"As a bricklayer Sempaly might not have been so religious; he might have found some difficulty in worshipping a God who had treated him so scurvily."
"Hush, Truyn!" exclaimed Sempaly, somewhat anxiously to his cousin. "You know I dislike all such discussions."
"True. I remember you wear Catholic blinkers and are always nervous about your beliefs; and you would not like to feel any doubt as to the unlimited prolongation of your comfortable little existence," said Truyn in a tone of grave and languid banter. For Sempaly was not burthened with religion, though, like many folks to whom life is easy, he clung desperately to a hope in a future life, for which reason he affected 'Catholic blinkers' and would not have opened a page of Strauss for the world.
"The sword is at our breast!" sighed the countess still sunk in dark forebodings. "This new ministry!..." And she shook her head.
"It will do no harm beyond producing a few dreary articles in the papers and inundating us with new Acts which the crown will not trouble itself about for a moment," observed Sempaly.
"The Austrian mob are gnashing their teeth already!" said the lady.
"Nonsense! The Austrian mob is a very good dog at bottom; it will not bite till you forbid it to lick your hands," said her cousin calmly.
"I should dislike one as much as the other," said the countess, looking complacently at her slender white fingers.
"But tell us, Nicki," asked Ilsenbergh, "has not the change of ministry put a stop to your chances of promotion?" Sempaly was in fact an apprentice in the Roman branch of the great Austrian political incubator.
"Of course," replied Sempaly. "I had hoped to be sent to London as secretary; but one of our secretaries here is to go to England, and the democrats are sending us one of their own protégés in his place. My chief told me so this morning."