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CHAPTER XXIII.
"The royal marriage has engrossed all tongues."
Before they met next morning, the Chevalier de Joinville had learned as much of Francesca's history as was known in the Castle. It is wonderful what a talent some people have for extracting information, and combining it when extracted—how one fact is made to elucidate another, and the conclusion inferred from evidence fine as the spider's thread! It is a pity that this genius should be wasted on the events of ordinary life. Half the ingenuity lavished on news—by news we mean the topics of the day as connected with their own circle—half this ingenuity would set up a whole Society of Antiquaries, and immortalise at least a dozen of them.
The Chevalier possessed in its perfection that happy art which illuminates the known by the imaginative, and in such light discovers the actual.
