“If I may speak my mind to you,” continued the Count d’Erfeuil, “as a nation, I love only the English and the French, one must either be proud like them or brilliant like us; all the rest is only imitation.”  Oswald was silent; the Count d’Erfeuil some moments after resumed the conversation by the most lively sallies of wit and gaiety.  He played with words and phrases in a very ingenious manner, but neither external objects nor intimate sentiments were the object of his discourse.  His conversation proceeded, if it may be so expressed, neither from without nor within; it was neither reflective nor imaginative, and the bare relations of society were its subject.

He repeated twenty proper names to Lord Nelville, either in France, or in England, to know if he was acquainted with them, and related upon this occasion highly seasoned anecdotes with a most graceful turn; but one would have said, in hearing him, that the only discourse suitable to a man of taste was, to use the expression, the gossip of good company.

Lord Nelville reflected some time on the character of Count d’Erfeuil; that singular mixture of courage and frivolity, that contempt of misfortune, so great if it had cost more efforts, so heroic if it did not proceed from the same source that renders us incapable of deep affections.  “An Englishman,” said Oswald to himself, “would be weighed down with sadness under similar circumstances.—­Whence proceeds the resolution of this Frenchman?  Whence proceeds also his mobility?  Does the Count d’Erfeuil then truly understand the art of living?  Is it only my own disordered mind that whispers to me I am superior to him?  Does his light existence accord better than mine with the rapidity of human life?  And must we shun reflection as an enemy, instead of giving up our whole soul to it?” Vainly would Oswald have cleared up those doubts; no one can escape from the intellectual region allotted him; and qualities are still more difficult to subdue than defects.

The Count d’Erfeuil paid no attention to Italy, and rendered it almost impossible for Lord Nelville to bestow a thought upon it; for he incessantly distracted him from that disposition of mind which excites admiration of a fine country, and gives a relish for its picturesque charms.  Oswald listened as much as he could to the noise of the wind and to the murmuring of the waves; for all the voices of nature conveyed more gratification to his soul than he could possibly receive from the social conversation indulged in at the foot of the Alps, among the ruins, and on the borders of the sea.