"Really?" he asked, greatly interested. "Were they all right?"
"Oh, quite," she said, "quite! I remembered them at once, but didn't bow. But d'Azigny was very polite; and, after a minute or two, he spoke to me, asked if he wasn't right in thinking I was the Baronne de Staffelaer. 'Baronne van der Welcke,' I replied. He flushed up and his wife nudged him, but after that they were very charming and amiable all the time I was at Nice. I saw a lot of them and, through their introduction, I went to a splendid ball at the Duc de Rivoli's. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I wore a beautiful dress, I was in my element once more, I was a foreigner, everybody was very pleasant and I felt light-hearted again, quit of everything and everybody, and I thought to myself . . ."
"Well, what did you think?"
"Oh, if only we had never gone back to Holland! If, when Brussels became so dull, we had just moved to a town like Nice. It's delightful there. As a foreigner, you need have nothing to trouble about, you can do just as you like, know just whom you please. You feel so free, so free . . . And why, I thought, must Addie become and remain a Dutchman? He could just as well be a Frenchman . . . or a cosmopolitan. . . ."
"Thank you, Mamma: I don't feel like being a Frenchman, nor yet a cosmopolitan. And you'd
