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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Cosmopolis by Paul Bourget, entire
+#54 in our series The French Immortals Crowned by the French Academy
+#6 in our series by Paul Bourget
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+Title: Cosmopolis, entire
+
+Author: Paul Bourget
+
+Release Date: April, 2003  [Etext #3967]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Cosmopolis by Paul Bourget, entire
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+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+COSMOPOLIS
+
+By PAUL BOURGET
+
+
+
+With a Preface by JULES LEMAITRE, of the French academy,
+
+
+
+
+PAUL BOURGET
+
+Born in Amiens, September 2, 1852, Paul Bourget was a pupil at the Lycee
+Louis le Grand, and then followed a course at the Ecole des Hautes
+Etudes, intending to devote himself to Greek philology.  He, however,
+soon gave up linguistics for poetry, literary criticism, and fiction.
+When yet a very young man, he became a contributor to various journals
+and reviews, among others to the 'Revue des deux Mondes, La Renaissance,
+Le Parlement, La Nouvelle Revue', etc.  He has since given himself up
+almost exclusively to novels and fiction, but it is necessary to mention
+here that he also wrote poetry.  His poetical works comprise: 'Poesies
+(1872-876), La Vie Inquiete (1875), Edel (1878), and Les Aveux (1882)'.
+
+With riper mind and to far better advantage, he appeared a few years
+later in literary essays on the writers who had most influenced his own
+development--the philosophers Renan, Taine, and Amiel, the poets
+Baudelaire and Leconte de Lisle; the dramatist Dumas fils, and the
+novelists Turgenieff, the Goncourts, and Stendhal.  Brunetiere says of
+Bourget that "no one knows more, has read more, read better, or
+meditated, more profoundly upon what he has read, or assimilated it more
+completely."  So much "reading" and so much "meditation," even when
+accompanied by strong assimilative powers, are not, perhaps, the most
+desirable and necessary tendencies in a writer of verse or of fiction.
+To the philosophic critic, however, they must evidently be invaluable;
+and thus it is that in a certain self-allotted domain of literary
+appreciation allied to semi-scientific thought, Bourget stands to-day
+without a rival.  His 'Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine (1883),
+Nouveaux Essais (1885), and Etudes et Portraits (1888)' are certainly not
+the work of a week, but rather the outcome of years of self-culture and
+of protracted determined endeavor upon the sternest lines.  In fact, for
+a long time, Bourget rose at 3 a.m.  and elaborated anxiously study after
+study, and sketch after sketch, well satisfied when he sometimes noticed
+his articles in the theatrical 'feuilleton' of the 'Globe' and the
+'Parlement', until he finally contributed to the great 'Debats' itself.
+A period of long, hard, and painful probation must always be laid down,
+so to speak, as the foundation of subsequent literary fame.  But France,
+fortunately for Bourget, is not one of those places where the foundation
+is likely to be laid in vain, or the period of probation to endure for
+ever and ever.
+
+In fiction, Bourget carries realistic observation beyond the externals
+(which fixed the attention of Zola and Maupassant) to states of the mind:
+he unites the method of Stendhal to that of Balzac.  He is always
+interesting and amusing.  He takes himself seriously and persists in
+regarding the art of writing fiction as a science.  He has wit, humor,
+charm, and lightness of touch, and ardently strives after philosophy and
+intellectuality--qualities that are rarely found in fiction.  It may well
+be said of M. Bourget that he is innocent of the creation of a single
+stupid character.  The men and women we read of in Bourget's novels are
+so intellectual that their wills never interfere with their hearts.
+
+The list of his novels and romances is a long one, considering the fact
+that his first novel, 'L'Irreparable,' appeared as late as 1884.  It was
+followed by 'Cruelle Enigme (1885); Un Crime d'Amour (1886); Andre
+Cornelis and Mensonges (1887); Le Disciple (1889); La Terre promise;
+Cosmopolis (1892), crowned by the Academy; Drames de Famille (1899);
+Monique (1902)'; his romances are 'Une Idylle tragique (1896); La
+Duchesse Bleue (1898); Le Fantome (1901); and L'Etape (1902)'.
