This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ... scope without the necessity of becoming an active part of it. Although the company in which he found himself, judged by the standard of fashion, might by many persons have been thought dowdy, the assemblage had an air that was lacking in the so-called smarter society that filled the newer palaces on the other side of the Seine. Usually Piotrovski avoided social functions, and at that moment would gladly have been peacefully at home, yet as a spectacle, people interested him; and, little as he cared for women, it amused him to watch them, very much as it amused him to watch the grimaces of the monkeys in the Jardin des Plantes. There seemed a suggestive resemblance between them in that they both made faces and became agitated over nothing at all. Piotrovski's aimless, yet restless, attention wandered from passing group to group. For the most part they were so many blanks to him--walking puppets without accompanying marks by which to distinguish one from the other. Occasionally he hazarded a guess as to their station or condition, occasionally he recognised a face or was given a clue by the fragments of conversation that reached him. A famous minister, who in his youth had been a page at the court of the last empire, approached slowly with a placid little old lady in a black satin brocade gown of ancient cut. They were much engrossed in their own conversation, which was doubtless of the last days of the empire, when he was a gallant chasseur and she was maid of honour to the empress; for, as they passed, Piotrovski heard her saying, "Ah, those were the days, monsieur!" Behind came two diplomats, talking of the latest appointment, and following them a group of men whose names ranked high among the ancient nobility of France. A little while...