"What? Already! Only a few hours after your arrival!"
"Yes. Henrietta is very anxious to hear everything relating to the Emperor Napoleon."
Madame de Montevesso was genuinely surprised. Her voice lost its equable charm while she asked what on earth could he have had to tell of Napoleon that he could not have written to her from Paris.
"Yes. He is in everybody's thoughts and on everybody's lips there," he said. "Whenever three people come together he is the presence that is with them. But last night . . ."
He was on the point of telling her of his adventure on the tower when she struck in:
"The Congress will put an end to all that presently." It checked Cosmo's expansiveness and he said instead:
"It's very possible. But last night on arriving here I experienced a curious sensation of his nearness. I went down in the evening to look at the Port."
"He isn't certainly very far from here. And what are your feelings about him?"
"Oh," he rejoined lightly, "as about everything else in the world—contradictory."
Madame de Montevesso rose suddenly, saying: