor on the following evening, to which all the notabilities and aristocratic families of the place were invited. The daughter, Nina, was a famous beauty, but as she was twenty-five she was regarded already as an old maid. Girls in the Caucasus usually marry at fifteen or sixteen. The Countess Rosmorduc, who was then thirty-five, had been married for twenty years. She also was a great beauty; but we did not make her acquaintance until the next year. The soirée at the house of the Zeretellis left an ineffaceable impression on our minds, because it was the first time that we got a glimpse of the social life of the country. Here we saw ladies in their national costume and witnessed for the first time the performance of the national dance—the _Lesginka_. We also participated for the first time at a banquet where the fiery Kachetin wine was poured from slender silver flagons into great drinking-horns, and where a toastmaster, chosen to this honorable office, proposed the healths—on this occasion, as first of all, the health of the guests from Austria. The host and hostess did not sit down at table but helped serve. Among those present we found many who spoke French, and where that was not the case Count Rosmorduc, who had learned the language of the country, served as dragoman.