“You had gone back again to the old slavery, to be pitied and compassionated, and condoled with, instead of being feared and envied,” said the other; and as she spoke, her flashing eyes and quivering brows gave an expression almost tiger-like to her features. “What was there about your house and its habits distinctive before? What gave you any pre-eminence above those that surround you? You were better looking, yourself; better dressed; your _salons_ better lighted; your dinners more choice,--there was the end of it. _Your_ company was _their_ company,--_your_ associates were _theirs_. The homage _you_ received to-day had been yesterday the incense of another. There was not a bouquet nor a flattery offered to _you_ that had not its _facsimile_, doing service in some other quarter. You were 'one of them,' Nina, obliged to follow their laws and subscribe to their ideas; and while _they_ traded on the wealth of your attractions, _you_ derived nothing from the partnership but the same share as those about you.” “And how will it be now?” asked the Countess, half in fear, half in hope. “How will it be now? I 'll tell you. This house will be the resort of every distinguished man, not of Italy, but of the world at large. Here will come the highest of every nation, as to a circle where they can say, and hear, and suggest a thousand things in the freedom of unauthorized intercourse. You will not drain Florence alone, but all the great cities of Europe, of its best talkers and deepest thinkers. The statesman and the author, and the sculptor and the musician, will hasten to a neutral territory, where for the time a kind of equality will prevail. The weary minister, escaping from a Court festival, will come here to unbend; the witty converser will store himself with his best resources for your _salons_. There will be all the freedom of a club to these men, with the added charm of that fascination your presence will confer; and thus, through all their intercourse, will be felt the '_parfum de femme_,' as Balzac calls it, which both elevates and entrances.”