+
+'Le Disciple' and 'Cosmopolis' are certainly notable books.  The latter
+marks the cardinal point in Bourget's fiction.  Up to that time he had
+seen environment more than characters; here the dominant interest is
+psychic, and, from this point on, his characters become more and more
+like Stendhal's, "different from normal clay."  Cosmopolis is perfectly
+charming.  Bourget is, indeed, the past-master of "psychological"
+fiction.
+
+To sum up: Bourget is in the realm of fiction what Frederic Amiel is in
+the realm of thinkers and philosophers--a subtle, ingenious, highly
+gifted student of his time.  With a wonderful dexterity of pen, a very
+acute, almost womanly intuition, and a rare diffusion of grace about all
+his writings, it is probable that Bourget will remain less known as a
+critic than as a romancer.  Though he neither feels like Loti nor sees
+like Maupassant--he reflects.
+
+                                   JULES LEMAITRE
+                              de l'Academie Francaise.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
+
+I send you, my dear Primoli, from beyond the Alps, the romance of
+international life, begun in Italy almost under your eyes, to which I
+have given for a frame that ancient and noble Rome of which you are so
+ardent an admirer.
+
+To be sure, the drama of passion which this book depicts has no
+particularly Roman features, and nothing was farther from my thoughts
+than to trace a picture of the society so local, so traditional, which
+exists between the Quirinal and the Vatican.  The drama is not even
+Italian, for the scene might have been laid, with as much truth, at
+Venice, Florence, Nice, St. Moritz, even Paris or London, the various
+cities which are like quarters scattered over Europe of the fluctuating
+'Cosmopolis,' christened by Beyle: 'Vengo adesso da Cosmopoli'.  It is
+the contrast between the rather incoherent ways of the rovers of high
+life and the character of perennity impressed everywhere in the great
+city of the Caesars and of the Popes which has caused me to choose the
+spot where even the corners speak of a secular past, there to evoke some
+representatives of the most modern, as well as the most arbitrary and the
+most momentary, life.  You, who know better than any one the motley world
+of cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting here
+only a fragment of it.  That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have
+neither defined customs nor a general character.  It is composed of
+exceptions and of singularities.  We are so naturally creatures of
+custom, our continual mobility has such a need of gravitating around one
+fixed axis, that motives of a personal order alone can determine us upon
+an habitual and voluntary exile from our native land.  It is so, now in
+the case of an artist, a person seeking for instruction and change; now
+in the case of a business man who desires to escape the consequences of
+some scandalous error; now in the case of a man of pleasure in search of
+new adventures; in the case of another, who cherishes prejudices from
+birth, it is the longing to find the "happy mean;" in the case of
+another, flight from distasteful memories.  The life of the cosmopolite
+can conceal all beneath the vulgarity of its whims, from snobbery in
+quest of higher connections to swindling in quest of easier prey,
+submitting to the brilliant frivolities of the sport, the sombre
+intrigues of policy, or the sadness of a life which has been a failure.
+Such a variety of causes renders at once very attractive and almost
+impracticable the task of the author who takes as a model that ever-
+changing society so like unto itself in the exterior rites and fashions,
+so really, so intimately complex and composite in its fundamental
+elements.  The writer is compelled to take from it a series of leading
+facts, as I have done, essaying to deduce a law which governs them.  That
+law, in the present instance, is the permanence of race.  Contradictory
+as may appear this result, the more one studies the cosmopolites, the
+more one ascertains that the most irreducible idea within them is that
+special strength of heredity which slumbers beneath the monotonous
+uniform of superficial relations, ready to reawaken as soon as love stirs
+the depths of the temperament.  But there again a difficulty, almost
+insurmountable, is met with.  Obliged to concentrate his action to a
+limited number of personages, the novelist can not pretend to incarnate
+in them the confused whole of characters which the vague word race sums
+up.  Again, taking this book as an example, you and I, my dear Primoli,
+know a number of Venetians and of English women, of Poles and of Romans,
+of Americans and of French who have nothing in common with Madame Steno,
+Maud and Boleslas Gorka, Prince d'Ardea, Marquis Cibo, Lincoln Maitland,
+his brother-in-law, and the Marquis de Montfanon, while Justus Hafner
+only represents one phase out of twenty of the European adventurer, of
+whom one knows neither his religion, his family, his education, his point
+of setting out, nor his point of arriving, for he has been through
+various ways and means.  My ambition would be satisfied were I to succeed
+in creating here a group of individuals not representative of the entire
+race to which they belong, but only as possibly existing in that race--or
+those races.  For several of them, Justus Hafner and his daughter Fanny,
+Alba Steno, Florent Chapron, Lydia Maitland, have mixed blood in their
+veins.  May these personages interest you, my dear friend, and become to
+you as real as they have been to me for some time, and may you receive
+them in your palace of Tor di Nona as faithful messengers of the grateful
+affection felt for you by your companion of last winter.
