vegetation and the perfume of the tropics pervade the room. The young
wife was looking at her husband who was smoking a narghile, the only
form of pipe she would have suffered in that room. The portieres, held
back by cords, gave a vista through two elegant salons, one white and
gold, comparable only to that of the hotel Forbin-Janson, the other in
the style of the Renaissance. The dining-room, which had no rival in
Paris except that of the Baron de Nucingen, was at the end of a short
gallery decorated in the manner of the middle-ages. This gallery
opened on the side of the courtyard upon a large antechamber, through
which could be seen the beauties of the staircase.

The count and countess had just finished breakfast; the sky was a
sheet of azure without a cloud, April was nearly over. They had been
married two years, and Clementine had just discovered for the first
time that there was something resembling a secret or a mystery in her
household. The Pole, let us say it to his honor, is usually helpless
before a woman; he is so full of tenderness for her that in Poland he
becomes her inferior, though Polish women make admirable wives. Now a
Pole is still more easily vanquished by a Parisian woman. Consequently
Comte Adam, pressed by questions, did not even attempt the innocent
roguery of selling the suspected secret. It is always wise with a
woman to get some good out of a mystery; she will like you the better
for it, as a swindler respects an honest man the more when he finds he
cannot swindle him. Brave in heart but not in speech, Comte Adam
merely stipulated that he should not be compelled to answer until he
had finished his narghile.

"If any difficulty occurred when we were travelling," said Clementine,
"you always dismissed it by saying, 'Paz will settle that.' You never
wrote to any one but Paz. When we returned here everybody kept saying,