Other fugitives to Pianura brought another impression of events--that
comic note which life, the supreme dramatic artist, never omits from her
tragedies. These were the Duke's old friend the Marquis de Coeur-Volant,
fleeing from his chateau as the peasants put the torch to it, and
arriving in Pianura destitute, gouty and middle-aged, but imperturbable
and epigrammatic as ever. With him came his Marquise, a dark-eyed lady,
stout to unwieldiness and much given to devotion, in whom it was
whispered (though he introduced her as the daughter of a Venetian
Senator) that a reminiscent eye might still detect the outline of the
gracefullest Columbine who had ever flitted across the Italian stage.
These visitors were lodged by the Duke's kindness in the Palazzo
Cerveno, near the ducal residence; and though the ladies of Pianura were
inclined to look askance on the Marquise's genealogy, yet his Highness's
condescension, and her own edifying piety, had soon allayed these
scruples, and the salon of Madame de Coeur-Volant became the rival of
Madame d'Albany's.
It was, in fact, the more entertaining of the two; for, in spite of his
lady's austere views, the Marquis retained that gift of social
flexibility that was already becoming the tradition of a happier day. To
the Marquis, indeed, the revolution was execrable not so much because of
the hardships it inflicted, as because it was the forerunner of social
dissolution--the breaking-up of the regime which had made manners the
highest morality, and conversation the chief end of man.
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