“What! Is his picture still alive in your heart, little Contessina? Well, he is soon coming to Paris ... and if you can’t have him, we will find another husband here for you, for it is high time you were married—twenty-three already, that is almost being an old maid! I shall marry off my Salomé before she gets to be twenty; only it is a pity, dearest, that you have not a good big dot. That is the main question here in Paris. Grace and beauty do not suffice. Salomé is to get an income of fifty thousand francs, a present that her brother Niko gives her; with that it will be an easier matter to find a good _parti_. And I already have my eye on some one, a member of the imperial family.” “Of Russia?” “No, of France.” The princess and her daughter never missed any of the Empress Eugénie’s _petits lundis_, and the Empress herself had proposed the marriage plan to which the Dedopali referred. She would not say anything more definite about it just then, and even Salomé, whom I questioned, professed to know nothing at all of the matter. The imperial box at the opera was frequently put at the disposal of the two ladies, and they often invited me to accompany them. One morning, when I came to my lesson at the music school, young Madame Duprez called to me: “Were you at the opera yesterday evening?” “Yes; Madame Sass was a splendid Valentine.” “So that was you, was it? In the Emperor’s box?” “Yes,” I replied, inwardly amused, in a tone as if it were my usual habit to occupy such places and no others at the theater. I felt that the incident made an impression on the whole school; evidently they were not in the habit of seeing the pupils in the monarch’s box. In the Mingrelian salon, on the other hand, my musical performances made a great impression again; there they were evidently not in the habit of seeing dilettantes sit down to the piano and treat the company to concert waltzes and colorature arias. Little—say, petty—gratifications of vanity. The expected Prince Heraclius of Georgia did not come to Paris. Probably if he had come the flame in my heart would have flared up again, and the ambitious dream of becoming a great lady might have displaced that of the “great artist”; all the more because doubts about my talent kept growing upon me, the wretched nervousness refused to be overcome, and when I performed on the experimental stage I was unable to make a real success. Only my mother kept stimulating my courage and ambition; the maestro, too, promised that in a year or two of study he should form me into a superior artist, and I persevered.