ho live in a republic.

Susanna was most amiable to Laura; repeated to all of them her
invitation to come and see her again; and after they had all promised
to see one another frequently, Caesar and Laura went down to their
carriage, and took a turn on the Corso by twilight.

XIII. ESTHETICS AND DEMAGOGY

_SUSANNA AND THE YOUNGSTERS_

From this meeting on, Caesar noticed that Marchmont paid court to Laura
with much persistence. A light-hearted, coquettish woman, it pleased
Laura to be pursued by a person like this Englishman, young,
distinguished, and rich; but she was not prepared to yield. Her
bringing-up, her class-feelings impelled her to consider adultery a
heinous thing. Nor was divorce a solution for her, since accepting it
would oblige her to cease being a Catholic and to quarrel irrevocably
with the Cardinal. Marchmont showed no discretion in the way he paid
court to Laura; he cared nothing about his wife, and talked of her with
profound contempt....

Laura found herself besieged by the Englishman; she couldn't decide to
discourage him entirely, and at critical moments she would take the
train, go off to Naples, and come back two or three days later,
doubtless with more strength for withstanding the siege.

"As a matter of reciprocal justice, since he makes love to my sister,
I ought to make love to his wife," thought Caesar, and he went several
times to the Hotel Excelsior to call on Susanna.

The Yankee wife was full of complaints against her husband. Her father
had advised her simply to get a divorce, but she didn't want to.
She found such a solution lacking in distinction, and no doubt she
considered the advice of an author in her own country very true, who had
given this triple injunction to the students of a woman's college: "Do
not drink, that is, do not drink too much; do not smoke, that is, do not
smoke too much; and do not get married, that is, do not get married too
much."

It did not seem quite right to Susanna to get married too much. Besides
she had a desire to become a Catholic. One day she questioned Caesar
about it:

"You want to change your religion!" exclaimed Caesar, "What for? I don't
believe you are going to find your lost faith by becoming a Catholic."

"And what do you think about it, Kennedy?" Susanna asked the young
Englishman, who was there too.

"To me a Catholic woman seems doubly enchanting."

"You would not marry a woman who wasn't a Catholic?"

"No, indee