would be found in Nice or Geneva, queen of the winter season, the
lioness of the day, and the arbiter of fashion. She and Bodlevski
always behaved with such propriety and watchful care that not a shadow
ever fell on Natasha's fame. It is true that Bodlevski had to change
his name once or twice and to seek a new field for his talents, and to
make sudden excursions to distant corners of Europe--sometimes in
pursuit of a promising "job," sometimes to evade the too persistent
attentions of the police. So far everything had turned out favorably,
and his name "had remained unstained," when suddenly a slight mishap
befell. The matter was a trifling one, but the misfortune was that it
happened in Paris. There was a chance that it might find issue in the
courts and the hulks, so that there ensued a more than ordinarily
rapid change of passports and a new excursion--this time to Russia,
back to their native land again, after an absence of twenty years.
Thus it happened that the papers announced the arrival in St.
Petersburg of Baroness von Döring and Ian Vladislav Karozitch.



IX

THE CONCERT OF THE POWERS


A few days after there was a brilliant reunion at Princess
Shadursky's. All the beauty and fashion of St. Petersburg were
invited, and few who were invited failed to come. It happened that
Prince Shadursky was an admirer of the fair sex, and also that he had
had the pleasure of meeting the brilliant Baroness von Döring at
Hamburg, and again in Paris. It was, therefore, to be expected that