The baroness, in her efforts to bring these discordant social elements together and to keep her salons full until the famous interview, constantly moved about, carried on ten different conversations at once, raising her soft, melodious voice to the purring pitch that distinguishes Oriental women,--a wheedling, seductive voice, and a mind as supple as her waist, opening all sorts of subjects, and, as convention requires, mingling fashions and sermons on charity, theatres and auction sales,--the scandalmonger and the confessor. She possessed a great personal charm in addition to this acquired science of entertaining, a science visible even in her very simple black dress, which brought out in relief her cloistral pallor, her houri-like eyes, her smooth, glossy hair, parted above a narrow, unwrinkled brow,--a brow whose mystery was accentuated by the too thin lips, closing to the curious the whole varied, adventurous past of that ex-odalisque, who was of no age, had no knowledge of the date of her birth, did not remember that she had ever been a child. Clearly, if the absolute power of evil, very rarely found in women, whom their impressionable physical nature subjects to so many varying currents, could exist in a human soul, it would be found in the soul of that slave trained to concessions and fawning, rebellious but patient, and thoroughly self-controlled, like all those whom the habit of wearing a veil lowered over their eyes has accustomed to lying without danger and without scruple. At that moment no one could have suspected the agony of suspense from which she was suffering, to see her kneeling in front of the princess, a good-humored old woman, of unceremonious manners, of whom La Fuernberg constantly said: "Well, if she's a princess!" "Oh! godmother, don't go yet, I beg you!" She overwhelmed her with all sorts of fascinating little tricks of action and expression, without acknowledging, of course, that she was determined to detain her until Jansoulet's arrival, in order to make her contribute to her triumph. "You see," said the good woman, pointing to the Armenian, sitting, majestic and solemn, his tasselled hat on his knees, "I have to take poor monseigneur to the _Grand-Saint-Christophe_ to buy medals. He could never do it without me." "But I want you to stay. You must. Just a few minutes more." And the baroness glanced furtively toward the gorgeous, old-fashioned clock hanging in a corner of the salon.