+
+                                             PAUL BOURGET.
+
+PARIS, November 16, 1892.
+
+
+
+
+COSMOPOLIS
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A DILETTANTE AND A BELIEVER
+
+Although the narrow stall, flooded with heaped-up books and papers, left
+the visitor just room enough to stir, and although that visitor was one
+of his regular customers, the old bookseller did not deign to move from
+the stool upon which he was seated, while writing on an unsteady desk.
+His odd head, with its long, white hair, peeping from beneath a once
+black felt hat with a broad brim, was hardly raised at the sound of the
+opening and shutting of the door.  The newcomer saw an emaciated,
+shriveled face, in which, from behind spectacles, two brown eyes twinkled
+slyly.  Then the hat again shaded the paper, which the knotty fingers,
+with their dirty nails, covered with uneven lines traced in a handwriting
+belonging to another age, and from the thin, tall form, enveloped in a
+greenish, worn-out coat, came a faint voice, the voice of a man afflicted
+with chronic laryngitis, uttering as an apology, with a strong Italian
+accent, this phrase in French:
+
+"One moment, Marquis, the muse will not wait."
+
+"Very well, I will; I am no muse.  Listen to your inspiration
+comfortably, Ribalta," replied, with a laugh, he whom the vendor of old
+books received with such original unconstraint.  He was evidently
+accustomed to the eccentricities of the strange merchant.  In Rome--for
+this scene took place in a shop at the end of one of the most ancient
+streets of the Eternal City, a few paces from the Place d'Espagne, so
+well known to tourists--in the city which serves as a confluent for so
+many from all points of the world, has not that sense of the odd been
+obliterated by the multiplicity of singular and anomalous types stranded
+and sheltering there?  You will find there revolutionists like boorish
+Ribalta, who is ending in a curiosity-shop a life more eventful than the
+most eventful of the sixteenth century.
+
+Descended from a Corsican family, this personage came to Rome when very
+young, about 1835, and at first became a seminarist.  On the point of
+being ordained a priest, he disappeared only to return, in 1849, so rabid
+a republican that he was outlawed at the time of the reestablishment of
+the pontifical government.  He then served as secretary to Mazzini, with
+whom he disagreed for reasons which clashed with Ribalta's honor.  Would
+passion for a woman have involved him in such extravagance?  In 1870
+Ribalta returned to Rome, where he opened, if one may apply such a term
+to such a hole, a book-shop.  But he is an amateur bookseller, and will
+refuse you admission if you displease him.  Having inherited a small
+income, he sells or he does not, following his fancy or the requirements
+of his own purchases, to-day asking you twenty francs for a wretched
+engraving for which he paid ten sous, to-morrow giving you at a low price
+a costly book, the value of which he knows.  Rabid Gallophobe, he never
+pardoned his old general the campaign of Dijon any more than he forgave
+Victor Emmanuel for having left the Vatican to Pius IX.  "The house of
+Savoy and the papacy," said he, when he was confidential, "are two eggs
+which we must not eat on the same dish."  And he would tell of a certain
+pillar of St. Peter's hollowed into a staircase by Bernin, where a
+cartouch of dynamite was placed.  If you were to ask him why he became a
+book collector, he would bid you step over a pile of papers, of boarding
+and of folios.  Then he would show you an immense chamber, or rather a
+shed, where thousands of pamphlets were piled up along the walls: "These
+are the rules of all the convents suppressed by Italy.  I shall write
+their history."  Then he would stare at you, for he would fear that you
+might be a spy sent by the king with the sole object of learning the
+plans of his most dangerous enemy--one of those spies of whom he has been
+so much in awe that for twenty years no one has known where he slept,
+where he ate, where he hid when the shutters of his shop in the Rue
+Borgognona were closed.  He expected, on account of his past, and his
+secret manner, to be arrested at the time of the outrage of Passanante as
+one of the members of those Circoli Barsanti, to whom a refractory
+corporal gave his name.
