"Achieve that, and we shall love you," said the Duchess. "But if on
your return to France you do not calumniate us, we shall love you even
better. The hapless Italians are too much crushed by foreign dominion
to be fairly judged--for we have known yours," she added, with a
smile.

"It was more generous than Austria's," said the physician, eagerly.

"Austria squeezes and gives us nothing back, and you squeeze to
enlarge and beautify our towns; you stimulated us by giving us an
army. You thought you could keep Italy, and they expect to lose it
--there lies the difference.

"The Austrians provide us with a sort of ease that is as stultifying
and heavy as themselves, while you overwhelmed us by your devouring
energy. But whether we die of tonics or of narcotics, what does it
matter? It is death all the same, Monsieur le docteur."

"Unhappy Italy! In my eyes she is like a beautiful woman whom France
ought to protect by making her his mistress," exclaimed the Frenchman.

"But you could not love us as we wish to be loved," said the Duchess,
smiling. "We want to be free. But the liberty I crave is not your
ignoble and middle-class liberalism, which would kill all art. I ask,"
said she, in a tone that thrilled through the box,--"that is to say, I
would ask,--that each Italian republic should be resuscitated, with
its nobles, its citizens, its special privileges for each caste. I
would have the old aristocratic republics once more with their
intestine warfare and rivalry that gave birth to the noblest works of
art, that created politics, that raised up the great princely houses.