all-powerful; she fancied herself the soul of grand enterprises, as the confidante of generals and statesmen; and then she started from her reveries and looked at the calm, dark face of the giant who had rocked her to sleep with his strange stories, and she asked herself whether she would ever venture to enter, on his hand, those lofty regions towards which she was drawn by the ardent wishes of her proud, ambitious heart. The prince must have been particularly interested in winning the young girl's confidence, for he laid aside the cool reserve with which he treated all others, when he was alone with her. He even spoke of his family with the greatest frankness. He told her that, as for his parents, he only knew his mother really, because he saw his father but very rarely. His mother was living in St. Petersburg, where her influence at court was still very great, although an incurable affection had sadly disfigured the once surpassingly beautiful woman, and made her a melancholy enthusiast. His father, Count Malikowsky, he said, was spending most of his time in travelling and at watering-places, as he was still passionately fond of the pleasures of life in spite of his age and his delicate health, and thus could combine at these Spas pleasure and profit. He, the prince, had, properly speaking, nothing to do with his father. They exchanged short letters with each other once or twice a year, on special occasions; he had seen his father the last time at the capital, when he was swearing his oath of allegiance to the king, and he had been shocked by the sad appearance of the old gentleman, which the latter had tried in vain to conceal by the subtlest arts of the toilette. The count and the princess harmonized very little, as their characters were so utterly different. The count went once a year to St. Petersburg, appeared at court, showed himself once or twice at the Letbus House, and disappeared again, in order to send friendly greetings for another year from Homburg, Baden-Baden, Pyrmont, etc. Nor did the prince conceal his views on other subjects. He had evidently thought much about matters which are usually of no interest to young men of his rank; but as he was far from being brilliant, and as he looked upon everything from the unchangeable standpoint of the officer and the aristocrat, his views and thoughts were all more or less stiff and wooden, as if they had been so many well-drilled recruits. Of his profession he thought very highly.