"I see every feminine quality in it, my dear."

"What can it be that he is wanting in?"

"Masculine ambition."

"I am not defending him," said Vittoria hastily.

"Not at all; and I am not attacking him. I can excuse his dread of
Republicanism. I can fancy that there is reason for him just now to fear
Republicanism worse than Austria. Paris and Milan are two grisly
phantoms before him. These red spectres are born of earthquake, and are
more given to shaking thrones than are hostile cannonshot. Earthquakes
are dreadfuller than common maladies to all of us. Fortune may help him,
but he has not the look of one who commands her. The face is not
aquiline. There's a light over him like the ray of a sickly star."

"For that reason!" Vittoria burst out.

"Oh, for that reason we pity men, assuredly, my Sandra, but not kings.
Luckless kings are not generous men, and ungenerous men are mischievous
kings."

"But if you find him chivalrous and devoted; if he proves his noble
intentions, why not support him?"

"Dandle a puppet, by all means," said Laura.

Her intellect, not her heart, was harsh to the king; and her heart was
not mistress of her intellect in this respect, because she beheld riding