'What do you think of S. Louis?' said he, jestingly.
'I think he is very eloquent and very convincing, but I do not think he is at all like a Frenchman.'
'Well, he is a _Breton bretonnant_' rejoined the ambassador. 'They are always more in earnest and more patrician.'
'If he be sincere, if he be only sincere,' she thought: that doubt pursued her. She had a vague sense that it was all only a magnificent comedy after all. Could apathy and irony change all so suddenly to conviction and devotion? Could the scoffer become so immediately the devotee? Could he care, really care, for those faiths of throne and altar which he defended with so much eloquence, so much earnestness? And yet, why not? These faiths were inherited things with him; their altars must have been always an instinct with him; for their sake his fathers had lived and died. What great wonder, then, that they should have been awakened in him after a torpor which had been but the outcome of those drugs with which the world is always so ready to lay asleep the soul?
They had now got out into the corridors, and as they turned the corner of one, they came straight upon Sabran.
'I congratulate you,' said Wanda, as she stretched her hand out to him with a smile.
As he took it and bowed over it he grew very pale.
'I have obeyed you,' he murmured, 'with less success than I could desire.'
'Do not be too modest, you are a great orator. You know how to remain calm whilst you exalt, excite, and influence others.'
He listened in silence, then inquired for the health of his kind friend the Princess Ottilie.
'She is well,' answered Wanda, 'and loses nothing of her interest in you. She reads all your speeches with approval and pleasure; not the less approval and pleasure because her political creed has become yours.'
'What did you tell me?' he said. 'That if I had no convictions, I could do no better than abide by the traditions of the Sabrans? If their cause were the safe and reigning one I would not support it for mere expediency, but as it is----'
'Your motives cannot be selfish ones,' she answered a little coldly. 'Selfishness would have led you to profess Bakouinism; it is the popular profession, and a socialistic aristocrat is always attracted and flattering to the _plebs._'