poor as for the rich, a subject of
laughter, an object of disgust and of pity. Your priests will dethrone
you, and elevate against you an anti-pope, or will say that you are
crazy. And it is necessary that they should tell the truth; it is
necessary that you should be crazy; the lunatics have saved the world.
Men will give to you the crown of thorns and the reed sceptre, and they
will spit in your face, and it is by that sign that you will appear as
Christ and true king; and it is by such means that you will establish
Christian socialism, which is the kingdom of God on earth.'"

Having spoken in this way, Choulette lighted one of those long and
tortuous Italian cigars, which are pierced with a straw. He drew from it
several puffs of infectious vapor, then he continued, tranquilly:

"And it would be practical. You may refuse to acknowledge any quality in
me except my clear view of situations. Ah, Madame Marmet, you will never
know how true it is that the great works of this world were always
achieved by madmen. Do you think, Madame Martin, that if Saint Francis of
Assisi had been reasonable, he would have poured upon the earth, for the
refreshment of peoples, the living water of charity and all the perfumes
of love?"

"I do not know," replied Madame Martin; "but reasonable people have
always seemed to me to be bores. I can say this to you, Monsieur
Choulette."

They returned to Fiesole by the steam tramway which goes up the hill. The
rain fell. Madame Marmet went to sleep and Choulette complained. All his
ills came to attack him at once: the humidity in the air gave him a pain
in the knee, and he could not bend his leg; his carpet-bag, lost the day
before in the trip from the station to Fiesole, had not been found, and
it was an irreparable disaster; a Paris review had just published one of
his poems, with typographical errors as glaring as Aphrodite's shell.

He accused men and things of being hostile to him. He became puerile,
absurd, odious. Madame Martin, whom Choulette and the rain saddened,
thought the trip would never end. When she reached the house she found
Miss Bell in the drawing-room, copying with gold ink on a leaf of
parchment, in a handwriting formed after the Aldine italics, verses which
she had composed in the night. At her friend's coming she raised her
little face, plain but illuminated by splendid eyes.

"Darling, permit me to introduce to you the Prince Albertinelli."

The Prince possessed a c