+
+But, on examining the dusty cartoons of the old book-stall, the police
+discovered nothing except a prodigious quantity of grotesque verses
+directed against the Piedmontese and the French, against the Germans and
+the Triple Alliance, against the Italian republicans and the ministers,
+against Cavour and Signor Crispi, against the University of Rome and the
+Inquisition, against the monks and the capitalists!  It was, no doubt,
+one of those pasquinades which his customers watched him at work upon,
+thinking, as he did so, how Rome abounded in paradoxical meetings.
+
+For, in 1867, that same old Garibaldian exchanged shots at Mentana with
+the Pope's Zouaves, among whom was Marquis de Montfanon, for so was
+called the visitor awaiting Ribalta's pleasure.  Twenty-three years had
+sufficed to make of the two impassioned soldiers of former days two
+inoffensive men, one of whom sold old volumes to the other!  And there is
+a figure such as you will not find anywhere else--the French nobleman who
+has come to die near St. Peter's.
+
+Would you believe, to see him with his coarse boots, dressed in a simple
+coat somewhat threadbare, a round hat covering his gray head, that you
+have before you one of the famous Parisian dandies of 1864?  Listen to
+this other history.  Scruples of devoutness coming in the wake of a
+serious illness cast at one blow the frequenter of the 'Cafe Anglais' and
+gay suppers into the ranks of the pontifical zouaves.  A first sojourn in
+Rome during the last four years of the government of Pius IX, in that
+incomparable city to which the presentiment of the approaching
+termination of a secular rule, the advent of the Council, and the French
+occupation gave a still more peculiar character, was enchantment.  All
+the germs of piety instilled in the nobleman by the education of the
+Jesuits of Brughetti ended by reviving a harvest of noble virtues, in the
+days of trial which came only too quickly.  Montfanon made the campaign
+of France with the other zouaves, and the empty sleeve which was turned
+up in place of his left arm attested with what courage he fought at
+Patay, at the time of that sublime charge when the heroic General de
+Sonis unfurled the banner of the Sacred Heart.  He had been a duelist,
+sportsman, gambler, lover, but to those of his old companions of pleasure
+whom chance brought to Rome he was only a devotee who lived economically,
+notwithstanding the fact that he had saved the remnants of a large
+fortune for alms, for reading and for collecting.
+
+Every one has that vice, more or less, in Rome, which is in itself the
+most surprising museum of history and of art.  Montfanon is collecting
+documents in order to write the history of the French nobility and of the
+Church.  His mistresses of the time when he was the rival of the Gramont-
+Caderousses and the Demidoffs would surely not recognize him any more
+than he would them.  But are they as happy as he seems to have remained
+through his life of sacrifice?  There is laughter in his blue eyes, which
+attest his pure Germanic origin, and which light up his face, one of
+those feudal faces such as one sees in the portraits hung upon the walls
+of the priories of Malta, where plainness has race.  A thick, white
+moustache, in which glimmers a vague reflection of gold, partly hides a
+scar which would give to that red face a terrible look were it not for
+the expression of those eyes, in which there is fervor mingled with
+merriment.  For Montfanon is as fanatical on certain subjects as he is
+genial and jovial on others.  If he had the power he would undoubtedly
+have Ribalta arrested, tried, and condemned within twenty-four hours for
+the crime of free-thinking.  Not having it, he amused himself with him,
+so much the more so as the vanquished Catholic and the discontented
+Socialists have several common hatreds.  Even on this particular morning
+we have seen with what indulgence he bore the brusqueness of the old
+bookseller, at whom he gazed for ten minutes without disconcerting him in
+the least.  At length the revolutionist seemed to have finished his
+epigram, for with a quiet smile he carefully folded the sheet of paper,
+put it in a wooden box which he locked.  Then he turned around.
+
+"What do you desire, Marquis?"  he asked, without any further
+preliminary.
+
+"First of all, you will have to read me your poem, old redshirt," said
+Montfanon, "which will only be my recompense for having awaited your good
+pleasure more patiently than an ambassador.  Let us see whom are you
+abusing in those verses?  Is it Don Ciccio or His Majesty?  You will not
+reply?  Are you afraid that I shall denounce you at the Quirinal?"
