rumours about Alvan and the baroness. But why should his lady trouble
herself for particulars of such people, whom it could scarcely be
supposed she would meet by accident? He asked her this. Clotilde said
it was common curiosity. She read him a short lecture on the dismal
narrowness of their upper world; and on the advantage of taking an
interest in the world below them and more enlightened; a world where
ideas were current and speech was wine. The prince nodded; if she had
these opinions, it must be good for him to have them too, and he shared
them, as it were, by the touch of her hand, and for the length of time
that he touched her hand, as an electrical shock may be taken by one far
removed from the battery, susceptible to it only through the link; he was
capable of thinking all that came to him from her a blessing--shocks,
wounds and disruptions. He did not add largely to her stock of items,
nor did he fetch new colours. The telegraph wire was his model of style.
He was more or less a serviceless Indian Bacchus, standing for sign of
the beauty and vacuity of their world: and how dismally narrow that world
was, she felt with renewed astonishment at every dive out of her gold-
fish pool into the world of tides below; so that she was ready to scorn
the cultivation of the graces, and had, when not submitting to the smell,
fanciful fits of a liking for tobacco smoke--the familiar incense of
those homes where speech was wine.

At last she fell to the asking of herself whether, in the same city with
him, often among his friends, hearing his latest intimate remarks--things
homely redolent of him as hot bread of the oven--she was ever to meet
this man upon whom her thoughts were bent to the eclipse of all others.
She desired to meet him for comparison's sake, and to criticize a popular
hero. It was inconceivable that any one popular could approach her
standard, but she was curious; flame played about him; she had some
expectation of easing a spiteful sentiment created by the recent