"You must not think that we were no better than savages because at first we fought against the Czars. Boris Godounov was glad enough of our help against the Tartars, Circassians and Cheremisses. I admit we always preferred fighting against European enemies. It was Alexis Tumene, son-in-law of Peter the Great, who led the great charge at Pultawa. As a reward the Czar ordained that his reforming edicts should not run in Tumene territories. We have at home a portrait in the style of your Mignard representing Alexis in a feathered cap, a golden lambskin, embroidered like a chasuble, and wearing his moustaches long, a fashion which the Czar had forbidden every one else. "The first Tumene to shave was my great-grand-father, Vladimir. He it was who was nearly shot by the orders of Barclay de Tolly. I don't remember the reason. He was in command of the Astrakhan Cossack Corps who bivouacked in the Champs-Elysées and apparently played the devil there. My great-grandfather did a good deal of looting, but converted his booty into cash which he soon lost at the Palais-Royal. You see he banked on red, and black came up fourteen times running. "Vladimir's father was at first on excellent terms with Catherine II. When she had had enough of him she made him marry a lady from Anhalt. This was the first time my family had contracted an alliance in this country. I hope I shall close the list. I don't say that to hurt your feelings, Melusine, but really that particular German was stupid and miserly. For instance, of the seven children she gave her husband not one was in her own image. They were all little Cossacks. "My grandmother came from Erivan. I am told I'm like her, but she was better-looking than I. She was madly in love with my grandfather, and abjured her faith in order to marry him. But before this she adored shooting, which is a long way the finest faith on earth. "Papa, who will come into my story again, is the second, member of the family to marry a German, and once more a Hohenzollem. But you must hear how it happened. Like his grandfather Vladimir, he was an inveterate gambler. He took an oath to win back everything his grandfather had lost in France. Indeed, he would have utterly ruined himself there, if you ever could ruin yourself with lands as big as six of your departments, Cossacks too numerous to count and flocks and herds which doubled every year. "He always spent ten months of the year in Paris--he was a member of the Jockey Club--Aix, Nice and every other place to which men of his type resort. It was at Aix that he met my mother. The year was 1882. One evening he was at the Villa des Fleurs with King George of Greece and the Grand Duke Vassily. They had been drinking a good deal and should not have been alone. Then Papa began to pour out scandal about women, swearing that they were all alike and that he, a Tumene prince and obliged to marry to perpetuate his name, had decided to marry any one Fate threw in his way.