"Monsieur," she began brokenly. "I don't know how to—"

The man paused in his work and cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Are you French? Have I had the happiness to oblige my fellow countrymen? If that is indeed so, Madame, then I am doubly glad to have preserved your beauty from harm."

Marianne found herself blushing under his ardent gaze. But by now Jolival had recovered from his fright and decided to take a hand. Bowing with ineffable grace despite his dented hat and crumpled clothes, he introduced himself.

"The Vicomte Arcadius de Jolival, entirely at your service, Monsieur. This lady is my ward, the daughter of the late Marquis d'Asselnat de Villeneuve."

Again the man raised his left eyebrow in a way that might have indicated either surprise or irony, Jolival could not be sure which. Then, all at once, he started searching through his pockets so feverishly that the vicomte could not help but ask him if he had lost something.

"My pipe," was the answer. "I can't think what I did with it."

"You must have dropped it when you rushed so nobly to our aid," Marianne said, bending down to look about her.

"I don't think so. I have a feeling it was gone before that."

It was not far to seek. The necessary appurtenance was restored a moment later by the tall young man who now rejoined them unhurriedly and without losing one jot of his Olympian calm.

"Your pipe, Monsieur," he said.

The stranger's harassed expression cleared.

"Ah, thank you, my boy. Just go along and see how the work on the guardhouse is coming along. I will be with you in a moment. And so," he went on, sucking vigorously at his pipe in an effort to get it going again, "and so… French, are you? Well, what the devil are you doing here, if I may ask?"

"Why of course you may!" Marianne smiled, finding herself liking him extremely. "I am here to see the Duc de Richelieu. He is still governor of the city, I hope?"

"He is indeed—and of all new Russia. You know him?"

"Not yet. But you, sir, who seem to be a fellow countryman, are you perhaps acquainted with him?"

The man smiled. "You would be surprised to find how many Russians speak French quite as well as I do, Madame. But you are correct on both counts. I am French and I do know the governor."

"Is he here in Odessa at this moment?"

"Why—yes, I imagine so. I have not heard that he has gone away."

"And what kind of a man is he? Forgive me if I seem to be presuming on your kindness, but I need to know. I heard it said in Constantinople that he is a very formidable man and somewhat difficult of access, that he rules here like a despot and is a hard man to cross. They said also that he hates the emperor Napoleon and everything to do with him."

The smile had faded from the man's face and he was regarding Marianne attentively with a stern, almost menacing expression.

"The Turks," he said slowly," have not so far had much cause to love His Excellency, who dealt them several sharp blows during the war. But do I understand, then, that you have come from the land of our erstwhile enemy? Have you no fear that the governor may require an explanation of what you were doing there? The ink is barely dry on the signatures to the treaty, you know. There is little mutual trust as yet and the smiles are still a trifle forced. I can only advise you to be very careful. Where the safety of his province is concerned, the governor is adamant."

"Do you mean that he will take me for a spy? " Marianne said in a low voice, coloring with a rush. "I do hope he won't because what I have to—" She was obliged to break off because the tall young man had come back at a run and was bending to whisper something in his master's ear with an appearance of unwonted agitation. Their new friend uttered an exclamation of annoyance and began to mutter angrily.

"Fools and half-wits! Nothing but fools and half-wits! Very well, I'm coming. Forgive me"—he turned back to Marianne—"but I am obliged to leave you on urgent business. We shall meet again, I am sure."

Cramming his pipe into his pocket without troubling to extinguish it, he bowed sketchily and was already hurrying away when Jolival called after him.

"Monsieur! Hi, Monsieur! Tell us at least whom we have to thank for saving our lives. Or how are we to find you again?"

The man paused for half a second in his stride and flung back over his shoulder: "Septimanie! I am called Septimanie!"

Then he vanished through the gateway of the arsenal, leaving Jolival staring after him with a look of astonishment.

"Septimanie?" he growled. "Why, that's my wife's name!"

Marianne burst out laughing and came to slip her arm through her old friend's.

