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Rh you to desire? You have rank, wealth, favour, health, and a husband who loves you, and whom you love, and of whom you may well be proud. I like the Duc de Mercœur so much; and I should have been sorry not to have liked him, Henriette: he is so handsome, so kind, and so silent."

Madame de Mercœur laughed at silence being mentioned as a merit.

"You may laugh," rejoined Francesca; "but you cannot imagine how bewildered I feel by the infinite variety of discourse which is here apparently a daily habit. I am talked out of my wits; I have scarcely recovered the surprise of the ingenious question, before I meet another surprise in the still more ingenious answer. I remember, in the dear old palazzo, and the still dearer pine-woods around, that we have conversed away hours; but, then, think how interesting were the subjects—ourselves. We had the whole future before us; but here it is yesterday, whose sayings and doings are so repeated, as if everything were done that afterwards it might be told."

"The truth is, ma mignonne," replied her companion, "we have nothing else to do—talking is the business of the idle. We do not talk out of the careless gaiety of the heart, which indulges its hopes, or expresses its feelings—we talk for