Aladdin of London, or The Lodestar

Alban had lived too long in a world of mean cynics that this talk should either surprise or entertain him. Men in Union Street spoke of women much as this careless fellow did, rarely generous to them and often exceedingly unjust. His own ideals he had confessed wholly to none, not even to Anna Gessner in the moment of their greatest intimacy. That fine old-world notion of the perfect womanhood, developed to the point of idolatry by the Celts of the West, but standing none the less as a witness to the whole world's desire, might remain but as a memory of his youth--he would neither surrender it nor admit that it was unworthy of men's homage. When Sergius spoke of his own countrywomen, Alban could forgive him all other estimates. And this was as much as to say that the image of Lois was with him even in that splendid place, and that some sentiment of her humble faith and sacrifice had touched him to the quick.

They went to the opera as the Count had promised and there heard an indifferent rendering of the Huguenots. A veritable sisterhood of blondes, willing to show off Count Sergius to some advantage, came from time to time to his box and was by him visited in turn. Officers in uniform crowded the foyers and talked in loud tones during the finest passages. A general sense of unrest made itself felt everywhere as though all understood the danger which threatened the city and the precarious existence its defenders must lead. When they quitted the theatre and turned into one of the military clubs for supper, the common excitement was even more marked and ubiquitous enough to arrest the attention even of such a flâneur as Sergius.

"These fellows are sitting down to supper with bombs under their chairs," he said sotto voce. "That is to say, each thinks that a bomb is there and hopes that it will kill his neighbor. We have no sympathy in our public life here--the conditions are altogether against it. Imagine five hundred men upon the deck of a ship which has struck a rock, and consider what opportunities there would be to deplore the drowned. In Russia each plays for his own safety and does not care a rouble what becomes of the man next door. Such a fact is both our strength and our weakness--our strength because opportunities make men, and our weakness because we have no unity of plan which will enable us to fight such a combination as is now being pitted against us. I myself believe that the old order is at an end. That is why I have a villa in the south of France and some excellent apartments in Paris."