The naïveté of this statement was quite lost upon the eager speaker.

We were soon shown the depth of our naïveté in fancying that justice could be done in Turkey by a Turk.

Indeed, I am often comparing his rather touchingly inflated naïveté as of a small young person walking on tiptoe while he is talking of elevated things, at the time when he felt himself the author of that unwritten romance, with his present epigrammatic curtness and affectation of power kept strictly in reserve.

"Then," he says, with a naïveté at which it is impossible to suppress a smile, "the King embraced me, and wept, assuring me that he would further my fortunes as though I were one of his natural children, that he loved me dearly, as I must be well assured, and that he would reward my frankness and friendship."

This naïveté on the part of the old chronicler was simply impayable, as Major Favraud would say, with his characteristic shrug.

Yet one secret of his fascination was the naïveté with which, at certain moments, he would abandon himself to some little impulse of a nature originally sensitive and tender.