"

"Yes; we never see either. It is all truffles and caramels and _vins
frappes_."

"There is your bread."

She glanced at the little children, two pretty, graceful little maids of
six and seven years old.

"_Ouf!_" said the Countess Branka. "They are only little bits of puff
paste, a couple of _petits fours_ baked on the boulevards. If they be
_chic_, and marry well, I for one shall ask no more of them. If ever you
have children, I suppose you will rear them on science and the
Antonines?"

"Perhaps on the open air and Homer."

* * *

Cannot you make them understand that we are not public artists to need
_reclames_, nor yet sovereigns to be compelled to submit to the
microscope? Is this the meaning of civilisation--to make privacy
impossible, to oblige every one to live under a lens?

* * *

The world was much happier when distinctions and divisions were
impassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the consequence?
That your _bourgeoise_ ruins her husband in wearing gowns fit only for a
duchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular to look precisely
like a cabman or a bailiff.

* * *

A great love must be as exhaustless as the ocean in its mercy, and as
profound in its comprehension.

* * *

What was love if not one long forgiveness? What raised it higher than
the senses if not its infinite patience and endurance of all wrong? What
was its hope of eternal life if it had not gathered strength in it
enough to rise above human arrogance and human vengeance?

* * *

There is an infinite sense of peace in those cool, vast, unworn mountain
solitudes, with the rain-mists sweeping like spectral armies over the
level lands below, and the sun-rays slanting heavenward, like the spears
of an angelic host. There is such abundance of rushing water, of deep
grass, of endless shade, of forest trees, of heather and pine, of
torrent and tarn; and beyond these are the great peaks that loom through
breaking clouds, and the clear cold air, in which the vulture wheels and
the heron sails; and the shadows are so deep, and the stillness is so
sweet, and the earth seems so green, and fresh, and silent, and strong.
Nowhere else can one rest so well; nowhere else is there so fit a refuge
for all the faiths and fancies that can find a home no longer in the
harsh and hurrying world; there is room for them all in the A