?All what one knew about the count and the countess of X..., was that they got voluntarily separated after two years of marriage and broke with one accord a badly matched union. The count, one said, lived secluded at the end of Spain, in his patrimonial castle; the countess, after having stayed a few months in Andalusia, her homeland, had set her residence in Paris, where she lived in a little mansion of the Avenue de Messine, under a borrowed name...