A Tragic Idyl

Synopsis

Neither these princes nor their neighbors noticed the presence at one of the tables of a man who had borne the title of King in one of the states improvised on the Balkan Peninsula. Men had fought for this man, men had died for him, but his royal interests seemed now to be restricted to the pasteboard monarchs on the table of trente-et-quarante.

And king and princes, grand-nephews and cousins of emperors, in the promiscuity of this international resort, elbowed noblemen whose ancestors had served or betrayed their own; and these lords elbowed the sons of tradesmen, dressed like them, nourished like them, amused like them; and these bourgeois brushed against celebrated artists—here the most famous of our portrait painters, there a well-known singer, there an illustrious writer—while fashionable women mingled with this crowd in toilets which rivalled in splendor those of the demi-monde. And other men poured in continually, and other women, and especially others of the demi-monde.

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