"I thought it very dull. My Lady's attitudes are certainly wonderful; but I don't think that I care for them so much that I want to see her in the morning arranging the backgrounds for her performance at night." "Nor I," she said, with considerable warmth and spirit. "In fact, I think we have too much _attitudes_ altogether. What does a man like your Admiral, a great hero who is directing the destinies of the world, want with this perpetual round of _attitudes_, _buffos_, _bals masqués_, and _fêtes_? They are all very well for us of the Two Sicilies, who have to eat and drink and be merry until the flood comes and swamps us into one of the great Powers; but a man like your Admiral does not need them--he needs rest." "I think you are sweeping, Donna Rusidda. After all, when the stress of a severe campaign is over, what the fighter requires is change more than rest. Men can go to sleep while they are fighting at a battle, if they are only weary enough. What the hard fighter and the hard worker need is recreation." "And is this recreation?" "There is no recreation for me like the society of beautiful and gracious ladies such as yourself." She bowed with mock gravity, and said, with a touch of bitterness in her voice, "You mean like the Ambassador's wife." "No," he answered: "she is very beautiful, wonderfully and uniformly gracious, and very clever; but I do not like seeing the Admiral blind to her play-actress side. He takes everything in her seriously, while I, who am a mere boy----" "Not always a boy, W-Will. You are sometimes a boy with the wiseness of a man, and sometimes a man with the foolishness of a boy." He felt the blood rushing to his face: her criticism was rather franker than he liked, but she had addressed him with greater familiarity than she had yet allowed herself. "You do not like her," she said. "Well, I will tell you: your Admiral, who has a weasel's eye for the French, may be caught napping by a woman; and she is very much in love with him--as any woman might be," she added, with a little tragedy sigh; "for _men_ are so scarce, though you will be one some day, Signor W-Will. And so you see she plays to him, with her beauty and her engagingness, and her wisdom and her foolishness; for the last card you play to the person, whose love you wish very much, is your foolishness, which is the greatest sacrifice you can offer." Then she continued: "But it was so comical her bringing us all--the Admiral and you and General Mack and the whole Court--to see her arranging her backgrounds, which you will all see made real by lamplight this evening, as if it was a matter of such great moment to us all to see a carpenter nail canvas to a post, or a gardener bringing in a poor palm tree sawn off at the roots to fit into a hole in the stage. Shall I tell you what I think?" "I wish I knew all your thoughts." "Well, you shall know one of them." "What is that?"