s. They exercised a powerful
will in working well. Being simple, they made few mistakes, and saw the
truth which our intelligence conceals from us."

Choulette began to relate to Madame Marmet the incidents of a call he
had made during the day on the Princess of the House of France to whom
the Marquise de Rieu had given him a letter of introduction. He liked
to impress upon people the fact that he, the Bohemian and vagabond, had
been received by that royal Princess, at whose house neither Miss
Bell nor the Countess Martin would have been admitted, and whom Prince
Albertinelli prided himself on having met one day at some ceremony.

"She devotes herself," said the Prince, "to the practices of piety."

"She is admirable for her nobility, and her simplicity," said Choulette.
"In her house, surrounded by her gentlemen and her ladies, she causes
the most rigorous etiquette to be observed, so that her grandeur is
almost a penance, and every morning she scrubs the pavement of the
church. It is a village church, where the chickens roam, while the
'cure' plays briscola with the sacristan."

And Choulette, bending over the table, imitated, with his napkin, a
servant scrubbing; then, raising his head, he said, gravely:

"After waiting in consecutive anterooms, I was at last permitted to kiss
her hand."

And he stopped.

Madame Martin asked, impatiently:

"What did she say to you, that Princess so admirable for her nobility
and her simplicity?"

"She said to me: 'Have you visited Florence? I am told that recently
new and handsome shops have been opened which are lighted at night.' She
said also 'We have a good chemist here. The Austrian chemists are not
better. He placed on my leg, six months ago, a porous plaster which
has not yet come off.' Such are the words that Maria Therese deigned
to address to me. O simple grandeur! O Christian virtue! O daughter
of Saint Louis! O marvellous echo of your voice, holy Elizabeth of
Hungary!"

Madame Martin smiled. She thought that Choulette was mocking. But he
denied the charge, indignantly, and Miss Bell said that Madame Martin
was wrong. It was a fault of the French, she said, to think that people
were always jesting.

Then they reverted to the subject of art, which in that country is
inhaled with the air.

"As for me," said the Countess Martin, "I am not learned enough to
admire Giotto and his school. What strikes me is the sensuality of that
art of the fifteenth century whic