sentiments in our happy marriage."

"I'll explain to you what it is that has made you and Thaddeus such
good friends," said Clementine. "The difference in the lives you lead
comes from your tastes and from necessity; from your likings, not your
positions. As far as one can judge from merely seeing a man once, and
also from what you tell me, there are times when the subaltern might
become the superior."

"Oh, Paz is truly my superior," said Adam, naively; "I have no
advantage over him except mere luck."

His wife kissed him for the generosity of those words.

"The extreme care with which he hides the grandeur of his feelings is
one form of his superiority," continued the count. "I said to him
once: 'You are a sly one; you have in your heart a vast domain within
which you live and think.' He has a right to the title of count; but
in Paris he won't be called anything but captain."

"The fact is that the Florentine of the middle-ages has reappeared in
our century," said the countess. "Dante and Michael Angelo are in
him."

"That's the very truth," cried Adam. "He is a poet in soul."

"So here I am, married to two Poles," said the young countess, with a
gesture worthy of some genius of the stage.

"Dear child!" said Adam, pressing her to him, "it would have made me