+
+"No flies enter a closed mouth," replied the old conspirator, justifying
+the proverb by the manner in which he shut his toothless mouth, into
+which, indeed, at that moment, neither a fly nor the tiniest grain of
+dust could enter.
+
+"An excellent saying," returned the Marquis, with a laugh, "and one I
+should like to see engraved on the facade of all the modern parliaments.
+But between your poetry and your adages have you taken the time to write
+for me to that bookseller at Vienna, who owns the last copy of the
+pamphlet on the trial of the bandit Hafner?"
+
+"Patience," said the merchant.  "I will write."
+
+"And my document on the siege of Rome, by Bourbon, those three notarial
+deeds which you promised me, have you dislodged them?"
+
+"Patience, patience," repeated the merchant, adding, as he pointed with a
+comical mixture of irony and of despair to the disorder in his shop,
+"How can you expect me to know where I am in the midst of all this?"
+
+"Patience, patience," repeated Montfanon.  "For a month you have been
+singing that old refrain.  If, instead of composing wretched verses, you
+would attend to your correspondence, and, if, instead of buying
+continually, you would classify this confused mass .  .  .  .  But," said
+he, more seriously, with a brusque gesture, "I am wrong to reproach you
+for your purchases, since I have come to speak to you of one of the last.
+Cardinal Guerillot told me that you showed him, the other day, an
+interesting prayer-book, although in very bad condition, which you found
+in Tuscany.  Where is it?"
+
+"Here it is," said Ribalta, who, leaping over several piles of volumes
+and thrusting aside with his foot an enormous heap of cartoons, opened
+the drawer of a tottering press.  In that drawer he rummaged among an
+accumulation of odd, incongruous objects: old medals and old nails,
+bookbindings and discolored engravings, a large leather box gnawed by
+insects, on the outside of which could be distinguished a partly effaced
+coat-of-arms.  He opened that box and extended toward Montfanon a volume
+covered with leather and studded.  One of the clasps was broken, and when
+the Marquis began to turn over the pages, he could see that the interior
+had not been better taken care of than the exterior.  Colored prints had
+originally ornamented the precious work; they were almost effaced.  The
+yellow parchment had been torn in places.  Indeed, it was a shapeless
+ruin which the curious nobleman examined, however, with the greatest
+care, while Ribalta made up his mind to speak.
+
+"A widow of Montalcino, in Tuscany, sold it to me.  She asked me an
+enormous price, and it is worth it, although it is slightly damaged.  For
+those are miniatures by Matteo da Siena, who made them for Pope Pius II
+Piccolomini.  Look at the one which represents Saint Blaise, who is
+blessing the lions and panthers.  It is the best preserved.  Is it not
+fine?"
+
+"Why try to deceive me, Ribalta?"  interrupted Montfanon, with a gesture
+of impatience.  "You know as well as I that these miniatures are very
+mediocre, and that they do not in the least resemble Matteo's compact
+work; and another proof is that the prayerbook is dated 1554.  See!"
+and, with his remaining hand, very adroitly he showed the merchant the
+figures; "and as I have quite a memory for dates, and as I am interested
+in Siena, I have not forgotten that Matteo died before 1500.  I did not
+go to college with Machiavelli," continued he, with some brusqueness,
+"but I will tell you that which the Cardinal would have told you if you
+had not deceived him by your finesse, as you tried to deceive me just
+now.  Look at this partly effaced signature, which you have not been able
+to read.  I will decipher it for you.  Blaise de Mo, and then a c, with
+several letters missing, just three, and that makes Montluc in the
+orthography of the time, and the b is in a handwriting which you might
+have examined in the archives of that same Siena, since you come from
+there.  Now, with regard to this coat-of-arms," and he closed the book to
+detail to his stupefied companion the arms hardly visible on the cover,
+"do you see a wolf, which was originally of gold, and turtles of gales?
+Those are the arms which Montluc has borne since the year 1554, when he
+was made a citizen of Siena for having defended it so bravely against the
+terrible Marquis de Marignan.  As for the box," he took it in its turn to
+study it, "these are really the half-moons of the Piccolominis.  But what
+does that prove?  That after the siege, and just as it was necessary to
+retire to Montalcino, Montluc gave his prayer-book, as a souvenir, to
+some of that family.  The volume was either lost or stolen, and finally
+reduced to the state in which it now is.  This book, too, is proof that a
+little French blood was shed in the service of Italy.  But those who have
+sold it have forgotten that, like Magenta and Solferino, you have only
+memory for hatred.  Now that you know why I want your prayer-book, will
+you sell it to me for five hundred francs?"
