will you go?"

"You are mistaken," replied the writer, "in thinking that. I do not love
your old France, but that does not prevent me from enjoying the new. One
can like wine and champagne at the same time. But I am not at liberty.
I must visit the exposition at Palais Castagna this morning."

"You will not do that," exclaimed impetuous Montfanon, whose severe face
again expressed one of those contrarieties which caused it to brighten
when he was with one of whom he was fond as he was of Dorsenne. "You
would not have gone to see the King assassinated in '93? The selling at
auction of the old dwelling of Pope Urban VII is almost as tragical! It
is the beginning of the agony of what was Roman nobility. I know. They
deserve it all, since they were not killed to the last man on the steps
of the Vatican when the Italians took the city. We should have done it,
we who had no popes among our grand-uncles, if we had not been busy
fighting elsewhere. But it is none the less pitiful to see the hammer of
the appraisers raised above a palace with which is connected centuries of
history. Upon my life, if I were Prince d'Ardea--if I had inherited the
blood, the house, the titles of the Castagnas, and if I thought I should
leave nothing behind me of that which my fathers had amassed--I swear to
you, Dorsenne, I should die of grief. And if you recall the fact that
the unhappy youth is a spoiled child of eight-and-twenty, surrounded by
flatterers, without parents, without friends, without counsellors, that
he risked his patrimony on the Bourse among thieves of the integrity of
Monsieur Hafner, that all the wealth collected by that succession of
popes, of cardinals, of warriors, of diplomatists, has served to enrich
ignoble men, you would think the occurrence too lamentable to have any
share in it, even as a spectator. Come, I will take you to Saint-
Claude."