ight go further, and say that I have looked with
secret pleasure at the course of events which to your short-sightedness
seemed disastrous."

"I can scarce conceive that possible," said the Countess, sighing.

"Naturally enough, perhaps, because you never knew the greatest of all
blessings in this life, which is--liberty. Separation from your husband,
my dear Nina, did not emancipate you from the tiresome requirements
of the world. You got rid of _him_, to be sure, but not of those who
regarded you as his wife. It required the act of courage by which you
cut with these people forever, to assert the freedom I speak of."

"I almost shudder at the contest I have provoked, and had you not
insisted on it--"

"You had gone back again to the old slavery, to be pitied and
compassionated, and condoled with, instead of being feared and envied,"
said the other; and as she spoke, her flashing eyes and quivering brows
gave an expression almost tiger-like to her features. "What was there
about your house and its habits distinctive before? What gave you any
pre-eminence above those that surround you? You were better looking,
yourself; better dressed; your _salons_ better lighted; your dinners
more choice,--there was the end of it. _Your_ company was _their_
company,--_your_ associates were _theirs_. The homage _you_ received
to-day had been yesterday the incense of another. There was not a
bouquet nor a flattery offered to _you_ that had not its _facsimile_,
doing service in some other quarter. You were 'one of them,' Nina,
obliged to follow their laws and subscribe to their ideas; and while
_they_ traded on the wealth of your attractions, _you_ derived nothing
from the partnership but the same share as those about you."

"And how will it be now?" asked the Countess, half in fear, half in
hope.

"How will it be now? I 'll tell you. This house will be the resort of
every distinguished man, not of Italy, but of the world at large. Here
will come the highest of every nation, as to a circle where they
can say, and hear, and suggest a thousand things in the freedom of
unauthorized intercourse. You will not drain Florence alone, but all the
great cities of Europe, of its best talkers and deepest thinkers. The
statesman and the author, and the sculptor and the musician, will hasten
to a neutral territory, where for the time a kind of equality will
prevail. The weary minister, escaping from a Court festival, will come
here to unbend; t