The Princess of Mingrelia was there again with her family, and I spent many hours of the day in her company. Her daughter, Princess Salomé, was by this time eighteen and released from the nursery, and I now kept up as lively an intercourse with her as with her mother. In age we two girls were actually better mates; an additional point was that we took riding lessons together, and every morning we used to go for a ride side by side in the roads of the park, under the oversight of the riding-master. That was a fine occasion for chatting, and we soon formed a cordial friendship. Salomé was to be presented at court at St. Petersburg the following winter, and to be introduced into society there—she looked out into the future with joyous hopes and plans; I, on the other hand, assumed rather a melancholy and resigned aspect, as one who no longer expected much from life. The two deaths by which dear ones were taken from me had really made me low-spirited; and the collapse of my artistic dreams had left me in a bad frame of mind, but of this matter I told her nothing. I confided to my new friend only the fact that two years before I had been in love with her uncle Heraclius—now, indeed, I had got the unhappy passion out of my mind, but yet there remained a certain dejection. Salomé only laughed at me for it. “How could one ever fall in love with such a sallow, bilious old man! No, no, Contessina, you will yet find a much better one.” The Dedopali’s two sons also had now grown up into tall, handsome young men. Prince Niko, the older, once caused us all a fine fright. He was to have a duel. He had been pursuing a little lady from Paris too ardently, and a rival had got into a rage over it; ugly words were exchanged, and the other man announced that on the following day he should send his seconds. The scene had had witnesses, and the old princess learned of it. Weeping and trembling she told me about the misfortune that had befallen, and I wept and trembled with her. Nothing was to be done about it: duels also belong to the unavoidable dispensation of things in this world—what young nobleman could refuse to take part in them? It was a sad business, of course, but no one in our circle dreamed of such a thing as harboring a mutinous thought against the absurdity of it. There was at that time as little talk of an anti-dueling league as of a league in opposition to duels between nations. To be exposed to murdering and being murdered was simply one of the chivalric and patriotic necessities that life brings to men. And when that is the case women can do nothing else but weep in timid admiration.