“Good,” said Hafner; “I was sure that, in talking against pessimism, I should make the Contessina talk.... Very gay?” he continued. “No. But when I think of the misfortunes which might have come to all of us here, for instance, I find it very tolerable. Better than living in another epoch, for example. One hundred and fifty years ago, Contessina, in Venice, you would have been liable to arrest any day under a warrant of the Council of Ten.... And you, Dorsenne, would have been exposed to the cudgel like Monsieur de Voltaire, by some jealous lord.... And Prince d’Ardea would have run the risk of being assassinated or beheaded at each change of Pope. And I, in my quality of Protestant, should have been driven from France, persecuted in Austria, molested in Italy, burned in Spain.” As can be seen, he took care to choose between his two inheritances. He had done so with an enigmatical good-nature which was almost ironical. He paused, in order not to mention what might have come to Madame Maitland before the suppression of slavery. He knew that the very pretty and elegant young lady shared the prejudices of her American compatriots against negro blood, and that she made every effort to hide the blemish upon her birth to the point of never removing her gloves. It may, however, in justice be added, that the slightly olive tinge in her complexion, her wavy hair, and a vague bluish reflection in the whites of her eyes would scarcely have betrayed the mixture of race. She did not seem to have heeded the Baron’s pause, but she arranged, with an absent air, the folds of her mauve gown, while Dorsenne replied: “It is a fine and specious argument.... Its only fault is that it has no foundation. For I defy you to imagine yourself what you would have been in the epoch of which you speak. We say frequently, ‘If I had lived a hundred years ago.’ We forget that a hundred years ago we should not have been the same; that we should not have had the same ideas, the same tastes, nor the same requirements. It is almost the same as imagining that you could think like a bird or a serpent.” “One could very well imagine what it would be never to have been born,” interrupted. Alba Steno. She uttered the sentence in so peculiar a manner that the discussion begun by Hafner was nipped in the bud. The words produced their effect upon the chatter of the idlers who only partly believed in the ideas they put forth. Although there is always a paradox in condemning life amid a scene of luxury when one is not more than twenty, the Contessina was evidently sincere. Whence came that sincerity? From what corner of her youthful heart, wounded almost to death? Dorsenne was the only person who asked himself the question, for the conversation turned at once, Lydia Maitland having touched with her fan the sleeve of Alba, who was two seats from her, to ask her this question with an irony as charming, after the young girl’s words, as it was involuntary: “It is silk muslin, is it not?”