“Why do you ask?”
“Simply because I shouldn’t go to see her often, so as not to be in the way.”
“Thank you ever so much. But I have no intentions in relation to her. She is too beautiful and too rich a woman for a modest employee like me to fix his eyes on.”
“Bah! A modest diplomat! That is absurd. It is merely that you don’t take to her.”
“No. It’s because she is a queen. There ought to be some defect in her face to make her human.”
“Yes; that’s true. She is too much of a prize beauty.”
“That is the defect in the Yankee women; they have no character. The weight of tradition might be fatal to industry and modern life, but it is the one thing that creates the spirituality of the old countries. Beyond contradiction American women have intelligence, beauty, energy, attractive flashes, but they lack that particular thing created by centuries: character. At times they have very charming impulses. Have you heard the story about Prince Torlonia’s wife?”
“No.”
“Well, Torlonia’s present wife was an American girl worth millions, who came with letters to the prince. He took her about Rome, and at the end of some days he said to her, supposing that the beautiful American had the intention of marrying: ‘I will introduce some young noblemen to you’; and she answered: ‘Don’t introduce anybody to me; because you please me more than anybody’; and she married him.”
“It was a pretty impulse.”