“Does all that seem amusing to you?” she asked expressionlessly.
“Does it seem amusing to you?”
“Tell me the other way, Marco, to enable me to judge.”
“To enable you to choose, dear Minerva, the other way is: to arrive and remain perfectly incognito; to let the proud and ferocious Duchess of Altomonte go, let all the relations and friends go; not to place, and prevent it from being placed, any notice of our arrival in the papers; to live in perfect obscurity and liberty, only going where we wish, only frequenting the places where we wish to amuse ourselves freely, going for excursions in the neighbourhood of Paris, especially those of beauty, poetry, and freshness, from Fontainebleau to Saint Germain, from Chantilly to Enghien—true idylls, Vittoria. Otherwise than the Imperial salon, dry and hard as the Duchess of Altomonte, who has been infesting it for the last forty years! In fact a life gay and sympathetic, especially free, without a single boring or heavy duty.”
Vittoria lowered her eyes wrapped in thought, then she asked—
“I suppose you have always, or nearly always, visited Paris in the second way?”
“Not nearly always—always.”
“Well then, Marco,” she replied coldly and drily, “I choose the first way. It seems more proper to me.”
“You are right, Minerva; let it be so!” he exclaimed, even more coldly.