ed in an
open envelope. He waved it for a while, with an air of mysterious
impudence, then handed it to the Countess Martin. It was a letter of
introduction from the Marquise de Rieu to a princess of the House of
France, a near relative of the Comte de Chambord, who, old and a widow,
lived in retirement near the gates of Florence. Having enjoyed the effect
which he expected to produce, he said that he should perhaps visit the
Princess; that she was a good person, and pious.

"A truly great lady," he added, "who does not show her magnificence in
gowns and hats. She wears her chemises for six weeks, and sometimes
longer. The gentlemen of her train have seen her wear very dirty white
stockings, which fell around her heels. The virtues of the great queens
of Spain are revived in her. Oh, those soiled stockings, what real glory
there is in them!"

He took the letter and put it back in his book. Then, arming himself with
a horn-handled knife, he began, with its point, to finish a figure
sketched in the handle of his stick. He complimented himself on it:

"I am skilful in all the arts of beggars and vagabonds. I know how to
open locks with a nail, and how to carve wood with a bad knife."

The head began to appear. It was the head of a thin woman, weeping.

Choulette wished to express in it human misery, not simple and touching,
such as men of other times may have felt it in a world of mingled
harshness and kindness; but hideous, and reflecting the state of ugliness
created by the free-thinking bourgeois and the military patriots of the
French Revolution. According to him the present regime embodied only
hypocrisy and brutality.

"Their barracks are a hideous invention of modern times. They date from
the seventeenth century. Before that time there were only guard-houses
where the soldiers played cards and told tales. Louis XIV was a precursor
of Bonaparte. But the evil has attained its plenitude since the monstrous
institution of the obligatory enlistment. The shame of emperors and of
republics is to have made it an obligation for men to kill. In the ages
called barbarous, cities and princes entrusted their defence to
mercenaries, who fought prudently. In a great battle only five or six men
were killed. And when knights went to the wars, at least they were not
forced to do it; they died for their pleasure. They were good for nothing
else. Nobody in the time of Saint Louis would have thought of sending to
battle a man of l