“If you loved him you would not talk so well.”

Emilio took no part in the conversation; he listened and gazed.  This reserve might have led foreigners to suppose that the Prince was a man of no intelligence,—­their impression very commonly of an Italian in love,—­whereas he was simply a lover up to his ears in rapture.  Vendramin sat down by Emilio, opposite the Frenchman, who, as the stranger, occupied the corner facing the Duchess.

“Is that gentleman drunk?” said the physician in an undertone to Massimilla, after looking at Vendramin.

“Yes,” replied she, simply.

In that land of passion, each passion bears its excuse in itself, and gracious indulgence is shown to every form of error.  The Duchess sighed deeply, and an expression of suppressed pain passed over her features.

“You will see strange things in our country, monsieur,” she went on.  “Vendramin lives on opium, as this one lives on love, and that one buries himself in learning; most young men have a passion for a dancer, as older men are miserly.  We all create some happiness or some madness for ourselves.”

“Because you all want to divert your minds from some fixed idea, for which a revolution would be a radical cure,” replied the physician.  “The Genoese regrets his republic, the Milanese pines for his independence, the Piemontese longs for a constitutional government, the Romagna cries for liberty—­”

“Of which it knows nothing,” interrupted the Duchess.  “Alas! there are men in Italy so stupid as to long for your idiotic Charter, which destroys the influence of woman.  Most of my fellow-countrywomen must need read your French books—­useless rhodomontade—­”

“Useless!” cried the Frenchman.

“Why, monsieur,” the Duchess went on, “what can you find in a book that is better than what we have in our hearts?  Italy is mad.”

“I cannot see that a people is mad because it wishes to be its own master,” said the physician.

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed the Duchess, eagerly, “does not that mean paying with a great deal of bloodshed for the right of quarreling, as you do, over crazy ideas?”

“Then you approve of despotism?” said the physician.

“Why should I not approve of a system of government which, by depriving us of books and odious politics, leaves men entirely to us?”

“I had thought that the Italians were more patriotic,” said the Frenchman.

Massimilla laughed so slyly that her interlocutor could not distinguish mockery from serious meaning, nor her real opinion from ironical criticism.

“Then you are not a liberal?” said he.

“Heaven preserve me!” said she.  “I can imagine nothing in worse taste than such opinions in a woman.  Could you love a woman whose heart was occupied by all mankind?”

“Those who love are naturally aristocrats,” the Austrian General observed, with a smile.