place which befitted his rank and station in life. He asked, instead, MM. Dufour and Cazanet to get him a house somewhere in the most crowded quarter of Paris.
"No, no, no!" he exclaimed when Dufour spoke of an aristocratic old stone pile buried under the pink chestnut-trees of the Rue de Varenne. "I want light, gentlemen. I want crowds around me."
Here Dufour thought of the armed retainers who accompanied the prince everywhere, and he winked at his partner; but the Russian did not seem to see the incongruity of his remark.
"Yes," he continued, "I want to sense the stir and throb of life—life—right, left, everywhere!"
"But, Monsieur le Prince, I assure you this house in the Rue de Varenne is—"
"It is gray and dark and lonely," the prince cut in. "I know. And I want life"—he shivered a little—"life and the dear breath of life!"
He bent over a map of Paris and pointed at a certain section.
"Here, gentlemen," he went on in a tone which admitted of no further argument; "get me a house here—if not a house, then a flat, a hut, a hovel—
