Moths by Ouida — page 140: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

+ : . AEC Aa * : 4, ’ * ~~ ee ee ALP . : : . . y ; GAY i ‘ > ‘ ; ay ar” sa 2 .* Wf \ A “4 ; 7 mt i ta | . 4 a - 7 - - p 4 a) ow - s ss A ae’ 5 Bowe’) 136 MOTHS. renowned beauty of the Winter Palace had brought her loveli- ness and her diamonds to the capital of the world. The Hotel Zouroff, under Nadine Nelaguine, had been always one of those grand foreign houses at which all great people ~meet—a noble terra nullius, in which all political differences were obliterated, and all that was either well born or well re- ceived met, and the Empire touched the Faubourg, and the Orleans princes brushed the marshals of the Republic. The Hotel Zouroff had never been very exclusive, but it had always been very brilliant. Under the young princess, Paris saw that it was likely to be much more éxclusive, and perhaps in pro- portion less entertaining. There was that in the serene sim. plicity, the proud; serious grace of the new mistress of it, which rallied to her the old regime and scared away the new. “You should have been born a hundred years ago,” said her husband with some impatience to her. “You would make the house the Hotel Rambouillet.”’ “TIT do not care for the stories of the ‘Figaro’ at my dinner- table, and I do not care to see the romp of the cotillon in my ball-room; but it is your house, it must be ordered as you please,” she answered him; and she let Madame Nelaguine take the reins of social government, and held herself aloof. But, though she effaced herself as much as possible, that tall, slender, proud figure, with the grave, colorless face that was ~ so cold and yet so innocent, had an effect that was not to be defined, yet not to be resisted, as she received the guests of the Hotel Zouroff; and the entertainments there, though they gained in simplicity and dignity, lost in entrain. Vere was not suited to her century. Houses take their atmosphere from those who live in them, and even the Hotel Zouroff, despite its traditions and its epoch, despite its excess of magnificence and its follies of expendi- ture, had a fresher and a purer air since the life of its new princess had come into it, “You have married a young saint, and the house feels al- ready like a sacristy,” said the Duchesse de Sonnez to Sergius Zourott. “Ca nous obsede, mon vieux!’ That was the feeling of society. | She was exquisitely lovely, she had a great distinction, she f Knew a great deal, and though she spoke seldom, spoke well, Om one was obsedante; she made them feel as if they were in church. Yet Paris spoke of nothing for the moment but of the Prin- cess Zouroff. Reigning beauties were for the moment all de- throned, and as Paris had for years talked of ‘this racers, his mistresses, his play, and his vices, so it now talked of Sergius Zouroft’s wife. That fair, grave, colorless face, so innocent yet so proud, so childlike yet so thoughtful, with its musing eyes and its arched. mouth, became the theme of artists, the adoration of dandies, the despair of women. As a maiden she would have been called lovely, but too cold, and passed over. Married, she had that position which adorns as diamonds adorn, and that charm as forbidden fruit which piques the sated palate of mankind. , 6 \ f \ ot : eth