"You are surely not going to take the poor man in dislike because of that? It's quite possible for a woman's Christian name to be a perfectly respectable surname at the same time. All it means is that our friend must be a descendant of someone who once lived in the old Gallic province of Septimania."

"I daresay," Jolival retorted, "but it's very disagreeable all the same. Upon my word, if I didn't know her to be so attached to England I'd be afraid of her turning up here… But there, come along now. I can see our guide is growing impatient. It's time for us to find out what a Russian hotel is like."

A good deal to the travelers' surprise, the place to which the boy now led them bore a striking resemblance to one of the better Parisian hostelries of the end of the previous century. Jolival, who had been expecting a dirty, smoky isba, trod with relief across the clean white doorstep of the Hotel Ducroux, which like the majority of Russian inns was called by the name of its proprietor.

It was a fine new building situated not far from the great barracks that were built into the side of the hill, pink-washed with tall white windows, their small panes gleaming in the last rays of the setting sun. The wide doorway with its shining brass fittings, flanked by a pair of orange trees in large glazed pots, stood open at the top of the hill at the beginning of the new town. It was clearly a very well-kept house.

Two maidservants in cap and apron and two men in red shirts—the only Russian note in this thoroughly European setting—rushed to take their baggage, while Maître Ducroux himself, magnificently attired in a dark blue coat with gilt buttons which gave him the appearance of a naval officer, came forward with stately tread to greet the new arrivals. This haughty demeanor melted into an expression of real delight, however, as he took in the elegance of his potential guests and the fact that he had to do with French people.

Antoine Ducroux himself had once been a cook in the employ of the Duc de Richelieu. He had come in answer to a summons when the duke had become governor of Odessa in 1803 to provide the rapidly growing town with a fitting hostelry. Since then the Hotel Ducroux had flourished. The food there was the best in all new Russia and a good part of the old, and it continued to prosper, thanks to the numbers of men of business who frequented the busy port, the newly rich settlers of what had formerly been an uncultivated desert region but was now in the process of rapid development, and to the officers of the military garrison, which was maintained at considerable strength.

As Marianne and Jolival were bowed by their host into an entrance hall charmingly decorated in panels of French gray picked out with gold, they came face to face with a middle-aged woman of striking appearance who was at that moment descending the stairs with a Russian colonel in attendance.

It was not so much her clothes that took the eye, although these were remarkable enough, consisting as they did of a wide-skirted dress of black silk of an extremely old-fashioned design, trimmed at neck and elbow with falls of white muslin, and a very large hat with a black feather set upon an edifice of powdered curls; rather it was the expression of her face, which bore a look of pride and arrogance that almost amounted to a challenge. Her age appeared to be about fifty and she was quite evidently an aristocrat. Judging from the superb earrings of pearls and diamonds that dangled on either side of her painted cheeks, she was also extremely rich.

The lady was by no means unhandsome, only there was a coldness and calculation about her blue eyes and a hard line to her mouth that rendered an otherwise harmonious set of features curiously devoid of charm. Her glance, directed upon the world from behind a delicately wrought lorgnette, left a disagreeable impression. This weapon she now aimed at Marianne, and she continued to stare at her as the two ladies passed one another, even to the extent of turning her feathered head somewhat until she was swallowed up in the bustle of the street, the colonel still trotting meekly at her heels.

Marianne and Jolival had halted instinctively at the foot of the stairs, letting Ducroux get a few steps ahead of them.

"What an extraordinary woman," Marianne said, when the two were out of sight. "Would it be rude of me to inquire who she is?"

"Not at all, Madame. Indeed, I could see by the way she looked at you that she will ask me the same question before long. It is strange the way French people recognize one another."

"That lady is French?"

"Yes indeed. She is the Comtesse de Gachet. She came here from St. Petersburg two days ago accompanied by Colonel Ivanoff, the officer you saw with her. She is, as I have been told, a lady of quality who has suffered much misfortune but who enjoys the special interest of His Majesty the tsar."