+
+The bookseller listened to that discourse with twenty contradictory
+expressions upon his face.  From force of habit he felt for Montfanon a
+sort of respect mingled with animosity, which evidently rendered it very
+painful for him to have been surprised in the act of telling an untruth.
+It is necessary, to be just, to add that in speaking of the great painter
+Matteo and of Pope Pius II in connection with that unfortunate volume, he
+had not thought that the Marquis, ordinarily very economical and who
+limited his purchases to the strict domain of ecclesiastical history,
+would have the least desire for that prayer-book.  He had magnified the
+subject with a view to forming a legend and to taking advantage of some
+rich, unversed amateur.
+
+On the other hand, if the name of Montluc meant absolutely nothing to
+him, it was not the same with the direct and brutal allusion which his
+interlocutor had made to the war of 1859.  It is always a thorn in the
+flesh of those of our neighbors from beyond the Alps who do not love us.
+The pride of the Garibaldian was not far behind the generosity of the
+former zouave.  With an abruptness equal to that of Montfanon, he took up
+the volume and grumbled as he turned it over and over in his inky
+fingers:
+
+"I would not sell it for six hundred francs.  No, I would not sell it for
+six hundred francs."
+
+"It is a very large sum," said Montfanon.
+
+"No," continued the good man, "I would not sell it."  Then extending it
+to the Marquis, in evident excitement, he cried: "But to you I will sell
+it for four hundred francs."
+
+"But I have offered you five hundred francs for it," said the nonplussed
+purchaser.  "You know that is a small sum for such a curiosity."
+
+"Take it for four," insisted Ribalta, growing more and more eager, "not a
+sou less, not a sou more.  It is what it cost me.  And you shall have
+your documents in two days and the Hafner papers this week.  But was that
+Bourbon who sacked Rome a Frenchman?"  he continued.  "And Charles
+d'Anjou, who fell upon us to make himself King of the two Sicilies?  And
+Charles VIII, who entered by the Porte du Peuple?  Were they Frenchmen?
+Why did they come to meddle in our affairs?  Ah, if we were to calculate
+closely, how much you owe us!  Was it not we who gave you Mazarin,
+Massena, Bonaparte and many others who have gone to die in your army in
+Russia, in Spain and elsewhere?  And at Dijon?  Did not Garibaldi
+stupidly fight for you, who would have taken from him his country?  We
+are quits on the score of service .  .  .  .  But take your prayer-book-
+good-evening, good-evening.  You can pay me later."
+
+And he literally pushed the Marquis out of the stall, gesticulating and
+throwing down books on all sides.  Montfanon found himself in the street
+before having been able to draw from his pocket the money he had got
+ready.
+
+"What a madman!  My God, what a madman!"  said he to himself, with a
+laugh.  He left the shop at a brisk pace, with the precious book under
+his arm.  He understood, from having frequently come in contact with
+them, those southern natures, in which swindling and chivalry elbow
+without harming one another--Don Quixotes who set their own windmills in
+motion.  He asked himself:
+
+"How much would he still make after playing the magnamimous with me?"
+His question was never to be answered, nor was he to know that Ribalta
+had bought the rare volume among a heap of papers, engravings, and old
+books, paying twenty-five francs for all.  Moreover, two encounters which
+followed one upon the other on leaving the shop, prevented him from
+meditating on that problem of commercial psychology.  He paused for a
+moment at the end of the street to cast a glance at the Place d'Espagne,
+which he loved as one of those corners unchanged for the last thirty
+years.  On that morning in the early days of May, the square, with its
+sinuous edge, was indeed charming with bustle and light, with the houses
+which gave it a proper contour, with the double staircase of La Trinite-
+des-Monts lined with idlers, with the water which gushed from a large
+fountain in the form of a bark placed in the centre-one of the
+innumerable caprices in which the fancy of Bernin, that illusive
+decorator, delighted to indulge.  Indeed, at that hour and in that light,
+the fountain was as natural in effect as were the nimble hawkers who held
+in their extended arms baskets filled with roses, narcissus, red
+anemones, fragile cyclamens and dark pansies.  Barefooted, with sparkling
+eyes, entreaties upon their lips, they glided among the carriages which
+passed along rapidly, fewer than in the height of the season, still quite
+numerous, for spring was very late this year, and it came with delightful
+freshness.  The flower-sellers besieged the hurried passers-by, as well
+as those who paused at the shop-windows, and, devout Catholic as
+Montfanon was, he tasted, in the face of the picturesque scene of a
+beautiful morning in his favorite city, the pleasure of crowning that
+impression of a bright moment by a dream of eternity.  He had only to
+turn his eyes to the right, toward the College de la Propagande, a
+seminary from which all the missions of the world set out.
