If Primula, who looked somewhat shyly from under the cornflowers on her bonnet, seemed to stand rather in need of some such encouragement, the editor of Chrysophilos evidently could very well do without it. Humility, it is true, spoke from his small eyes, which squinted suspiciously above the golden rim of his spectacles as he approached with bent back; modesty, it is true, smiled from the unpleasant lines which, marked the large mouth with its low-drawn comers; but they were the humility and the modesty of a cat rubbing her back against the foot of the ladder which leads to the garret where the fat pigeons are cooing. He went up to the baroness, kissed repeatedly her graciously-extended hand, bowed low to the other two ladies, not quite so low to the gentlemen, seated himself after some hesitation on the edge of a chair which stood rather outside of the circle, and waited, his head slightly on one side, till somebody should feel disposed to honor him with a question. The conversation of the company turned on a most interesting subject, the person of his Highness, First Lieutenant Prince Waldenberg, who had been ordered a few weeks ago from his regiment of the Guards at the Capital to the line regiment which was in garrison at Grunwald, and who had of course, from his first appearance, become, the lion of the whole country nobility now residing in town. "Only I should like to know why he has been ordered here," said Cloten. "Felix, with whom I talked it over yesterday--_apropos_, it is very well, madame, you make him keep his room; he looks really very badly--Felix thinks the prince has probably had another duel; they say he is the most passionate man in the world." "Why, Arthur!" said Emily. "You talk as if passion were a crime. I wish some people I know had a little more of it." "Are not the Waldenbergs of Slavonic descent?" asked Hortense. "It seems to me the prince looks like a Mongolian." "Oh! you have not seen him near, my dearest Barnewitz," said Emily; "he is one of the handsomest men I have ever seen, and he dances divinely." "I believe the Waldenbergs are originally a Polish family," said Anna Maria. "Not at all, madame," cried Cloten; "pure Germanic, upon honor, pure Germanic." "I am sure Professor Jager can tell us something more about that," said the baroness, turning with a gracious smile towards the man of science.