into the wilderness. And Nina Balatka was prepared to go out into the
wilderness. Karil Zamenoy and his wife were prosperous people, and
lived in a comfortable modern house in the New Town. It stood in
a straight street, and at the back of the house there ran another
straight street. This part of the city is very little like that old
Prague, which may not be so comfortable, but which, of all cities on
the earth, is surely the most picturesque. Here lived Sophie Zamenoy;
and so far up in the world had she mounted, that she had a coach of
her own in which to be drawn about the thoroughfares of Prague and its
suburbs, and a stout little pair of Bohemian horses--ponies they were
called by those who wished to detract somewhat from Madame Zamenoy's
position. Madame Zamenoy had been at Paris, and took much delight
in telling her friends that the carriage also was Parisian; but, in
truth, it had come no further than from Dresden. Josef Balatka and
his daughter were very, very poor; but, poor as they were, they lived
in a large house, which, at least nominally, belonged to old Balatka
himself, and which had been his residence in the days of his better
fortunes. It was in the Kleinseite, that narrow portion of the town,
which lies on the other side of the river Moldau--the further side,
that is, from the so-called Old and New Town, on the western side of
the river, immediately under the great hill of the Hradschin. The
Old Town and the New Town are thus on one side of the river, and the
Kleinseite and the Hradschin on the other. To those who know Prague,
it need not here be explained that the streets of the Kleinseite are
wonderful in their picturesque architecture, wonderful in their lights
and shades, wonderful in their strange mixture of shops and palaces--
and now, alas! also of Austrian barracks--and wonderful in their
intricacy and great steepness of ascent. Balatka's house stood in a
small courtyard near to the river, but altogether hidden from it,
somewhat to the right of the main street of the Kleinseite as you pass