the prince had applied for a special permit, and had been granted it—and thus Paris discovered that it housed a deep, mysterious sensation, and began to wonder what it was all about.
From Montmartre to the Quartier Latin, from the Porte Saint Martin to the Ternes, the great macrocosm of Paris commenced to stir and buzz like a beehive.
A string of would-be visitors besieged the desk of the Hotel Saint James—shirt-makers and boot-makers and English breeches-makers, perfumers and florists and jewelers, cranks and reporters and solicitors for charitable institutions, beggars, genteel and ungenteel they came, they were met by the urbane Italian courier, and were sent on their way without having gratified either their curiosity or their greed.
The great society ladies fared no better. They littered the prince s writing-desk with invitations to balls and dinners and receptions and garden fetes and theater parties. Those with marriageable daughters made ready for a regular siege. They consulted with milliner and modiste, with Paquin and Virot and Doucet and Reboux; slim, clever fingers ma nipulated silk and lawn, satin and gauze, lace and
