"Elle en a de trop," retorted the countess.
"Did you ever read Zola's 'Quatre Saisons?'" Renard asked, turning to the count, at the other end of the table.
No, the count had not read it—but he could read the story of a beautiful nature when he encountered one, and presently he allowed Charm to see how absorbing he found its perusal.
"Ah, bien—et tout de même—Zola, yes, he writes terrible books; but he is a good man—a model husband and father," continued Monsieur d'Agreste, addressing the table.
"And Daudet—he adores his wife and children," added the count, as if with a determination to find only goodness in the world.
"I wonder how posterity will treat them? They'll judge their lives by their books, I presume."
"Yes, as we judge Rabelais or Voltaire—"
"Or the English Shakespeare by his 'Hamlet.'"
"Ah! what would not Voltaire have done with Hamlet!" The countess was beginning to wake again.
"And Molière? What of his 'Misanthrope?' There is a finished, a human, a possible Hamlet! a Hamlet with flesh and blood," cried out the younger count on her right. "Even Mounet-Sully could do nothing with the English Hamlet."