“Monsieur is not interested in the conversation?” he asked, and, though there was a mocking smile on the thin lips, there was also a kindly look in the brilliant eyes.

Calvert blushed hotly at being so easily found out by this worldly looking prelate.  Monsieur de Talleyrand shrugged his shoulders. “’Tis a good sign, I think,” and he looked still more kindly at Calvert.  “You have been brought up amid simpler, purer surroundings, Mr. Calvert,” he said, suddenly leaning over toward the young man and speaking in tones so low as to be drowned in the noisy conversation.  “I envy you your good fortune,” he went on.  “I envy you your inability to fit yourself into any niche, to adjust yourself to any surroundings, as your friend Monsieur Morris, for example, seems to have the faculty of doing.  See, he is even making verses to Madame la Duchesse!”

Calvert looked over at Mr. Morris and saw him tear from his table-book a leaf upon which he had been writing and, with a bow, offer it to the Duchess.

“Are we not to hear Monsieur’s verses?” demands Monsieur de Talleyrand, languidly, after a moment’s silence, during which Her Highness had regarded the lines with a puzzled air, and smiling faintly.

“These are in English—­I shall have to get Madame de Chastellux to translate them for me some day,” and she folded the paper as if to put it away, but there arose such exclamations of disappointment, such gentle entreaties not to be denied the pleasure of hearing the verses, that she yielded to the clamor and signalled Madame de Chastellux her permission to have them read aloud.  Amid a discreet silence, broken only by little murmurs of appreciation and perfumed applause, the lady of honor read the lines, translating them as she read: 

  “If Beauty so sweet in all gentleness drest,
    In loveliness, virtue arrayed;
  By the graces adorned, by the muses carest,
    By lofty ambition obeyed;

  Ah! who shall escape from the gold-painted dart,
    When Orleans touches the bow? 
  Who the softness resist of that sensible heart
    Where love and benevolence glow?

  Thus we dream of the Gods who with bounty supreme
    Our humble petitions accord,
  Our love they excite, and command our esteem
    Tho’ only at distance adored.”

There was a ripple of applause, somewhat languid and perfunctory on the part of the gentlemen, vivacious and prolonged on the part of the ladies, as Madame de Chastellux finished.  To Mr. Calvert the scene was a little ridiculous, the interest of the company, like the sentiment of the verses, somewhat artificial, and Mr. Morris’s role of versifier to Madame la Duchesse decidedly beneath that gentleman’s talents.

Monsieur de Talleyrand laughed softly. “‘Other places—­other customs,’” he said, and again reading Calvert’s thoughts so accurately that that young gentleman scarce knew whether to be most astonished or indignant.  It would most likely have been the latter had not a certain friendliness in the Bishop’s glance disarmed his anger.  “Mr. Morris is fortunate,” he went on, quietly.  “See—­he has pleased everyone except Madame de Flahaut.”