“Aye, Herminia,” said the marquis:  “I have had under my command a magnificent regiment.  Very often have I experienced the energetic and exquisite enjoyment of command!  At my word my squadrons put themselves in action; bugles blared, my officers, glittering in golden embroidery, galloped everywhere to repeat my orders:  all my brave soldiers, burning with courage, and cicatrized by battles, obeyed my signal; and I felt proud and strong, holding as I did (so to speak) in my hands, the force and valor of each and all combined into one being of resistless strength and invincible intrepidity,—­of all of which I was as much the master, as I mastered the rage and fire of my war-horse!  Aye! that was greatness.  But now, in spite of the misfortunes which have befallen our Order, I feel myself a thousand times more ready for action, more authoritative, more strong and more daring, at the head of our mute and black-robed militia, who only think and wish, or move and obey, mechanically, according to my will.  On a sign they scatter over the surface of the globe, gliding stealthily into households under the guise of confessing the wife or teaching the children, into family affairs by hearing the dying avowals,—­up to the throne through the quaking conscience of a credulous crowned coward;—­aye, even to the chair of the Pope himself, living manifesto of the Godhead though he is, by the services rendered him or imposed by him.  Is not this secret rule, made to kindle or glut the wildest ambition, as it reaches from the cradle to the grave, from the laborer’s hovel to the royal palace, from palace to the papal chair?  What career in all the world presents such splendid openings? what unutterable scorn ought I not feel for the bright butterfly life of early days, when we made so many envy us?  Don’t you remember, Herminia?” he added, with a bitter smile.

“You are right, perfectly right, Frederick!” replied the princess quickly.  “How little soever we may reflect, with what contempt do we not think upon the past!  I, like you, often compare it with the present; and then what satisfaction I feel at having followed your counsels!  For, indeed, without you, I should have played the miserable and ridiculous part which a woman always plays in her decline from having been beautiful and surrounded by admirers.  What could I have done at this hour?  I should have vainly striven to retain around me a selfish and ungrateful world of gross and shameful men, who court women only that they may turn them to the service of their passions, or to the gratification of their vanity.  It is true that there would have remained to me the resource of what is called keeping an agreeable house for all others,—­yes, in order to entertain them, be visited by a crowd of the indifferent, to afford opportunities of meeting to amorous young couples, who, following each other from parlor to parlor, come not to your house but for the purpose of being together; a very pretty pleasure, truly, that of harboring those blooming, laughing, amorous youths, who look upon the luxury and brilliancy with which one surrounds them, as if they were their due upon bonds to minister to their pleasure, and to their impudent amours!”