and an expression of suppressed pain passed over her features.

"You will see strange things in our country, monsieur," she went on.
"Vendramin lives on opium, as this one lives on love, and that one
buries himself in learning; most young men have a passion for a dancer,
as older men are miserly. We all create some happiness or some madness
for ourselves."

"Because you all want to divert your minds from some fixed idea, for
which a revolution would be a radical cure," replied the physician. "The
Genoese regrets his republic, the Milanese pines for his independence,
the Piemontese longs for a constitutional government, the Romagna cries
for liberty--"

"Of which it knows nothing," interrupted the Duchess. "Alas! there
are men in Italy so stupid as to long for your idiotic Charter, which
destroys the influence of woman. Most of my fellow-countrywomen must
need read your French books--useless rhodomontade--"

"Useless!" cried the Frenchman.

"Why, monsieur," the Duchess went on, "what can you find in a book that
is better than what we have in our hearts? Italy is mad."

"I cannot see that a people is mad because it wishes to be its own
master," said the physician.

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed the Duchess, eagerly, "does not that mean
paying with a great deal of bloodshed for the right of quarreling, as
you do, over crazy ideas?"

"Then you approve of despotism?" said the physician.

"Why should I not approve of a system of government which, by depriving
us of books and odious politics, leaves men entirely to us?"

"I had thought that the Italians were more patriotic," said the
Frenchman.

Massimilla laughed so slyly that her interlocutor could not distinguish
mockery from serious meaning, nor her real opinion from ironical
criticism.

"Then you are not a liberal?" said he.

"Heaven preserve me!" said she. "I can imagine nothing in worse taste
than such opinions in a woman. Could you love a woman whose heart was
occupied by all mankind?"

"Those who love are naturally aristocrats," the Austrian General
observed, with a smile.

"As I came into the theatre," the Frenchman observed, "you were the
first person I saw; and I remarked to his Excellency that if there was a
woman who could personify a nation it was you. But I grieve to
discover that, though you represent its divine beauty, you have not the
constitutional spirit."

"Are you not bound," said the Duchess, pointing to the ballet now being
danced, "t