Upon this occasion her guests thoroughly fulfilled her expectations, with the exception of the youngest of the party. Stéphanie de Sartines, like a spoiled child, had importuned her father to allow her to accept Madame de Salgues's invitation; but having gained her point, she sat absorbed and silent, refusing to eat or to speak, and devoting herself to the contemplation of her idolized friend Clémence, from whom she was so soon to be separated. Ivan pitied the sad-faced little girl, and remembering her exploits at their first meeting, sought to console her with the most tempting of bon-bons and preserved fruits; but he could elicit nothing beyond a melancholy "No, thank you, monsieur."
"You should say M. le Prince, my daughter," her father corrected.
"En Russie tout faquin est prince,"[1] observed the audacious Emile to his neighbour, M. de Cranfort.
The latter, though disposed to regard Ivan in the light of a successful rival, resented the discourtesy of Emile, and showed it by asking coldly, "What do you say, sir?"
"Don't you know the story? Before the war broke out the Czar sent Prince Tufaquin as ambassador to the court of the Emperor, who, during their first interview, called him nothing but 'Monsieur.' One of the bystanders afterwards told him of the title borne by the envoy. 'J'ignorais qu'en Russie tout faquin est prince,' was his answer."
"General Buonaparte was a parvenu," said M. de Cranfort; "therefore it was not altogether his fault if he mistook rudeness for wit."
Emile "knew when he was beaten," perhaps because he was not an Englishman; so he turned from M. de Cranfort to Stéphanie, whom he heard deploring that Prince Ivan was going to take Clémence away from them into Russia, where she would be frozen to death in the long cold winter, or eaten by the bears.
- ↑ "In Russia every coxcomb is a prince."
