He could have
lived gaily on a crust in good company and amid smiling faces; but the
social deficiencies of Pianura were more difficult to endure than any
material privation. In Italy, as the Marquis had more than once
remarked, people loved, gambled, wrote poetry, and patronised the arts;
but, alas, they did not converse. Coeur-Volant could not conceal from
his Highness that there was no conversation in Pianura; but he did his
best to fill the void by the constant exercise of his own gift in that
direction, and to Odo at least his talk seemed as good as it was
copious. Misfortune had given a finer savour to the Marquis's
philosophy, and there was a kind of heroic grace in his undisturbed
cultivation of the amenities.
While the Marquis was struggling to preserve the conversational art, and
Alfieri planning the savage revenge of the Misogallo, the course of
affairs in France had gained a wilder impetus. The abolition of the
nobility, the flight and capture of the King, his enforced declaration
of war against Austria, the massacres of Avignon, the sack of the
Tuileries--such events seemed incredible enough till the next had
crowded them out of mind. The new year rose in blood and mounted to a
bloodier noon. All the old defences were falling. Religion, monarchy,
law, were sucked down into the whirlpool of liberated passions. Across
that sanguinary scene passed, like a mocking ghost, the philosophers'
vision of the perfectibility of man. Man was free at last--freer than
his would-be liberators had ever dreamed of making him--and he used his
freedom like a beast.
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