ughter of a Venetian
Senator) that a reminiscent eye might still detect the outline of the
gracefullest Columbine who had ever flitted across the Italian stage.
These visitors were lodged by the Duke's kindness in the Palazzo
Cerveno, near the ducal residence; and though the ladies of Pianura were
inclined to look askance on the Marquise's genealogy, yet his Highness's
condescension, and her own edifying piety, had soon allayed these
scruples, and the salon of Madame de Coeur-Volant became the rival of
Madame d'Albany's.

It was, in fact, the more entertaining of the two; for, in spite of his
lady's austere views, the Marquis retained that gift of social
flexibility that was already becoming the tradition of a happier day. To
the Marquis, indeed, the revolution was execrable not so much because of
the hardships it inflicted, as because it was the forerunner of social
dissolution--the breaking-up of the regime which had made manners the
highest morality, and conversation the chief end of man. He could have
lived gaily on a crust in good company and amid smiling faces; but the
social deficiencies of Pianura were more difficult to endure than any
material privation. In Italy, as the Marquis had more than once
remarked, people loved, gambled, wrote poetry, and patronised the arts;
but, alas, they did not converse. Coeur-Volant could not conceal from
his Highness that there was no conversation in Pianura; but he did his
best to fill the void by the constant exercise of his own gift in that
direction, and to Odo at least his talk seemed as good as it was
copious. Misfortune had given a finer savour to the Marquis's
philosophy, and there was a kind of heroic grace in his undisturbed
cultivation of the amenities.

While the Marquis was struggling to preserve the conversational art, and
Alfieri planning the savage revenge of the Misogallo, the course of
affairs in France had gained a wilder impetus. The abolition of the
nobility, the flight and capture of the King, his enforced declaration
of war against Austria, the massacres of Avignon, the sack of the
Tuileries--such events seemed incredible enough till the next had
crowded them out of mind. The new year rose in blood and mounted to a
bloodier noon. All the old defences were falling. Religion, monarchy,
law, were sucked down into the whirlpool of liberated passions. Across
that sanguinary scene passed, like a mocking ghost, the philosophers'
vision of the perfectibility of