fellowship. You have influence, you have amazing wit, you have
unparalleled beauty, and, let me say it with the utmost sadness, you have
now had experience. Why will you not recognize facts? Italian unity!
I have exposed the fatuity--who listens? Italian freedom! I do not
attempt to reason with my daughter. She is pricked by an envenomed fly
of Satan. Yet, behold her and the duchess! It is the very union I
preach; and I am, I declare to you, signorina, in great danger. I feel
it, but I persist. I am in danger" (Count Serabiglione bowed his head
low) "of the transcendent sin of scorn of my species."

The little nobleman swayed deploringly in his chair. "Nothing is so
perilous for a soul's salvation as that. The one sane among madmen!
The one whose reason is left to him among thousands who have forsaken it!
I beg you to realize the idea. The Emperor, as I am given to understand,
is about to make public admission of my services. I shall be all the
more hated. Yet it is a considerable gain. I do not deny that I esteem
it as a promotion for my services. I shall not be the first martyr in
this world, signorina."

Count Serabiglione produced a martyr's smile.

"The profits of my expected posts will be," he was saying, with a
reckoning eye cast upward into his cranium for accuracy, when Laura
returned, and Vittoria ran out to the duchess. Amalia repeated Irma's
tattle. A curious little twitching of the brows at Violetta d'Isorella's
name marked the reception of it.

"She is most lovely," Vittoria said.

"And absolutely reckless."