After she had given them Madame Grandoni felt a pang of regret; the Prince turned upon her a face so white, bewildered and wounded. It had seemed to her they might form a wholesome admonition, but she now saw that, as coming from his wife, they were cruel, and she herself felt almost cruel for having repeated them. What they amounted to was an exquisite taunt of his mediocrity—a mediocrity after all neither a crime nor a design nor a preference. How could the Prince occupy himself, what interests could he create and what faculties, gracious heaven, did he possess? He was as ignorant as one of the dingy London sheep browsing before them, and as contracted as his hat-band. His expression became pitiful; it was as if he dimly measured the insult, felt it more than saw it—felt he couldn’t plead incapacity without putting his wife largely in the right. He gazed at Madame Grandoni, his face worked, and for a moment she thought he was going to cry right out. But he said nothing—perhaps because he was afraid of that—so that suffering silence, during which she gently laid her hand on his own, remained his sole answer. He might doubtless do so much he didn’t that when Christina touched on this she was unanswerable. The old lady changed the subject: told him what a curious country England was in so many ways; offered information as to their possible movements during the summer and autumn, which within a day or two had taken more form. But at last, as if he had not heard her, he broke out on the identity of the young man who had come in the day he called, just as he was going. Madame Grandoni risked the truth. “He was the Princess’s bookbinder.” “Her bookbinder? Do you mean one of her lovers?” “Prince, how can you dream she’ll ever live with you again?” the old lady asked in reply to this. “Why then does she have him in her drawing-room—announced like an ambassador, carrying a hat in his hand like mine? Where were his books, his bindings? I shouldn’t say this to _her_,” he added as if the declaration justified him. “I told you the other day that she’s making studies of the people—the lower orders. The young man you saw is a study.” She couldn’t help laughing out as she gave her explanation this turn; but her mirth elicited no echo. “I’ve thought that over—over and over; but the more I think the less I understand. Would it be your idea that she’s quite crazy? I must tell you I don’t care if she is!” “We’re all quite crazy, I think,” said Madame Grandoni; “but the Princess no more than the rest of us. No, she must try everything; at present she’s trying democracy, she’s going all lengths in radicalism.” “_Santo Dio!_” murmured the young man. “And what do they say here when they see the bookbinder?”