are dishonest. You know that set composed of filibusters with varied
decorations, all noble, all titled, all unknown at the embassies, with
the exception of those who are spies. All talk of their honor without the
slightest occasion for doing so, boast of their ancestors, tell you about
their lives, braggarts, liars, sharpers, as dangerous as the false cards
they have up their sleeves, as delusive as their names--in short,
the aristocracy of the bagnio.

"I adore these people. They are interesting to study, interesting to
know, amusing to understand, often clever, never commonplace like public
functionaries. Their wives are always pretty, with a slight flavor of
foreign roguery, with the mystery of their existence, half of it perhaps
spent in a house of correction. They have, as a rule, magnificent eyes
and incredible hair. I adore them also.

"Madame Samoris is the type of these adventuresses, elegant, mature and
still beautiful. Charming feline creatures, you feel that they are
vicious to the marrow of their bones. You find them very amusing when you
visit them; they give card parties; they have dances and suppers; in
short, they offer you all the pleasures of social life.

"And she had a daughter--a tall, fine-looking girl, always ready for
amusement, always full of laughter and reckless gaiety--a true
adventuress' daughter--but, at the same time, an innocent,
unsophisticated, artless girl, who saw nothing, knew nothing, understood
nothing of all the things that happened in her father's house.

"The girl was simply a puzzle to me. She was a mystery. She lived amid
those infamous surroundings with a quiet, tranquil ease that was either
terribly criminal or else the result of innocence. She sprang from the