neither day nor darkness, but partakes of both."

"So you see that in this head there is too much patriotism," said
the Prince, laying his hand on the thick black curls that fell on
Vendramin's brow.

"Oh, if he loves us he will give up his dreadful opium!" said
Massimilla.

"I will cure your friend," said the Frenchman.

"Achieve that, and we shall love you," said the Duchess. "But if on
your return to France you do not calumniate us, we shall love you even
better. The hapless Italians are too much crushed by foreign dominion to
be fairly judged--for we have known yours," she added, with a smile.

"It was more generous than Austria's," said the physician, eagerly.

"Austria squeezes and gives us nothing back, and you squeeze to enlarge
and beautify our towns; you stimulated us by giving us an army. You
thought you could keep Italy, and they expect to lose it--there lies the
difference.

"The Austrians provide us with a sort of ease that is as stultifying and
heavy as themselves, while you overwhelmed us by your devouring energy.
But whether we die of tonics or of narcotics, what does it matter? It is
death all the same, Monsieur le docteur."

"Unhappy Italy! In my eyes she is like a beautiful woman whom France
ought to protect by making her his mistress," exclaimed the Frenchman.

"But you could not love us as we wish to be loved," said the Duchess,
smiling. "We want to be free. But the liberty I crave is not your
ignoble and middle-class liberalism, which would kill all art. I ask,"
said she, in a tone that thrilled through the box,--"that is to say, I
would ask,--that each Italian republic should be resuscitated, with its
nobles, its citizens, its special privileges for each caste. I would
have the old aristocratic republics once more with their intestine
warfare and rivalry that gave birth to the noblest works of art, that
created politics, that raised up the great princely houses. By extending
the action of one government over a vast expanse of country it is
frittered down. The Italian republics were the glory of Europe in
the middle ages. Why has Italy succumbed when the Swiss, who were her
porters, have triumphed?"

"The Swiss republics," said the doctor, "were worthy housewives, busy
with their own little concerns, and neither having any cause for
envying another. Your republics were haughty queens, preferring to sell
themselves rather than bow to a neighbor; they fell too low ever to rise
again. The