eeable intrigue
in the society of your equals? No--but a hostess engaged in suckling and
bathing her brats, or in studying chemistry and optics with some dirty
school-master, who is given the seat of honour at table and a pavilion
in the park to which he may retire when weary of the homage of the
great; while as for the host, he is busy discussing education or
political economy with his unfortunate guests, if, indeed, he is not
dragging them through leagues of mud and dust to inspect his latest
experiments in forestry and agriculture, or to hear a pack of snuffling
school-children singing hymns to the God of Nature! And what," he
continued, "is the result of it all? The peasants are starving, the
taxes are increasing, the virtuous landlords are ruining themselves in
farming on scientific principles, the tradespeople are grumbling because
the nobility do not spend their money in Paris, the court is dull, the
clergy are furious, the Queen mopes, the King is frightened, and the
whole French people are yawning themselves to death from Normandy to
Provence."

"Yes," said Castelrovinato with his melancholy smile, "the test of
success is to have had one's money's worth; but experience, which is
dried pleasure, is at best a dusty diet, as we know. Yonder, in a fold
of those hills," he added, pointing to the cluster of Euganean mountains
just faintly pencilled above the plain, "lies the little fief from which
I take my name. Acre by acre, tree by tree, it has gone to pay for my
experiments, not in agriculture but in pleasure; and whenever I look
over at it from Venice and reflect on what each rood of ground or trunk
of tree has purchased, I wonder to see my life as bare as ever for all
that I have spent on it."

The young Marquess shrugged his shoulders. "And would your life," he
exclaimed, "have been a whit less bare had you passed it in your
ancestral keep among those windy hills, in the company of swineherds and
charcoal-burners, with a milk-maid for your mistress and the village
priest for your partner at picquet?"

"Perhaps not," the other agreed. "There is a tale of a man who spent his
life in wishing he had lived differently; and when he died he was
surrounded by a throng of spectral shapes, each one exactly like the
other, who, on his asking what they were, replied: 'We are all the
different lives you might have lived.'"

"If you are going to tell ghost-stories," cried Coeur-Volant, "I will
call for a bottle of Cana