"Ah! but we are Florentines transplanted to the North," answered
Thaddeus with a refinement of accent and a look in his eyes which made
his conduct at table seem assumed for the occasion. There was too
evident a contrast between his involuntary self-revelation in this
speech and his behavior during dinner. Clementine examined the captain
with a few of those covert glances which show a woman's surprise and
also her capacity for observation.

It resulted from this little incident that silence reigned in the
salon while the three took their coffee, a silence rather annoying to
Adam, who was incapable of imagining the cause of it. Clementine no
longer tried to draw out Thaddeus. The captain, on the other hand,
retreated within his military stiffness and came out of it no more,
neither on the way to the Opera nor in the box, where he seemed to be
asleep.

"You see, madame, that I am a very stupid man," he said during the
dance in the last act of "Guillaume Tell." "Am I not right to keep, as
the saying is, to my own specialty?"

"In truth, my dear captain, you are neither a talker nor a man of the
world, but you are perhaps Polish."

"Therefore leave me to look after your pleasures, your property, your
household--it is all I am good for."

"Tartufe! pooh!" cried Adam, laughing. "My dear, he is full of ardor;
he is thoroughly educated; he can, if he chooses, hold his own in any
salon. Clementine, don't believe his modesty."