your strife.'"

"Well, you have only eight hundred now to get," remarked the count,
who considered this moan, addressed to Pere Leger, a sort of letter of
credit drawn upon himself.

"True," said Pierrotin. "Xi! xi! Rougeot!"

"You must have seen many fine ceilings in Venice," resumed the count,
addressing Schinner.

"I was too much in love to take any notice of what seemed to me then
mere trifles," replied Schinner. "But I was soon cured of that folly,
for it was in the Venetian states--in Dalmatia--that I received a cruel
lesson."

"Can it be told?" asked Georges. "I know Dalmatia very well."

"Well, if you have been there, you know that all the people at that end
of the Adriatic are pirates, rovers, corsairs retired from business, as
they haven't been hanged--"

"Uscoques," said Georges.

Hearing the right name given, the count, who had been sent by Napoleon
on one occasion to the Illyrian provinces, turned his head and looked at
Georges, so surprised was he.

"The affair happened in that town where they make maraschino," continued
Schinner, seeming to search for a name.

"Zara," said Georges. "I've been there; it is on the coast."

"You are right," said the painter. "I had gone there to look at the
country, for I adore scenery. I've longed a score of times to paint
landscape, which no one, as I think, understands but Mistigris, who
will some day reproduce Hobbema, Ruysdael, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, and
others."

"But," exclaimed the count, "if he reproduces one of them won't that be
enough?"

"If you persist in interrupting, monsieur," said Oscar, "we shall never
get on."

"And Monsieur Schinner was not addressing himself to you in particular,"
added Georges.

"'Tisn't polite to interrupt," said Mistigris, sententiously, "but we
all do it, and conversation would lose a great deal if we didn't scatter
little condiments while exchanging our reflections. Therefore, continue,
agreeable old gentleman, to lecture us, if you like. It is done in the
best society, and you know the proverb: 'we must 'owl with the wolves.'"

"I had heard marvellous things of Dalmatia," resumed Schinner, "so I
went there, leaving Mistigris in Venice at an inn--"

"'Locanda,'" interposed Mistigris; "keep to the local color."

"Zara is what is called a country town--"

"Yes," said Georges; "but it is fortified."

"Parbleu!" said Schinner; "the fortifications count for much in my
adventure. At Zara there are a great man