He blushed to his eyes, and I repented.  She suddenly began to laugh; it was then I observed how sweet her voice was in laughter.  We talked after this of various matters, and in a little while I complimented her on her excellent English, and asked if she had learnt it in England.

“Heaven forbid!” she cried.  “I have never been there and wish never to go.  I should never get on with the—­” I wondered what she was going to say; the fogs, the smoke, or whist with sixpenny stakes?—­“I should never get on,” she said, “with the aristocracy!  I am a fierce democrat—­I am not ashamed of it.  I hold opinions which would make my ancestors turn in their graves.  I was born in the lap of feudalism.  I am a daughter of the crusaders.  But I am a revolutionist!  I have a passion for freedom—­my idea of happiness is to die on a great barricade!  It’s to your great country I should like to go.  I should like to see the wonderful spectacle of a great people free to do everything it chooses, and yet never doing anything wrong!”

I replied, modestly, that, after all, both our freedom and our good conduct had their limits, and she turned quickly about and shook her fan with a dramatic gesture at Pickering.  “No matter, no matter!” she cried; “I should like to see the country which produced that wonderful young man.  I think of it as a sort of Arcadia—­a land of the golden age.  He’s so delightfully innocent!  In this stupid old Germany, if a young man is innocent he’s a fool; he has no brains; he’s not a bit interesting.  But Mr. Pickering says the freshest things, and after I have laughed five minutes at their freshness it suddenly occurs to me that they are very wise, and I think them over for a week.”  “True!” she went on, nodding at him.  “I call them inspired solecisms, and I treasure them up.  Remember that when I next laugh at you!”

Glancing at Pickering, I was prompted to believe that he was in a state of beatific exaltation which weighed Madame Blumenthal’s smiles and frowns in an equal balance.  They were equally hers; they were links alike in the golden chain.  He looked at me with eyes that seemed to say, “Did you ever hear such wit?  Did you ever see such grace?” It seemed to me that he was but vaguely conscious of the meaning of her words; her gestures, her voice and glance, made an absorbing harmony.  There is something painful in the spectacle of absolute enthralment, even to an excellent cause.  I gave no response to Pickering’s challenge, but made some remark upon the charm of Adelina Patti’s singing.  Madame Blumenthal, as became a “revolutionist,” was obliged to confess that she could see no charm in it; it was meagre, it was trivial, it lacked soul.  “You must know that in music, too,” she said, “I think for myself!” And she began with a great many flourishes of her fan to explain what it was she thought.  Remarkable things, doubtless; but I cannot answer for it, for in the midst of the explanation the curtain rose again.