'Why, then, does she have him in her drawing-room—announced like an ambassador, carrying a hat in his hand like mine? Where were his books, his bindings? I shouldn't say this to her,' the Prince added, as if the declaration justified him.
'I told you the other day that she is making studies of the people—the lower orders. The young man you saw is a study.' Madame Grandoni could not help laughing out as she gave her explanation this turn; but her mirth elicited no echo from her interlocutor.
'I have thought that over—over and over; but the more I think the less I understand. Would it be your idea that she is quite crazy? I must tell you I don't care if she is!'
'We are all quite crazy, I think,' said Madame Grandoni; 'but the Princess no more than the rest of us. No, she must try everything; at present she is trying democracy and socialism.'
'Santo Dio!' murmured the young man. 'And what do they say here when they see her bookbinder?'
'They haven't seen him, and perhaps they won't. But they do, it won't matter, because here everything is forgiven. That a person should be singular is all they want. A bookbinder will do as well as anything else.'
The Prince mused a while, and then he said, 'How can she bear the dirt, the bad smell?'
'I don't know what you are talking about. If you mean the young man you saw at the house (I may tell you, by the way, that it was only the first time he had been there, and that the Princess had only seen him once)—if you mean the little bookbinder, he isn't dirty, especially what we
