“Cara mia,” said the other, carelessly, “I know everything already. There is nothing you have done, nothing that has happened to you, that I am not aware of. I might go further, and say that I have looked with secret pleasure at the course of events which to your short-sightedness seemed disastrous.”
“I can scarce conceive that possible,” said the Countess, sighing.
“Naturally enough, perhaps, because you never knew the greatest of all blessings in this life, which is—liberty. Separation from your husband, my dear Nina, did not emancipate you from the tiresome requirements of the world. You got rid of him, to be sure, but not of those who regarded you as his wife. It required the act of courage by which you cut with these people forever, to assert the freedom I speak of.”
“I almost shudder at the contest I have provoked, and had you not insisted on it—”
“You had gone back again to the old slavery, to be pitied and compassionated, and condoled with, instead of being feared and envied,” said the other; and as she spoke, her flashing eyes and quivering brows gave an expression almost tiger-like to her features. “What was there about your house and its habits distinctive before? What gave you any pre-eminence above those that surround you? You were better looking, yourself; better dressed; your salons better lighted; your dinners more choice,—there was the end of it. Your company was their company,—your associates were theirs. The homage you received to-day had been yesterday the incense of another. There was not a bouquet nor a flattery offered to you that had not its facsimile, doing service in some other quarter. You were 'one of them,' Nina, obliged to follow their laws and subscribe to their ideas; and while they traded on the wealth of your attractions, you derived nothing from the partnership but the same share as those about you.”
“And how will it be now?” asked the Countess, half in fear, half in hope.
“How will it be now? I 'll tell you. This house will be the resort of every distinguished man, not of Italy, but of the world at large. Here will come the highest of every nation, as to a circle where they can say, and hear, and suggest a thousand things in the freedom of unauthorized intercourse. You will not drain Florence alone, but all the great cities of Europe, of its best talkers and deepest thinkers. The statesman and the author, and the sculptor and the musician, will hasten to a neutral territory, where for the time a kind of equality will prevail. The weary minister, escaping from a Court festival, will come here to unbend; the witty converser will store himself with his best resources for your salons. There will be all the freedom of a club to these men, with the added charm of that fascination your presence will confer; and thus, through all their intercourse, will be felt the 'parfum de femme,' as Balzac calls it, which both elevates and entrances.”
“But will not society revenge itself on all this?” “It will invent a hundred calumnious reports and shocking stories; but these, like the criticisms on an immoral play, will only serve to fill the house. Men—even the quiet ones—will be eager to see what it is that constitutes the charm of these gatherings; and one charm there is that never misses its success. Have you ever experienced, in visiting some great gallery, or, still more, some choice collection of works of art, a strange, mysterious sense of awe for objects which you rather knew to be great by the testimony of others, than felt able personally to appreciate? You were conscious that the picture was painted by Raphael, or the cup carved by Cellini, and, independently of all the pleasure it yielded you, arose a sense of homage to its actual worth. The same is the case in society with illustrious men. They may seem slower of apprehension, less ready at reply, less apt to understand; but there they are, Originals, not Copies of greatness. They represent value.”
Have we said enough to show our reader the kind of persuasion by which Madame de Sabloukoff led her friend into this new path? The flattery of the argument was, after all, its success; and the Countess was fascinated by fancying herself something more than the handsomest and the best-dressed woman in Florence. They who constitute a free port of their house will have certainly abundance of trade, and also invite no small amount of enterprise.
A little after midnight the salons began to fill, and from the Opera and the other theatres flocked in all that was pleasant, fashionable, and idle of Florence. The old beau, painted, padded, and essenced, came with the younger and not less elaborately dressed “fashionable,” great in watch-chains and splendid in waistcoat buttons; long-haired artists and moustached hussars mingled with close-shaven actors and pale-faced authors; men of the world, of politics, of finance, of letters, of the turf,—all were there. There was the gossip of the Bourse and the cabinet, the green-room and the stable. The scandal of society, the events of club life, the world's doings in dinners, divorces, and duels, were all revealed and discussed, amidst the most profuse gratitude to the Countess for coming back again to that society which scarcely survived her desertion.