'Chi non sa fingersi amico, non sa essere nemico.

"He who does not know how to disguise himself as a friend, does not know how to be an enemy." In the little corner of society in which Countess Steno, the Gorkas and Lincoln Maitland moved, who was hypocritical and spiteful enough to practise that counsel?
"It is not Madame Steno," thought Julien; "she has related all herself to her lover.

I knew a similar case.

But it involved degraded Parisians, not a Dogesse of the sixteenth century found intact in the Venice of today, like a flower of that period preserved.

Let us strike her off.
Let us strike off, too, Madame Gorka, the truthful creature who could not even condescend to the smallest lie for a trinket which she desires.
It is that which renders her so easily deceived.