'He edited and annotated the great "Mexico",' said Herr Greswold, as though all were told in that.
'A savant?' murmured the Princess, in some contemptuous chagrin. 'Pray what is the "Mexico"?'
'The grandest archæological and botanical work, the work of the finest research and most varied learning that has been produced out of Germany,' commenced the Professor, with eagerness, but the Princess arrested him midway in his eloquence.
'The French are all infidels, we know that; but one might have hoped that in one of the old nobility, as his name would imply, some lingering reverence for tradition remained.'
'It is not a subversive, not a philosophic work,' said the Professor, eagerly; but she silenced him.
'It is a book! Why should a Marquis de Sabran write a book?' said the Princess, with ineffable disdain.
There were all the Fathers for anyone who wanted to read: what need for any other use of printer's type? So she was accustomed to think and to say when, scandalised, she saw the German, French, and English volumes, of which whole cases were wont to arrive at Hohenszalras for the use of Wanda von Szalras alone: works of philosophy and of science amongst them which had been denounced in the 'Index.'
'Dear mother,' said the Countess Wanda, 'I have read the "Mexico": it is a grand monument raised to a dead man's memory out of his own labours by one of his own descendants—his only descendant, if I remember aright.'
'Indeed,' said the Princess, unconvinced. 'I know those scientific works by repute; they always consider the voyage of a germ of moss, carried on an aerolite through an indefinite space for a billion of ages, a matter much easier of credence than the "Life of St. Jerome." I believe they call it sporadic transmission; they call typhus fever the same.'
'There is nothing of that in the "Mexico": it is a very fine work on the archæology and history of the country, and on its flora.'