"Even so, Louis," replied the Count, "even so. This is Morseiul; and I know not whether it be from that inherent love of the place in which some of our happiest days have been spent, or whether the country round us be in reality more lovely than any other that I have seen since I left it, yet just when you spoke I was thinking of asking you whether you were or were not satisfied with my boasted Morseiul." "It may well be lovelier than any you have seen since you left it," replied the Chevalier; "for, as far as I know aught of your history, and I think I could account for every day of your life since last you were here, you have seen nothing since but the flat prettiness of the Beauvoisis, the green spinage plate of the Cambresis, or the interminable flats of Flanders, where plains are varied by canals, and the only eminence to be seen for forty miles round one is the top of a windmill. Well may Morseiul be prettier than that, and no great compliment to Morseiul either; but I will tell you something more, Albert. I have seen Morseiul long ago. Ay, and sat in these halls, and drank of that wine, and looked out of that window, and thought then as I think now, that it is, indeed, as fair a land as ever I should wish to cast my eyes on." "Indeed, Louis!" exclaimed his companion; "how happens it, then, if you know the place so well, that you have listened to all my praises thereof, and come hither with me purposely to see it, without giving me one hint that you knew of the existence of such a place upon the surface of the globe?" "Why it has happened from two causes," replied the Chevalier, "and perhaps from three. In the first place, did you never discover that I have the gift of secrecy in a very high degree?" "Why I have certainly discovered," replied the Count with a smile, "that you are fond of a mystery; and sometimes, Louis, when there's no great need of one." "Most cuttingly and ungenerously answered," replied the Chevalier, with a laugh; "but granting the fact, as a man does when he denies it strenuously in his mind all the time---but granting the fact, was not that one good and sufficient cause for my not saying a word about it? And in the next place, Albert, if I had told you I had been here, and knew it very nearly as well as you do yourself, it would have deprived you of the whole pleasure of relating the wonders and the marvels of Morseiul, which would have been most ungenerous of me, seeing and knowing the delight you took therein; and perhaps there might be another cause," he added in a graver tone. "Perhaps I might hesitate to talk to you, Albert,--to you, with whom filial affection is not the evanescent thing that weeps like an April shower for half an hour over the loss of those we love, and then is wafted away in sparkling and in light--I might have hesitated, I say, to speak with you of times when one whom you have loved and lost sat in these halls and commanded in these lands."