"In the first place, then, I must tell you in whose house, and where you are."
"Are we come to that point?" said Consuelo, "Thank you, doctor--I neither asked nor wished to know."
"_Ta, ta, ta!_" said Supperville. "You have already fallen into the romantic ways into which it pleases the prince to drag his friends. Do not indulge in these toys; the least that can result from them to you, is to increase, when you have yourself gone mad, the number of fools and maniacs in this court. I have no intention to break the promise I gave the prince, to tell you either his name or where you are. About that you should not care, for it would be a mere gratification of your curiosity, and that is not the disease I wish to cure in you, for you are troubled with an excess of confidence. You may then learn without disobeying, or without the risk of displeasing him, (I am interested in not betraying you,) that you are in the house of the best and most absurd of old men--a man of mind, a philosopher, with a soul courageous and tender almost as a hero's or a madman's. He is a dreamer, treating the ideal as a reality, and life as a romance--a _savant_, who, from the study and the acquisition of the quintessence of ideas, has, like Don Quixote after his books of knight-errantry, fancied inns were castles, galley-slaves innocent victims, and wind-mills monsters. He is a saint, if we look at his intentions; a madman, if we think of the results. He has contrived, among other things, a perpetual net of conspiracies, permanent and universal, to paralyze the action of all the wicked of the world; 1. To combat and oppose tyranny in governments. 2. To reform the immorality or barbarism of the laws which govern society. 3. To infuse in the hearts of all men of courage and devotion, the enthusiasm of his propaganda, and the zeal of his doctrines--nothing less--and yet he seeks and expects to realize it! Were he seconded by some sincere and reasonable men, the little good he does might bear fruit. Unfortunately, however, he is surrounded by a clique of intriguers and ambitious impostors, who pretend to share his faith and serve him, but who really make use of his credit to procure good places in all the courts of Europe, and waste the greater part of the money he destines to carry out his plans. Such is the man, and the people around him. You can judge in what hands you are, and the generous protectors who rescued you from the claws of Frederick are not likely to expose you to a greater danger by exalting you to the clouds, merely to let you fall yet lower. You are now warned. Distrust their promises, their fine words, their tragedy, and the tricks of Cagliostro, Saint Germain, and company."