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into a laugh and wanted to reply, "The war is already lost. We have all lost the war, you too." But I said nothing. I only said: "Our people are very unhappy," and she moved on among the crowd with her slow, rather uncertain step— This, all this I should have liked to say to Prince Eugene, but I held myself back and smiled, thinking of that young princely couple.
    "The Italian people are very fond of them, aren't they?" asked Prince Eugene, and before I could answer, "Yes, the people are very fond of them." (But I would have liked to answer him differently, and did not dare.) He went on saying that he possessed many letters from Umberto—he actually said "from Umberto"— that he was putting them in order because he intended to collect and publish them, and I was unable to gather whether he was talking of King Humbert or of the Prince of Piedmont. He asked me later whether in Italian, Umberto is written with an " h ."
    "Without the ' h '" I replied. And I laughed thinking that the Prince of Piedmont was a slave himself, as we all were—a poor, crowned slave, his chest laden with medals and crosses. I thought that he too was a slave, and I laughed. I was ashamed of my laughter, and still I laughed.
    I noticed after a while that Prince Eugene's gaze was slowly turning toward a canvas hanging on the wall of the room. It was the famous picture "Pa balkong"—"From the Balcony"—that he had painted in Paris during his early years, in about 1888. A young woman, Friherrina Celsing, leans from a balcony facing one of the avenues radiating from the Etoile. The brown skirt with its blue and green reflections, the warm blond hair tucked under a little hat such as Manet's and Renoir's women wore, stand out in the canvas against the transparent white lead, the gray-pink of the house fronts, and the damp green of the trees in the avenue. A carriage is passing below the balcony. It is a black cab and, seen from above, the horse looks as if it were made of wood: stiff and lean, it strikes a note of a childish play in that quaint and delicate Parisian street. The horses of the omnibus that is driving down from the Etoile appear to be freshly varnished with the same shiny enamel as that of the horse-chestnut leaves. They look like the wooden horses on a merry-go-round during a provincial fair in that delicate provincial hue of trees, of houses, of sky above the roofs of the avenue. The sky is still that of Verlaine and already that of Proust.
    "Paris was very young then," said Prince Eugene approaching the canvas. He was gazing at Friherrina Celsing leaning from the balcony, and he spoke to me softly, almost reluctantly of that young Paris of his, of Puvis de Chavannes, of his painter friends, Zorn, Wahlberg, Cederström, Arsenius, Wenneberg and of those happy years. "Paris was very young then. It was the Paris of Madame de Morienval, Madame de Saint-Euvert, of the Duchess of Luxembourg (and also of Madame de Cambremer and of the young Marquess de Beausergent), and of those Proustian goddesses la profondeur du parterre de feux inhumains, horizontaux et splendides —whose glances enflamed the depths of the orchestra with inhuman, horizontal and splendid fires. Of the blanches déités —white goddesses, dressed in fleurs blanches —white flowers, duvetées comme une aile —downy as a wing, à la fois plume et corolle —at the same time feather and flower, ainsi que certaines floraisons marines —do well as certain marine vegetation, who spoke with the delicious refinement d'une sécheresse voulue, à la Mérimée ou à la Meilhac, aux demi-dieux du Jockey Club— of a studied brittleness, in the Mérimée or Meilhac manner, to the elect of the Jockey Club, in the atmosphere of Racine's Phèdre. It was the Paris of the Marquess de Palancy who passed through the transparent shadows of his box at the theater comme un poisson derrière la cloison vitrée d'un aquarium —like a fish behind the glass enclosure of an aquarium. And it was