’Twas indeed as he had said, and, amid the applause and compliments, only Madame de Flahaut sat silent and evidently piqued, her pretty face wearing an expression of bored indifference.  But even while Monsieur de Talleyrand spoke, Mr. Morris, bending toward her, addressed some remark to her and in an instant she was all animation and charm, exerting for his benefit every fascination of which she was mistress, and showing him by glance and voice how greatly she prized his attentions.  For a moment Mr. Calvert sat silent, contemplating the little play going on before his eyes, when, suddenly remembering the words of the Duchesse d’Orleans, he turned and looked at Monsieur de Talleyrand.  Such a softening change had come over the cynical, impassive countenance, so wistful a look into the keen, dark eyes bent upon Madame de Flahaut, as caused a feeling of pity in the young man’s heart for this brilliant, unhappy, unrighteous servant of the Church.

“So Mr. Calvert has read my secret, as I read his,” said Monsieur de Talleyrand, slowly, and returning the gaze which Calvert had absently fastened upon him while revolving these thoughts.  Suddenly he began speaking rapidly, as if impelled thereto by some inward force, and, in a low but passionately intense voice, heard only by Mr. Calvert: 

“We are the sport of fate in this country more than in any other, I think,” he said.  “I might have been a young man like yourself, as noble, good, and true as yourself—­oh, do not look astonished!  ’Tis one of my acknowledged talents—­the reading of character—­I, like yourself, might have fought and loved with honor but that I am lame, and why was I lame?” he went on, bitterly.  “Because I never knew a mother’s love or care, because, when a baby, being sent from my home—­and under that roof I have never spent a night since—­I fell and injured my foot, and the woman in whose charge I had been put, being afraid to tell my parents of my mishap, the hurt was allowed to go uncorrected until ’twas too late.  And so, being lame and unfit for a soldier’s career, I was thrust into the Church, nolens volens.  Monsieur Calvert,” he said, smiling seriously, “when you hear Mr. Jefferson criticising the Bishop of Autun—­for I know he thinks but slightingly of the ecclesiastic—­recollect that ’twas the disappointed ambition and the unrelenting commands of Charles Maurice Talleyrand’s parents which made him what he is!  We are all like that,” he went on, moodily.  “Look at de Ligne—­he was married by his father at twenty to a young girl whom he had never seen until a week before the wedding.  And Madame de Flahaut—­at fifteen she was sacrificed to a man of fifty-five, who scarcely notices her existence!” He glanced across the table and again the power of love touched and softened his face for an instant.  He rose—­for the supper was finished and the company beginning to move—­and laid his hand for an instant on Calvert’s broad young shoulder.  “Mr. Calvert,” he said, half-mockingly, half-seriously, “do not be too hard upon us!  There are some excuses to be made.  In your country all things are new—­your laws, your habits, your civilization are yet plastic.  See that you mould them well!  ’Tis too late here—­we are as the generations have made us.  ‘Other places—­other customs!’” and he went off limping.