n
light, the violet peaks, and the ancient trees of Florence, smiled with
happy fatigue. She had gone with Miss Bell, Dechartre, and Madame Marmet
to the Chartrist convent of Ema. And now, in the intoxication of her
visions, she forgot the care of the day before, the importunate
letters, the distant reproaches, and thought of nothing in the world
but cloisters chiselled and painted, villages with red roofs, and roads
where she saw the first blush of spring. Dechartre had modelled for Miss
Bell a waxen figure of Beatrice. Vivian was painting angels. Softly bent
over her, Prince Albertinelli caressed his beard and threw around him
glances that appeared to seek admiration.

Replying to a reflection of Vivian Bell on marriage and love:

"A woman must choose," he said. "With a man whom women love her heart is
not quiet. With a man whom the women do not love she is not happy."

"Darling," asked Miss Bell, "what would you wish for a friend dear to
you?"

"I should wish, Vivian, that my friend were happy. I should wish
also that she were quiet. She should be quiet in hatred of treason,
humiliating suspicions, and mistrust."

"But, darling, since the Prince has said that a woman can not have at
the same time happiness and security, tell me what your friend should
choose."

"One never chooses, Vivian; one never chooses. Do not make me say what I
think of marriage."

At this moment Choulette appeared, wearing the magnificent air of those
beggars of whom small towns are proud. He had played briscola with
peasants in a coffeehouse of Fiesole.

"Here is Monsieur Choulette," said Miss Bell. "He will teach what we are
to think of marriage. I am inclined to listen to him as to an oracle. He
does not see the things that we see, and he sees things that we do not
see. Monsieur Choulette, what do you think of marriage?"

He took a seat and lifted in the air a Socratic finger:

"Are you speaking, Mademoiselle, of the solemn union between man and
woman? In this sense, marriage is a sacrament. But sometimes, alas! it
is almost a sacrilege. As for civil marriage, it is a formality. The
importance given to it in our society is an idiotic thing which would
have made the women of other times laugh. We owe this prejudice, like
many others, to the bourgeois, to the mad performances of a lot of
financiers which have been called the Revolution, and which seem
admirable to those that have profited by it. Civil marriage is, in
reality, only