Pagina 461 di 3800

"But the worst of it, gentlemen-I am giving Kuragin away to

you-is that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow,

is taking advantage of it!"

Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over

its arm. He began to laugh.

"Tell me about that!" he said.

"Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices.

"You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince

Andrew, "that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly

said of the Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man

has been doing among the women!"

"La femme est la compagne de l'homme," * announced Prince

Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated

legs.

* "Woman is man's companion."

Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's

face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom-he had to

admit-he had almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the

butt of this set.