"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 which is said to be Christian. I have seen piety
and purity only in the images of Fra Angelico, although they are very
pretty. The rest, those figures of Virgins and angels, are voluptuous,
caressing, and at times perversely ingenuous. What is there religious in
those young Magian kings, handsome as women; in that Saint Sebastian,
brilliant with youth, who seems merely the dolorous Bacchus of
Christianity?"

Dechartre replied that he thought as she did, and that they must be
right, she and he; since Savonarola was of the same opinion, and, finding
no piety in any work of art, wished to burn them all.

"There were at Florence, in the time of the superb Manfred, who was half
a Mussulman, men who were sai