He had abundant will and self-control.  He was not long in recovering himself; he raised his head like one who feels himself strong enough to defy all dangers.  After greeting Mme. de Lorcy, he drew near Antoinette, and asked how she was, in a grave, almost ceremonious tone.

“Your visit distresses me, my dear count,” said Mme. de Lorcy to him; “I fear it is the last.  Have you come to bid us farewell?”

“Alas! yes, madame,” he replied.  “The letter for which I have been waiting has not yet arrived; but this delay will not alter my plans:  in three days I shall leave Paris.”

“Without a desire to return, without regret?” she asked.

“I shall only regret Maisons, and the kind reception I have received there.  Paris is too large; little people like myself feel their smallness more here than elsewhere; it does not require an excess of pride for one to dislike being reduced to the state of an atom.  Residing in Vienna suits me better; I breathe freer there; it is a city better adapted to my size and taste.  Birds do wrong to change their nests.”

Thereupon, he began to describe and warmly extol the Prater and its fine walks, Schonbrunn, its botanical gardens and the Gloriette, the church of St. Stephen’s, and the limpid waters of the Danube; sometimes addressing himself to Antoinette, who listened without a word, and sometimes to Mme. de Lorcy, whose eyes were turned at intervals towards M. Langis, seeming to say to him:  “Was I not right?  Confess that your apprehensions lacked common-sense.  Do you hear him? he has only half an hour to spend with her, and he describes the Prater.  Are you still thinking of cutting his throat?  Please say one polite and civil word to him.  It is not he, it is you who are gloomy.  Throw off your sinister air.  How long will this taciturn reverie last in which you are sunk?  You make yourself a laughing-stock—­you act like a fool.  You resemble a sphinx of the desert engaged in meditating upon a serpent, and who mistakes an innocent adder for a viper.”  M. Langis understood what she wished to say to him, but he did not throw off his sinister air.

After praising Vienna and its environs, Samuel Brohl eulogized the easy, careless character of the Viennese.  He told, in a sprightly way, several anecdotes.  His gaiety was rather feverish—­somewhat forced studied, and abrupt; but, nevertheless, it was gaiety.  Mme. de Lorcy responded to him, Mlle. Moriaz continued silent; she crumpled between her fingers the guipure lace of her Marie-Antoinette fichu, and, with fixed eye, she seemed to be counting the stitches.  Samuel Brohl interrupted himself in the midst of a sentence, and rose suddenly.  He turned towards Antoinette; in a hollow voice he begged her to tell M. Moriaz how much he regretted that his early departure would deprive him of the honour and pleasure of visiting him at Cormeilles; then he bowed to Mme. de Lorcy, thanked her for the happy moments that he had spent with her, and charged her to commend him to the kind remembrance of Abbe Miollens.