Ivan recovered slowly from his severe and painful wound. He had just risen from his bed one day, and was sitting, pale and languid, near the table trying to read, when he heard some one inquiring for him. He had received frequent visits from his comrades in the Guards, and from other friends in the army; but now he turned gladly to welcome one whom he had not seen since the night of the assault. “Michael Ivanovitch!” he exclaimed; “I am delighted to see you.” Michael returned his greeting with respectful and affectionate warmth, and they sat down to talk over all that had happened. The change in Ivan’s appearance shocked and grieved his old playfellow. “You look so pale and worn, Barrinka,” he said. “Have they been good to you here?” “Most kind and good,” said Ivan. “I have had the best of care and nursing. But oh, Michael, I have been longing to tell you the luck the bandage brought me which you placed on my wound. It was wonderful!” And he told the story of his acquaintance with the De Talmonts. “Nothing can exceed their kindness to me,” he said. “They insist upon my becoming their guest--or rather, I suppose I should say, the guest of the aged relative with whom they live. They are good enough to tell me she is eager to make my acquaintance. So I go to them to-morrow; indeed, it was with difficulty I contrived to put it off so long, but I could not bear to burden them with a helpless invalid.” “Ah, Barrinka, you make friends everywhere!” “These friends were made for me, first by you, then by the Czar, who has put all loyal Frenchmen under infinite obligations. But tell me, Michael, what do you think of Paris? I have not been there yet, you know.” “Well, Barrinka,” said Michael meditatively, and with the air of an old traveller, “I do not think much of it after all. I would not compare it for a moment with St. Petersburg, not to speak of holy Moscow. I never saw holy Moscow until just before the fire,--and that was like seeing a lovely face with the hand of death upon it,--but this city of the Frenchmen is nothing to it--nothing! To what it _was_, I mean,” he added with a sigh. “Where do you see anything like the great beautiful houses, painted red and green and purple and yellow; like the roofs of burnished lead, all shining as if they were on fire; like the gilded domes and crosses on the tops of our churches? Napoleon himself had the wit to admire them, and to know he had nothing half so good in his own country, so he got the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides gilt to look like one of ours,--a Frenchman told me that himself.--Curse those Invalids!” said Michael, with a sudden change of manner and a look of gloom and ill-humour. “And why so? What harm have the poor old fellows done to you?” asked Ivan, half laughing. “Great harm, Barrinka. Think of their having got hold of our own Maria Ivanovka and taken her for themselves!” “Your--_who?_”