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the Count wouldn’t give his consent. He kept them waiting for two whole days while he searched through the Almanach de Gotha.”
    â€œIt was a question of blue blood?”
    She nodded. “He could not find anyone with a sufficient number of royal quarterings in his coat of arms. In the end he had to compromise, I believe, and take what he could get.” Shetook a sip of coffee and then said: “Something similar happened in our family recently. My niece has just had her first child, and two days after it was born, she commenced hemorrhaging. They couldn’t find her husband—he was playing golf—so the doctor went ahead and arranged for a transfusion, without his consent—and when Eugène walked in and saw this strange man—he was a very common person—sitting beside his wife’s bed, he was most upset.”
    â€œThe blood from a transfusion only lasts forty-eight hours,” Harold said, in his own peculiar way every bit as much of a snob as the Count of Paris.
    â€œMy niece’s husband did not know that,” Mme Viénot said. “And he did not want his children to have this person’s blood in their veins. My sister and the doctor had a very difficult time with him.”
    On the other side of the circle of chairs, M. Carrère said that he didn’t like Germans, to Mme Bonenfant, who was not defending them.
    Mme Viénot took his empty cup and put it on the tray. Turning back to Harold and Barbara, she said: “France was not ready for the war, and when the Germans came we could do nothing. It was like a nightmare.… Now, of course, we are living in another; we are deathly afraid of war between your country and the Union of Soviet Republics. You think it will happen soon?… I blame your President Roosevelt. He didn’t understand the Russian temperament and so he was taken in by promises that mean nothing. The Slav is not like other Europeans.… Some years ago I became acquainted with a Russian woman. She was delightful to be with. She was responsive and intelligent. She had all the qualities one looks for in a friend. And yet, as time went on, I realized that I did not really know her. I was always conscious of something held back.”
    She was looking directly at Harold’s face but he was not sure she even saw him. He studied her, while she took a sip of coffee, trying to see her as her friend the Russian woman saw her—thepale-blue eyes, the too-black hair, the rouged cheeks. She must be somewhere in Proust, he thought.
    â€œNever trust a Slav,” she said solemnly.
    And what about the variations, he wondered. There must be variations, such as never trust an Englishman; never trust a Swede. And maybe even never trust an American?
    â€œAre French people always kind and helpful to foreigners?” he asked. “Because that has been our experience so far.”
    â€œI can’t say that they are, always,” Mme Viénot said. She put her cup and saucer on the tray. “You have perhaps been fortunate.”
    She got up and moved away, leaving him with the feeling that he had said something untactful. His own cup was empty, but he continued to hold it, though the table was within reach.
    M. Gagny was talking about the British royal family. He knew the Duke of Connaught, he said, and he had danced with the Princess Elizabeth, but he was partial to the Princess Margaret Rose.
    Mme Viénot sat down beside her mother, patted her dry mottled hand, and smiled at her and then around at the company, lightly and publicly admitting her fondness.
    M. Carrère explained to Barbara that he could speak English, but that it tired him, and he preferred his native tongue. Mme Carrère’s English was better than his, but on the other hand he talked and she didn’t. Mme Bonenfant did not know English at all, though she spoke German. And the Canadian was so conspicuously bilingual that his presence in the