"'Madame is in another wing of our apartments--go in here--the child is
attended by the nurse.' With that he pushed me through a swinging door
and left me standing in a semi-lighted chamber. I was very near ill
temper, I assure you, for my position was embarrassing. The room was
large and heavily hung with tapestries. A nurse, a hag, a witch, a dark
old gypsy creature, came over to me and asked me, in Russian:--

"'Do you wish to see his Royal Highness the King of Earth and Heaven?'
Thinking she was some stupid _moujik's_ wife, I nodded my head
seriously, though amused by the exalted titles. She put up a thin hand
and I tiptoed to a cradle of gold and ivory--it certainly seemed so to
my inexperienced eyes--the nurse parted the curtains, and there I saw--I
saw--but my son, you will think I exaggerate--I saw the most exquisite
baby in the universe. You laugh at an old bachelor's rhapsody! In
reality I don't care much for children. But that child, that supreme
morsel of humanity, was too much for me. I stood and stared and stood
and stared, and all the while the tiny angel was smiling in my eyes, oh!
such a celestial smile. From his large blue eyes, like flowers, he
smiled into my very soul. I was chained to the floor as if by lead.
Every fibre of my soul, heart, and brain went out to that little
wanderer from the infinite. It was a pathetic face, full of suppressed
sorrow--_Dieu_! but he was older than his father. I found my mind
beginning to wander as if hypnotized. I tried to divert my gaze, but in
vain. Some subtle emanation from this extraordinary child entered my
being, and then, as if a curtain were being slowly lowered, a mist
encompassed my soul; I was ceding, I felt, the immortal part of me to
another, and all the time I was smiling at the baby and the baby
smiling back. I remember his long blond hair, parted in the middle and
falling over his shoulders; but even that remarkable trait for an infant