The countess placed the captain beside her; his behavior was that of a poor sub-lieutenant dining at his general’s table. He let Clementine talk, listened deferentially as to a superior, did not differ with her in anything, and waited to be questioned before he spoke at all. He seemed actually stupid to the countess, whose coquettish little ways missed their mark in presence of such frigid gravity and conventional respect. In vain Adam kept saying: “Do be lively, Thaddeus; one would really suppose you were not at home. You must have made a wager to disconcert Clementine.” Thaddeus continued heavy and half asleep. When the servants left the room at the end of the dessert the captain explained that his habits were diametrically opposite to those of society,--he went to bed at eight o’clock and got up very early in the morning; and he excused his dulness on the ground of being sleepy. “My intention in taking you to the Opera was to amuse you, captain; but do as you prefer,” said Clementine, rather piqued. “I will go,” said Paz. “Duprez sings ‘Guillaume Tell,’” remarked Adam. “But perhaps you would rather go to the ‘Varietes’?” The captain smiled and rang the bell. “Tell Constantin,” he said to the footman, “to put the horses to the carriage instead of the coupe. We should be rather squeezed otherwise,” he said to the count. “A Frenchman would have forgotten that,” remarked Clementine, smiling. “Ah! but we are Florentines transplanted to the North,” answered Thaddeus with a refinement of accent and a look in his eyes which made his conduct at table seem assumed for the occasion. There was too evident a contrast between his involuntary self-revelation in this speech and his behavior during dinner. Clementine examined the captain with a few of those covert glances which show a woman’s surprise and also her capacity for observation. It resulted from this little incident that silence reigned in the salon while the three took their coffee, a silence rather annoying to Adam, who was incapable of imagining the cause of it. Clementine no longer tried to draw out Thaddeus. The captain, on the other hand, retreated within his military stiffness and came out of it no more, neither on the way to the Opera nor in the box, where he seemed to be asleep. “You see, madame, that I am a very stupid man,” he said during the dance in the last act of “Guillaume Tell.” “Am I not right to keep, as the saying is, to my own specialty?” “In truth, my dear captain, you are neither a talker nor a man of the world, but you are perhaps Polish.” “Therefore leave me to look after your pleasures, your property, your household--it is all I am good for.” “Tartufe! pooh!” cried Adam, laughing. “My dear, he is full of ardor; he is thoroughly educated; he can, if he chooses, hold his own in any salon. Clementine, don’t believe his modesty.” “Adieu, comtesse; I have obeyed your wishes so far; and now I will take the carriage and go home to bed and send it back for you.”