thing about music. I prefer to descend to your level and talk with you about your engravings and majolicas. Well! What treasures have you discovered lately?"
"If you would like, I will show them to you; but you are no judge of them."
"Show them to me all the same. I am getting my education among these—bankers, as you call them. They have lovely engravings. They like to show them."
"Have you been at the Schützburgs'?" asked the mistress of the house, from her place by the samovar.
"Certainly, ma chère. They invited my husband and me to dinner, and they told me that the sauce at this dinner cost a thousand rubles," replied the Princess Miagkaya, in a loud voice, conscious that all were listening to her; "and it was a very poor sauce, too,—something green. I had to return the compliment, and I got them up a sauce that cost eighty-five kopeks,[1] and all were satisfied. I can't make thousand-ruble sauces!"
"She is unique," said the hostess.
"Astonishing," said another.
The Princess Miagkaya never failed of making her speeches effective, and the secret of their effectiveness lay in the fact that, although she did not always select suitable occasions, as was the case at the present time, yet she spoke simply and sensibly. In the society where she moved, what she said gave the effect of the most subtle wit. She could not comprehend why it had such an effect, but she recognized the fact, and took advantage of it.
While the Princess Miagkaya was speaking, all listened to her, and the conversation around the ambassador's wife stopped; so the hostess, wishing to make the conversation more united, turned to the ambassador's wife and said:—
"Are you sure that you will not have some tea? Then please join us."
"No; we are very well where we are, in this corner,
- ↑ One rubke, or one hundred kopeks, is worth eighty cents.
