It was a very strange brown head, with burning black eyes beneath dark lids; a passionate face, with blood-red lips, and only marred by rather a long nose. Altogether its possessor seemed very pretty and precociously mature for her five-and-twenty years, having the look of a Bacchante garmented by the foremost dressmakers of the reign. 'Yes, the Baroness,' repeated Jantrou. 'I knew her when she was a young girl, at her father's, Count de Ladricourt. Oh! a mad speculator he was, and revoltingly brutal. I went to take his orders every morning; one day he came near giving me a beating. I shed no tears when he died in an apoplectic fit, ruined after a series of lamentable "settlements." The little one then had to make up her mind to marry Baron Sandorff, Counsellor to the Austrian Embassy, who was thirty-five years older than herself, and whom she had positively driven mad with her fiery glances.' 'I know,' said Saccard, simply. The Baroness's head had again dived back into the brougham, but it almost immediately reappeared, more ardent than ever, and turned so as to command a better view of the Place. 'She speculates, doesn't she?' 'Oh, like a crazy woman! Whenever there is a crisis, she is to be seen there in her carriage, following the quotations, feverishly taking notes in her memorandum book, giving orders--and see! it was Massias whom she was waiting for: here he comes to join her.' In fact, Massias, his quotations in his hand, was running up as fast as his short legs would carry him, and they saw him rest his elbows on the carriage door, and pop his head through the open window, in order to confer with the Baroness. Then Saccard and Jantrou stepped away a little, so that they might not be caught spying on the pair, and as the _remisier_ came back, still on the run, they called him. He at first gave a glance back, to make sure that he was hidden by the street corner, and then he stopped short, out of breath, his florid face quite purple, but still gay, with big blue eyes as limpid as those of a child. 'But what is the matter with them all?' he cried. 'There's Suez all going to rack and ruin. There are rumours of a war with England, a piece of news that revolutionises them all, and that comes no one knows whence. War, indeed! who can have invented such a cram? Or did it invent itself all alone? At all events, there's a nice to-do!' 'Does the lady still bite?' asked Jantrou with a wink. 'Oh, madly! I am carrying her orders to Nathansohn.' Saccard, who was listening, remarked: 'Ah, yes, so it's true, then; I had heard that Nathansohn had joined the _coulisse_.'