‘That is the world’s revenge for being ruled by each of you.’
‘Is it permitted in these serious days for churchmen to make pretty speeches? I prefer your scoldings, they are more uncommon.’
‘The kindness which permits them is uncommon,’ said Melville, as he took up his tea-cup.
‘Ah! I can be kind,’ said Nadine Napraxine. ‘ Ask Mahmoud and my little dog. But then Mahmoud is dumb, and the dog is—a dog. If humanity were my dog, too, as you say, I should make it aphone!’
‘Poor humanity!’ said Melville, with a sigh. ‘If it would not offend you, Princess, there are two lines of Mürger which always seem to me to exactly describe the attitude, or rather the altitude, from which you regard all our sorrows and follies.’
‘And they are?’
‘They are those in which he thinks he hears:
“Le fifre au son aigu railler le violoncelle,
Qui pleure sous l’archet ses notes de crystal;”