"Oh, impossible! We cannot lose you so soon. I imagine you have a card for the Countess Theudelinde's next soirée?"
"I regret that I am prevented from accepting her agreeable invitation; I have pressing business which necessitates my return."
The abbé laughed. "Confess honestly," he said, "that if you had no other reason to return home, you would run away from an entertainment which would bore you infinitely."
"Well, then, if you will have the truth, I do confess that a soirée is to me something of a penance."
"These soirées, however, are on a different footing from those réunions which, I agree with you, are more pain than pleasure, and where a stranger feels himself 'out of it,' as the saying goes. Countess Theudelinde aims at having a salon, and succeeds admirably. She receives all the best people. I don't mean by that generic word only the upper ten, but the best in the true sense, the best that Pesth affords in art, in literature, in science; the aristocracy of birth, talent, and beauty."
Ivan shook his head incredulously. "And how does such a mixed gathering answer?"
The abbé did not reply at once; he scratched his nose thoughtfully.
"Until they get to know one another, it is perhaps somewhat stiff. But with intellectual people this stiffness must soon disappear, and each one will do something to keep the ball rolling. You have an excellent delivery; I noticed it the night of your lecture. You could easily find a subject on which to lecture which would interest your listeners by its novelty, surprise them by its profundity, and amuse them by its variety; their intellect and their imagination would be equally engaged."
It was Ivan's turn to laugh, which he did loudly. "My excellent sir, such a subject is unknown to me. I confess my ignorance; neither in print nor in manuscript have I met with it."
The clergyman joined in the laugh.