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 agrees with every one and opposes everything. She delights in everlasting moral discussions, in which she does not spare herself or any one else. She strictly reproves faults in herself which she does not have, but those that I see in her she will not correct”

He did not finish. The Emperor suddenly laid his hand on the Count’s shoulder and said:

“What lady is that, just leaving the ballroom with the young cavaliers?”

The Count was so angered by the sudden interruption of the confession for which the Emperor himself had asked him that he turned away. But the Emperor thought that he had turned quickly to answer his question. A few moments passed before the Count was able, with proper calmness for the occasion, to say:

“It is the one, illustrious master, whose sins I am just confessing.”

The situation suddenly dawned upon the experienced courtier. The lady whose name the Emperor, so indifferent to women, desired