The chances of a roving life have brought some slight addition to the evidence.  Stopping over a boat at Dieppe, a few summers ago, I happened to see my good friend Mme. Vezin registered at the Casino, where I recognised an acquaintance or two.  That decided me to spend the night and call at her villa.  Her salon never failed to divert me, for, drawing together the most disparate people, she handled them with easy generalship.  Under her chandelier ardent art students from the Middle West and the poor relations of royalty might be heard exchanging confidences and foreign tongues.  So, as I climbed the hill at the verge of the chalk and pasture, I felt sure of the unexpected, nor was I disappointed.  Shrill voices from my fellow countrywomen came down the garden path and assured me that art had accompanied Mme. Vezin in her annual retreat from the Luxembourg Gardens.  Entering I found the same perfect hostess and much the old dear, queer scene.  I was bracing myself for a polyglot evening—­being with all my travel quite incapable of languages—­when the little maid announced importantly Mme. la Marquise del Puente.  All rose instinctively as there entered an erect white-haired woman simply dressed in a black gown along which hung a notable crimson scarf.  Murmuring the indispensable banalities I bowed distantly, meaning to observe her impersonally before an encounter.  But she disarmed me by throwing herself on my mercy.  She knew me already through dear Mr. Hanson Brooks.  It was her first visit here; I, she saw, was of the household.  Would I not show her the curiosities and protect her from the bores?  Sullenly I followed her while she discussed the bijoux that littered the shelves, and the deep modulations of her voice insensibly mollified me.  I had intended in Anitchkoff’s behalf to count every wrinkle of her seventy-five unhallowed years, but found myself instead admiring her cloud of silver hair, avoiding the gaze of her black eyes, and noting with a kind of fascination the precise gestures of her fine hand as she took up or set down Mme. Vezin’s poor little things.

At last she settled into an armchair, beckoning me to a footstool, and I began to talk unconscionably, she urging me on.  She professed to know my writings—­it was of course impossible that she should have seen those rare anonymous letters to the most ladylike of Boston newspapers:  she touched my dearest hobby, that republics and governments generally must be judged not by their politics but by the amenity of the social life they foster.  Feeling that this was witchcraft or divination even more questionable, and dreading she had another Giorgione to sell, I made a last futile effort for freedom, proposing introductions.  With a phrase she subdued me, and my halting French began to be eloquent.  I confessed my innermost ambition, the creation of a criticism learned and judicial in substance but impressionistic in form.  She dwelt upon the beauties of her eyrie in the Basque mountains which I must one day see.  As we chatted on obliviously an audience of marvelling art students and baigneurs formed about us quietly.  Their serried faces suddenly revealed to me my ignominious surrender.  I started as from a dream and, as she bade me not forget to call, I kissed her long hand and fled with only a curt farewell to my hostess.