now sought only to hide its sanctuary from the desecration of the multitude.

"Ah! Truyn, at last, and how are you?" cried the countess with sincere pleasure.

"Much as ever," replied Truyn.

"And where is your wife?" asked Ilsenbergh.

"I do not know."

"Is she still at Nice?"

"I do not know." And as he spoke his expression was colder and more set than before.

"Are you to be long in Rome?" said the countess, anxious to divert the conversation into a more pleasing channel.

"As long as my little companion likes and it suits her," answered Truyn. His 'little companion' always meant his only child, a girl of about twelve.

"You must bring Gabrielle to see me very soon," said the lady. "My Mimi and Lintschi are of the same age."

"I will bring her as soon as possible; unluckily she is so very shy she cannot bear strangers. But she has quite lost her heart to the general and to our cousin Sempaly."

"What, Nicki!" exclaimed the countess. "Do you mean that he has the patience to devote himself to children?"

"He has a peculiar talent for it. He dined with us to-day."

"He is an unaccountable creature!" sighed the countess. "He hardly ever comes near us."

At this moment a quick step was heard outside and Count Sempaly was announced.

"Lupus in Fabula!" remarked Ilsenbergh.

The new-comer was a young man of eight or nine and twenty, not tall, but powerfully though slightly built; his remarkably handsome, well-cut features and clear brown complexion were beautified by a most engaging smile, and by fine blue eyes with dark lashes and shaded lids. Under cover of that smile he could say the most audacious things, and whether the glance of those eyes were a lightning flash or a sunbeam no one had ever been quite certain. He gallantly kissed the tips of the countess's fingers, nodded to the men with a sort of brusque heartiness, and then seated himself on a cushion at the lady's feet.

"Well, it is a mercy to be allowed to see you at last; you really do not come often enough, Nicki; and in society I hardly ever meet you," complained the countess in a tone of kindly reproof. "Why do you so seldom appear in the respectable world?"

"Because he is better amused in the other world!" said Ilsenbergh with a giggle in an undertone.

But a reproachful glance from his wife warned him to be sober.

"I simply have not the time for it," said Sempaly half laughing. "I have too much to do."

"Too much to do!" said Truyn with his quiet irony.... "In diplomacy?--What is the latest news?"

"A remarkable article in the 'Temps' on the great washing-basin question," replied Sempaly with mock gravity.

"The washing-basin question!" repeated the others puzzled.

"Yes," continued Sempaly. "The state of affairs is this: When, not long since, the young duke of B---- was required to serve under the conscription, his feelings were deeply hurt by the fact that he had not only to live in barracks, but to wash at the pump like a common soldier. This so outraged his mamma that she went to the Minister of War to petition that her son might have a separate washing-basin; but after serious discussion her application was refused. It was decided that this separate washing-basin would be a breach of the Immortal Principles of '89."

"It is hardly credible!" observed Truyn; Ilsenbergh shrugged his shoulders and the countess innocently asked:

"What are the immortal principles of '89?"

"A sort of ideal convention between the aristocracy and the canaille," said Sempaly coolly. "Or if you prefer it, the first steps towards the abdication of privilege at the feet of the higher humanity," he added with a smile.

The countess was no wiser than before, Sempaly laughed maliciously as he fanned himself with a Japanese screen, and Ilsenbergh said: "Then you are a democrat, Sempaly?"

"From a bird's-eye point of view," added Truyn drily; he had not much faith in his cousin's liberalism.

"I am always a democrat when I have just been reading 'The Dark Ages,'" said Sempaly--'The Dark Ages' was the name he chose to give to Ilsenbergh's newspaper.--"Besides, joking apart, I am really a liberal, though I own I am uneasy at the growing power of the radicals. By the bye, I had nearly forgotten to give you two items of news that will delight you Fritzi,"--addressing the countess. "The reds have won all the Paris elections, and at Madrid they have been shooting at the king."

"Horrible!" exclaimed the countess, and she shuddered, "we shall see the Commune again before long."

"'93," said Truyn, with his tone of dry irony.

"We really ought to draw a cordon round the Austrian throne to protect it against the pestilential flood of democracy," said Sempaly very gravely. "Ilsenbergh you must petition the upper house."

"Your jokes are very much out of place," said the countess, "the matter is serious."

"Oh, no! not for us," said Truyn. "Our people are too long suffering."

"They are sound at the core," interrupted Ilsenbergh with dramatic emphasis.

"They do not yet know the meaning of liberty," said Sempaly laughing, "and to them equality is a mere abstraction--a metaphysical delicacy."

"They are thoroughly good and loyal!" exclaimed Ilsenbergh, "and they know...."

"Oh!" cried Sempaly, "they know very little and that is your safeguard. When once their eyes are opened your life will cease to be secure. If I had been a bricklayer I should certainly have been a socialist," and he crossed his arms and looked defiantly at his audience.

"A socialist!" cried Ilsenbergh indignantly. "You!--never. No, you could not have been a socialist; your religious feelings would have preserved you from such wickedness!"

"Hm!" replied Sempaly suspiciously, and Truyn said with a twist of his lips:

"As a bricklayer Sempaly might not have been so religious; he might have found some difficulty in worshipping a God who had treated him so scurvily."

"Hush, Truyn!" exclaimed Sempaly, somewhat anxiously to his cousin. "You know I dislike all such discussions."

"True. I remember you wear Catholic blinkers and are always nervous about your beliefs; and you would not like to feel any doubt as to the unlimited prolongation of your comfortable little existence," said Truyn in a tone of grave and languid banter. For Sempaly was not burthened with religion, though, like many folks to whom life is easy, he clung desperately to a hope in a future life, for which reason he affected 'Catholic blinkers' and would not have opened a page of Strauss for the world.

"The sword is at our breast!" sighed the countess still sunk in dark forebodings. "This new ministry!..." And she shook her head.

"It will do no harm beyond producing a few dreary articles in the papers and inundating us with new Acts which the crown will not trouble itself about for a moment," observed Sempaly.

"The Austrian mob are gnashing their teeth already!" said the lady.

"Nonsense! The Austrian mob is a very good dog at bottom; it will not bite till you forbid it to lick your hands," said her cousin calmly.

"I should dislike one as much as the other," said the countess, looking complacently at her slender white fingers.

"But