“Your worship will excuse me if I beg you to commence your history at the conclusion. I have several customers waiting below.” “I will be brief. It is the custom in certain cold regions for every young girl who has reached her seventeenth year to make a tour for a couple of months to look out for a husband. Those who make any impression on her, or on whom she makes an impression, accompany her home to her father, who then makes his choice among the suitors. The fair Wahallaaka had just reached her seventeenth year, when I fell in with her at the close of the circuit. My attention was first attracted by the splendour of the sledge in which she rode. It was drawn by thirty wolves, which shook the crimson silk tassels and jingled the steel chains of their harness. Seven hundred and sixty-seven suitors rode behind her. The eyes of the fair Scandinavian met mine, and she felt at once that her journey was completed. Could she meet with a more suitable husband? She was not foolish enough to suppose so; and, giving me a sign to join the _cortège_, she gave the order to return to Khétakous-Mouvoskaïa, which is the capital of her father’s dominions. He, a man full of judgment and taste, confirmed his daughter’s choice, and it was decided that at the expiration of two months I should become the husband of the beauteous Wahallaaka. For fifty days we had a succession of festivals. Sledge races by torchlight were followed by balls and concerts. White bear-hunting, whale-catching, and a thousand other innocent diversions, furnished me with opportunities for the display of my brilliant intelligence, my strength, my courage, my address, my presence of mind, my grace, my agility, my----” Ali Pépé threw an imploring glance at Allegrignac. “I will be brief. Nothing in this world is perfect, and the incomparable Wahallaaka had her share of imperfections. She was given to flirting and fibbing: she was fickle, she was foolish, she was vain, she was rash.” “Sir!” sighed the count’s wretched listener. “I will be brief. You are right; why should I open again these scarce-healed wounds? A page one day brought me a letter from my future bride. ‘Go,’ it said; ‘leave me, to prove your love for me. The ties which are about to unite us are so serious that I wish, before confirming them irretrievably, to assure myself that I have not been mistaken in my choice of you. Go; during your absence I intend to give myself, without reserve, to all the pleasures of society. I shall do everything I can to forget you, and if in a year’s time, when you return, I still love you, then, my knight, I will be your bride. You will go to Spain. I do not give you that Eden for your place of exile without good reason. They assert that the men there are the handsomest in the world. Well, my betrothed, when your time comes to return, choose one of the finest of these wretches, cut off his head, and bring it to me, that I may judge with my own eyes of the beauty of the barbarian type.’”