nce that surrounded his master and
mistress. To judge from his story, there was no happier, more enviable
or charitable creature on the face of the earth, than his lady, the
countess, and as she, according to his account drove out daily, rode
horseback, or took long walks, never sparing herself or uttering any
complaint, there didn't seem to be the least occasion for having
summoned so distinguished a physician as your old friend, from so great
a distance to feel her pulse.

"The first conversation I held with her husband certainly made a great
change in my opinion. I found your successful rival an entirely
different man from what I had imagined, a person really needing pity,
who finds no enjoyment in all he possesses, money, lands, a noble name,
and a long line of ancestors, and who is not happy though in the prime
of life and surrounded by the utmost splendor.

"The style of the house I can only term ducal! A magnificent castle,
forests such as I've seen only in Russia, a four-in-hand of which no
prince need be ashamed, a kitchen and cellar that considerably enlarged
the horizon even of the author of the 'Art of Eating.' The ten days I
spent in the castle gave me an idea of the enviableness of the genuine
old nobility, living regardless of expense and not yet infected by the
industrial spirit of our times.

"The count himself, who has grown up amid these surroundings, is a
gentleman from head to foot, every inch a cavalier, a man who can talk
admirably about hunting and the ballet, and from whom, without the
smallest conscientious scruple, one can win a few hundred louis d'ors
at whist. That's however probably the best thing to be had of him; for
in other respects--but perhaps I'm unjust, I could not help continually
comparing him with you and asking myself--without wishing to flatter
you--in what way he'd have got the start of you, if you had both
appeared before our princess on equal terms. He seemed to me like a
beautifully carved, richly gilded old picture frame, containing a
cheap, poorly colored lithograph. But, as I said before, my old
prejudice in your favor may have played me a trick.

"'If it's only not something of the same kind, a comparison which must
result to the disadvantage of the man she has chosen, that is affecting
our countess', I instantly said to myself. But I soon perceived that
your old relations had not the slightest connection with the matter.

"In the first place, the count who made va