“Zara,” said Georges. “I’ve been there; it is on the coast.”
“You are right,” said the painter. “I had gone there to look at the country, for I adore scenery. I’ve longed a score of times to paint landscape, which no one, as I think, understands but Mistigris, who will some day reproduce Hobbema, Ruysdael, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, and others.”
“But,” exclaimed the count, “if he reproduces one of them won’t that be enough?”
“If you persist in interrupting, monsieur,” said Oscar, “we shall never get on.”
“And Monsieur Schinner was not addressing himself to you in particular,” added Georges.
“‘Tisn’t polite to interrupt,” said Mistigris, sententiously, “but we all do it, and conversation would lose a great deal if we didn’t scatter little condiments while exchanging our reflections. Therefore, continue, agreeable old gentleman, to lecture us, if you like. It is done in the best society, and you know the proverb: ‘we must ‘owl with the wolves.’”
“I had heard marvellous things of Dalmatia,” resumed Schinner, “so I went there, leaving Mistigris in Venice at an inn—”
“‘Locanda,’” interposed Mistigris; “keep to the local color.”
“Zara is what is called a country town—”
“Yes,” said Georges; “but it is fortified.”