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Updated: May 14, 2025
This haughty, capricious Russian, with whom a chance occurrence at the table d'hote had thrown her into intercourse, had not taken a place among her pleasantest reminiscences. Princess Gulof was the wife of a governor-general whom she had wedded in second marriage after a long widowhood. He did not see her often, two or three times a year, that was all.
This melancholy declaration was signed, and the signature was perfectly legible. Mlle. Moriaz spelled it out readily, although at that moment her sight was dim, and she was convinced that the trinket, which Count Larinski had presented to her as a family relic, had belonged to Anna Petrovna, Princess Gulof.
"Ah! truly it is the Princess Gulof," said Mme. de Lorcy to herself, and turned away to avoid an encounter. It was at Ostend, three years previous, during the season of the baths, that she had made the acquaintance of the princess; she did not care to renew it.
It is dangerous; the bells of Cormeilles have ceased ringing. Ah! bon Dieu, who knows? Mme. de Lorcy surely has a hand in this business; it is the result of some grand plot. How many acts are there in the play? Here we are at the second or third; but there are some jokes that are very provoking. I shall end by being seriously angry." Princess Gulof appeared to have entirely failed in her object.
She eagerly seized the bracelet, and on the back of the plate, now left bare, she saw engraved in the gold, characters almost microscopic in size. Through the greatest attention she succeeded in deciphering them. She distinguished several dates, marking the year, the month, and the day, when some important event had occurred to the Princess Gulof.
At that very moment Mme. de Lorcy, who was alone with Princess Gulof, was saying: "Well, my dear, you have talked with my man. What do you think of him?" The princess distressed her by her reply. "I think, my dear," she rejoined, "that Count Larinski is the last of the heroes of romance or, if you like better, the last of the troubadours; but I have no reason to believe him to be an adventurer."
It was Princess Gulof. It seemed to him as if the four walls of the room were rocking to and fro, and that the floor was slipping from under his feet like the deck of a ship in a wild storm. By a great effort of will, he recovered himself. "Never mind, Samuel Brohl," he said to himself. "Let us see the game through.
"The day before yesterday," she thought, "this woman appeared to me to be deranged: she is a lunatic; I wish that Abel were here, he could tell me what happened at dinner between him and this dotard, and we should laugh over it together. Perhaps nothing happened at all. The Princess Gulof should be confined. They do very wrong to let maniacs like that go at large.
The previous day, Antoinette once departed, Mme. de Lorcy had resumed her attack on Princess Gulof, and the princess had ended by consenting to delay her departure, to dine with the adventurer of the green eyes, and to subject him to a close scrutiny. There she was; yes, it was indeed she!
For it was now four years since Samuel Brohl had entered into his strange partnership with the Polish nobleman. Brohl himself was the son of a Jewish tavern-keeper in Gallicia. A great Russian lady, Princess Gulof, attracted by his handsome presence, and strange green eyes, had engaged him as her secretary and educated him.
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