Aladdin of London, or The Lodestar

Sergius Zamoyski had engaged a handsome suite of rooms upon the first floor of the magnificent modern hotel which looks down upon the Aleja Avenue, and to these they went at once upon their arrival. It was something at least to escape from the excited throngs below and to stand apart, alike from the rabble and the soldiers. Nor was the advantage of their situation to be despised; for they had but to step out upon the veranda before their sitting-rooms to command the whole prospect of the avenue, and there, at their will, to be observers of the conflict. To Sergius Zamoyski, familiar with such scenes, Warsaw offered no surprises whatever. To Alban it remained a city of whirlwind, and of human strife and suffering beyond all imagination terrible. He would have been content to remain out there upon that high balcony until the last trooper had ridden from the street and the last bitter cry been raised. The Count's invitation to dinner seemed grotesque in its reversion to commonplace affairs.

"All this is an every-day affair here now," that young man remarked with amazing nonchalance; "since the workmen began to shoot the patrols, the city has had no peace. I see that it interests you very much. You will find it less amusing when you have been in Russia for a month or two. Now let us dress and dine while we can. Those vultures down below will not leave a bone of the carcass if we don't take care."

He re-entered the sitting-room and thence the two passed to their respective dressing-rooms. An obsequious valet offered Alban a cigarette while he made his bath, and served a glass of an American cocktail. The superb luxury of these apartments did not surprise the young English boy as much as they might have done, for he had already stayed one night at an almost equally luxurious hotel in Berlin and so approached them somewhat familiarly; but the impression, oddly conceived and incurable, that he had no right to enjoy such luxuries and was in some way an intruder, remained. No one would have guessed this, the silent valet least of all; but in truth, Alban dressed shyly, afraid of the splendor and the richness; and his feet fell softly upon the thick Persian carpets as though some one would spy him out presently and cry, "Here is the guest who has not the wedding garment." In the dining-room, face to face with the gay Count, some of these odd ideas vanished; so that an observer might have named them material rather than personal.

They dined with open windows, taking a zakuska in the Russian fashion in lieu of hors d'oeuvre, and nibbling at smoked fish, caviar and other pickled mysteries. The Count's ability to drink three or four glasses of liquor with this prefatory repast astonished Alban not a little--which the young Russian observed and remarked upon.