"You do right? Indeed, no! You are much mistaken if you think so. Just
be so good as to let me get to the fire, Mr. Hunsden; I have something
to cook." (An interval occupied in settling a casserole on the fire;
then, while she stirred its contents:) "Right! as if it were right to
crush any pleasurable sentiment that God has given to man, especially
any sentiment that, like patriotism, spreads man's selfishness in wider
circles" (fire stirred, dish put down before it).

"Were you born in Switzerland?"

"I should think so, or else why should I call it my country?"

"And where did you get your English features and figure?"

"I am English, too; half the blood in my veins is English; thus I have
a right to a double power of patriotism, possessing an interest in two
noble, free, and fortunate countries."

"You had an English mother?"

"Yes, yes; and you, I suppose, had a mother from the moon or from
Utopia, since not a nation in Europe has a claim on your interest?"

"On the contrary, I'm a universal patriot, if you could understand me
rightly: my country is the world."

"Sympathies so widely diffused must be very shallow: will you have
the goodness to come to table. Monsieur" (to me who appeared to be now
absorbed in reading by moonlight)--"Monsieur, supper is served."

This was said in quite a different voice to that in which she had been
bandying phrases with Mr. Hunsden--not so short, graver and softer.

"Frances, what do you mean by preparing, supper? we had no intention of
staying."

"Ah, monsieur, but you have stayed, and supper is prepared; you have
only the alternative of eating it."

The meal was a foreign one, of course; it consisted in two small but
tasty dishes of meat prepared with skill and served with nicety; a salad
and "fromage francais," completed it. The business of eating interposed
a brief truce between the belligerents, but no sooner was supper
disposed of than they were at it again. The fresh subject of dispute
ran on the spirit of religious intolerance which Mr. Hunsden affirmed to
exist strongly in Switzerland, notwithstanding the professed attachment
of the Swiss to freedom. Here Frances had greatly the worst of it,
not only because she was unskilled to argue, but because her own real
opinions on the point in question happened to coincide pretty nearly
with Mr. Hunsden's, and she only contradicted him out of opposition. At
last she gave in, confessing that she thought as he thought,