Night after night, to decades of
years, the old lady recounts the little journal of her day to the
admiring listeners, whose chorus of approval is performed daily
with the same unvarying regularity. The times are changing now;
the prince is not so easily amused, and the sycophant has
accordingly acquired the art of amusing, but there still survive
some wonderful monuments of the old school.
Anastase Gouache was a man of great talent and of rising fame, but
like other men of his stamp he preferred to believe that he was
received on a friendly footing for his own sake rather than on
account of his reputation. In his own eyes, he was, as a man, as
good as those with whom he associated, and had as much right to
make love to Faustina Montevarchi as the young Frangipani, for
whom her father destined her. Faustina, on her part, was too young
to appreciate the real strength of the prejudices by which she was
surrounded. She could not understand that, although the man she
loved was a gentleman, young, good-looking, successful, and not
without prospects of acquiring a fortune, he was yet wholly
ineligible as a husband. Had she seen this ever so clearly it
might have made but little difference in her feelings; but she did
not see it, and the disparaging remarks about Anastase, which she
occasionally heard in her own family, seemed to her utterly unjust
as well as quite unfounded.
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