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The Prince of Wales heard my question, and immediately, with his charming tact and ease of manner, said to me: "You don't know the Princesse Mathilde; do let me have the pleasure of presenting you to her," naming me at once in my official capacity, "wife of the Minister of Foreign Affairs."

"She essentially resembled Socrates," says Mathilde Blind, "in her manner of eliciting whatsoever capacity for thought might be latent in the people she came in contact with; were it only a shoemaker or day-laborer, she would never rest till she had found out in what points that particular man differed from other men of his class.

Poor Mathilde, she sits and gazes at me till I almost fall weeping. But she seldom speaks, she is so quiet as if she knew that she must keep a secret. For, Robert, though I know you did not tell her, she knows she knows that you love me, and she has given me a little wooden cross which she said will make us happy.

"Until you opened my eyes," he said, "I did not know, or did not care to know, that love, far from being a drag on ambition, may be a help." Mathilde made a little movement towards him which she instantly repressed. The heart is quicker, but the head nearly always has the last word.

"I mean to be great and rich, Mademoiselle," he added after a pause. "I have risked my life for that purpose half a dozen times." Mathilde stood looking across the room towards the window. He could only see her profile and the straight line of her lips. She too was the product of a generation in which men rose to dazzling heights without the aid of women.

As for Agar and myself, we were simply overwhelmed with praise, and Chilly wanted to pay for our costumes. We played this one-act piece more than a hundred times consecutively to full houses. We were asked to give it at the Tuileries, and at the house of Princess Mathilde. Oh, that first performance at the Tuileries!

For it was at Vilna that the last thread of discipline was broken, and every man did as he wished." "They did not come to Kowno?" asked Mathilde, who had a clear mind, and that grasp of a situation which more often falls to the lot of the duller sex. "They did not come to Kowno. They would turn south at Vilna. It was as well.

Honora paused in her toilet, and contemplated for a moment the white skirt that her maid presented. "I think I'll wear the blue pongee to-day, Mathilde," she said. The decision for the blue pongee was the culmination of a struggle begun with the opening of her eyes that morning. It was Sunday, and the time was at hand when she must face the world.

So secluded was the life led by the two, father and daughter, that they showed themselves only at a few official receptions and, at certain times in the year, in two or three friendly drawing-rooms, where the fame of the professor and the beauty of Mathilde made a sensation.

Now it was the turn of Princesse Mathilde, then at the height of her beauty; and there were many others besides. Among the gentlemen, a strong contingent of our visitors was furnished by the foreigners passing through Paris Prince Paul of Wurtemberg, Prince Max of Bavaria, Prince Paul Esterhazy. Amongst the English were Disraeli, Bear Ellis, Charles Fox, Monckton Milnes, &c., &c.