Yes," yawning and giving himself an air, "I am relieved by your cold attitude.

That is the folly of being noble! One cannot be attentive to those beneath one save at a loss of self-respect.

Bah! my Czar, could he but see, would call his Storri disgraced by the mere nearness of such as you." "And you name your Czar to me!" returned the San Reve, now sneering calm, her cool contralto restored; "to me, a French woman! And your nobility, too--that thing of Caspian mud! Storri, the San Reves were soldiers with Napoleon; your noble kind ran from them like hares.

The San Reves stabled their horses in the audience chambers of your Czars." The San Reve rippled off these periods in quiet, invincible scorn.
Storri, beaten, frightened, began to whine.

His bluster, his bombast, his nobility, his affected elevations, were alike broken down.