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It is now a great while agone since the chief of the house among the Marquesses of Saluzzo was a youth called Gualtieri, who, having neither wife nor children, spent his time in nought but hunting and hawking nor had any thought of taking a wife nor of having children; wherein he deserved to be reputed very wise.
We must celebrate the day of my regeneration in a becoming manner; we must celebrate it with foaming champagne, pates de foie gras, and oysters; and if we want to devote a last tear to the memory of my wife, why, we shall drink a glass of Lacrymce Christi in her honor. You must come and see me to-night, Gualtieri.
"Let me hear those two lines." Gualtieri covered his head, and standing in the door he had opened, he said with a deep pathos and in a profoundly melancholy voice: "Deux coqs vivaient en paix; une poule survint, Et voila la guerreallumec" and nodding a last adieu, he disappeared. Gentz laughed. "Indeed, he is right," he exclaimed; "that is the end of wedded life.
"The servant who brought it has left, as he said no reply was required." Gentz beckoned his servant to withdraw, and he then hastily opened the package. "Twelve fifty-dollar bills!" he exclaimed, triumphantly. "One hundred dollars more than I had asked for! That is very kind, indeed." "May be he does not give it to you, but merely lends it to you," said Gualtieri, smiling.
Gualtieri, having done this, gave out to his people that he had chosen a daughter of one of the Counts of Panago and letting make great preparations for the nuptials, sent for Griselda to come to him and said to her, 'I am about to bring home this lady, whom I have newly taken to wife, and mean, at this her first coming, to do her honour.
Germany, however, is so happy and contented that, like the Pharisee, she may look upon republican France and exclaim: 'I thank thee, my God, that I am not like this man." "You are right," replied Gualtieri. "We also stand in need of a revolution. In Germany, too, a guillotine must be erected heads must fall, and death must hold its bloody harvest."
Oh, I wish our German sovereigns would comprehend all this, and that all those who have a tongue to speak, would shout it into their ears and arouse them from their proud security and infatuation." "Well, have not you a tongue to speak, and yet you are silent?" asked Gualtieri, smiling. "No, I have not been silent," exclaimed Gentz, enthusiastically.
"I believe," said Gualtieri, shrugging his shoulders, "that you are a highly-gifted visionary, and that the king is a tolerably intelligent and tolerably sober young gentleman, who, whenever he wants to skate, does not allow himself to be dazzled and enticed by the smooth and glittering surface, but first repeatedly examines the ice in order to find out whether it is firm enough to bear him.
I shall invite a few other friends, and if you will afford us a rare pleasure, you will read to us some of La Fontaine's Fables, which no one understands to recite so well as you." "I shall do so," said Gualtieri, extending his hand to Gentz. "I shall read to you one of La Fontaine's Fables, the first two lines of which eloquently express the whole history of your past."
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