row and beginning to
smile, he said: "Ah! I see--I see. Did you take me literally? I thought
you understood what I said. No, my dear abbe, I am not married, and I
never shall marry; but there are free unions as sacred, as indissoluble
as marriage."

The abbe knit his brows, his countenance assumed an expression of
chagrin and disapproval. He was about delivering to his dear count a
sermon on the immorality and positive danger of free unions, but
Samuel Brohl gave him no time. "I am not going to Vienna to rejoin
my mistress," he interposed. "She never leaves me, she accompanies me
everywhere; she is here."

Abbe Miollens cast about him a startled, bewildered gaze, expecting to
see a woman start out of some closet or come forward from behind some
curtain.

"I tell you that she is here," repeated Samuel Brohl, pointing to an
alabaster statuette, posed on a _piedouche_. The statuette represented a
woman bound tightly, on whom two Cossacks were inflicting the knout; the
socle bore the inscription, "Polonia vincta et flagellata."

The abbe's countenance became transformed in the twinkling of an eye,
the wrinkles smoothed away from his brow, his mouth relaxed, a joyous
light shone in his eyes. "How well it is that I came!" thought he. "And
under what obligations M. Moriaz will be to me!"

Turning towards Samuel he exclaimed:

"I am simply a fool; I imagined--Ah! I comprehend, your mistress is
Poland; this is delightful, and it is truly a union that is as sacred
as marriage. It has, besides, this advantage--that it interferes with
nothing else. Poland is not jealous, and if, peradventure, you should
meet a woman worthy of you whom you would like to marry, your mistress
would have nothing to say against it. To speak accurately, however,
she is not your mistress; one's country is one's mother, and reasonable
mothers never prevent their sons from marrying."

It was now Samuel's turn to assume a stern and sombre countenance. His
eye fixed upon the statuette, he replied:

"You deceive yourself, M. l'Abbe, I belong to her, I have no longer the
right to dispose of either my heart, or my soul, or my life; she will
have my every thought and my last drop of blood. I am bound to her by my
vows quite as much, I think, as is the monk by his."

"Excuse me, my dear count," said the abbe; "this is fanaticism, or
I greatly mistake. Since when have patriots come to take the vow of
celibacy? Their first duty is to become the fathers of