of that which
my fathers respected. But times have changed, and certain fanaticisms
are no longer admissible. That is what I have wished to say to you in
such a manner that you could take no offence."

And he gallantly kissed Fanny's tiny hand, not divining that he had
redoubled the melancholy of that too-generous child. The discord
continued to be excessive between the world of ideas in which she moved
and that in which the ruined Prince existed. As the mystics say with so
much depth, they were not of the same heaven.

Of all the chimeras which had lasted hours, God alone remained. It
sufficed the noble creature to say: "My father is so happy, I will not
mar his joy."

"I will do my duty toward my husband. I will be so good a wife that I
will transform him. He has religion. He has heart. It will be my role to
make of him a true Christian. And then I shall have my children and
the poor." Such were the thoughts which filled the mind of the envied
betrothed. For her the journals began to describe the dresses already
prepared, for her a staff of tailors, dressmakers, needlewomen and
jewellers were working; she would have on her contract the same
signature as a princess of the blood, who would be a princess herself
and related to one of the most glorious aristocracies in the world. Such
were the thoughts she would no doubt have through life, as she walked
in the garden of the Palais Castagna, that historical garden in which
is still to be seen a row of pear-trees, in the place where Sixte-Quint,
near death, gathered some fruit. He tasted it, and he said to Cardinal
Castagna--playing on their two names, his being Peretti--"The pears are
spoiled. The Romans have had enough. They will soon eat chestnuts." That
family anecdote enchanted Justus Hafner. It seemed to him full of the
most delightful humor. He repeated it to his colleagues at the club,
to his tradesmen, to it mattered not whom. He did not even mistrust
Dorsenne's irony.

"I met Hafner this morning on the Corso," said the latter to Alba at one
of the soirees at the end of the month, "and I had my third edition of
the pleasantry on the pears and chestnuts. And then, as we took a few
steps in the same direction, he pointed out to me the Palais Bonaparte,
saying, 'We are also related to them.'.... Which means that a
grand-nephew of the Emperor married a cousin of Peppino.... I swear he
thinks he is related to Napoleon!... He is not even proud of it. The
Bonapartes