"Not such a bad thing, that sentiment." 

 In the ardour of his honesty Cosmo did not notice either the attitude or the tone, though he caught the sense of the words. 

 "Was it of the right kind," he went on, as if communing with himself, "or was it the absence of sound thought, and almost of all feeling? M. le Marquis, I am too young to judge, but one would have thought, listening to the talk one heard on all sides, that such a man as Bonaparte had never existed." 

 "You have been in the society of returned exiles," said the Marquis after a moment of meditation. "You must judge them charitably. A class that has been under the ban for years lives on its passions and on prejudices whose growth stifles not only its sagacity but its visions of the reality." He changed his tone. "Our present Minister of Foreign Affairs never communicates with me personally. The only personal letter I had from him in the last four months was on the subject of procuring some truffles that grow in this country for the King, and there were four pages of most minute directions as to where they were to be found and how they were to be packed and transmitted to Paris. As to my dispatches, I get merely formal acknowledgments. I really don't know what is going on except through travellers who naturally colour their information with their own desires. M. de Talleyrand writes me short notes now and then, but as he has been himself for months in Vienna he can't possibly know what is going on in France. His acute mind, his extraordinary talents are fit to cope with the international situation, but I suppose he too is uneasy. In fact, my dear young friend, as far as I can judge, uneasy suspense is the prevailing sentiment all round the basin of the Mediterranean. The fate of nations still hangs in the balance." 

 Cosmo waited a moment before he whispered, "And the fate of some individual souls perhaps." 

 The ambassador made no sound till after a whole minute had elapsed, and then it was only to say: 

 "I suppose that like many of your young and even old countrymen, you have formed a project of visiting Elba." 

 Cosmo at once adopted a conversational tone. "Half-formed at most," he said. "I was never one of those who like to visit prisons and gaze at their fellow beings in captivity. A strange taste indeed! I will own to you, M. le Marquis," he went on boyishly, "that the notion of captivity is very odious to me, for men, and for animals too. I would sooner look at a dead lion than a lion in a 

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