+
+But it was decreed that the impassioned nobleman should not enjoy
+undisturbed the bibliographical trifle obtained so cheaply and which he
+carried under his arm, nor that feeling so thoroughly Roman; a sudden
+apparition surprised him at the corner of a street, at an angle of the
+sidewalk.  His bright eyes lost their serenity when a carriage passed by
+him, a carriage, perfectly appointed, drawn by two black horses, and in
+which, notwithstanding the early hour, sat two ladies.  The one was
+evidently an inferior, a companion who acted as chaperon to the other, a
+young girl of almost sublime beauty, with large black eyes, which
+contrasted strongly with a pale complexion, but a pallor in which there
+was warmth and life.  Her profile, of an Oriental purity, was so much on
+the order of the Jewish type that it left scarcely a doubt as to the
+Hebrew origin of the creature, a veritable vision of loveliness, who
+seemed created, as the poets say, "To draw all hearts in her wake."  But
+no!  The jovial, kindly face of the Marquis suddenly darkened as he
+watched the girl about to turn the corner of the street, and who bowed to
+a very fashionable young man, who undoubtedly knew the late pontifical
+zouave, for he approached him familiarly, saying, in a mocking tone and
+in a French which came direct from France:
+
+"Well!  Now I have caught you, Marquis Claude-Francois de Montfanon!....
+She has come, you have seen her, you have been conquered.  Have your eyes
+feasted upon divine Fanny Hafner?  Tremble!  I shall denounce you to his
+Eminence, Cardinal Guerillot; and if you malign his charming catechist I
+will be there to testify that I saw you hypnotized as she passed, as were
+the people of Troy by Helen.  And I know very positively that Helen had
+not so modern a grace, so beautiful a mind, so ideal a profile, so deep a
+glance, so dreamy a mouth and such a smile.  Ah, how lovely she is!  When
+shall you call?"
+
+"If Monsieur Julien Dorsenne," replied Montfanon, in the same mocking
+tone, "does not pay more attention to his new novel than he is doing at
+this moment, I pity his publisher.  Come here," he added, brusquely,
+dragging the young man to the angle of Rue Borgognona.  "Did you see the
+victoria stop at No. 13, and the divine Fanny, as you call her, alight?
+.  .  .  She has entered the shop of that old rascal, Ribalta.  She will
+not remain there long.  She will come out, and she will drive away in her
+carriage.  It is a pity she will not pass by us again.  We should have
+had the pleasure of seeing her disappointed air.  This is what she is in
+search of," added he, with a gay laugh, exhibiting his purchase, "but
+which she could not have were she to offer all the millions which her
+honest father has stolen in Vienna.  Ha, ha!"  he concluded, laughing
+still more heartily, "Monsieur de Montfanon rose first; this morning has
+not been lost, and you, Monsieur, can see what I obtained at the
+curiosity-shop of that old fellow who will not make a plaything of this
+object, at least," he added, extending the book to his interlocutor, at
+whom he glanced with a comical expression of triumph.
+
+"I do not wish to look at it," responded Dorsenne.  "But, yes," he
+continued, as Montfanon shrugged his shoulders, "in my capacity of
+novelist and observer, since you cast it at my head, I know already what
+it is.  What do you bet?  .  .  .  It is a prayer-book which bears the
+signature of Marshal de Montluc, and which Cardinal Guerillot discovered.
+Is that true?  He spoke to Mademoiselle Hafner about it, and he thought
+he would mitigate your animosity toward her by telling you she was an
+enthusiast and wished to buy it.  Is that true as well?  And you,
+wretched man, had only one thought, to deprive that poor little thing of
+the trifle.  Is that true?  We spent the evening before last together at
+Countess Steno's; she talked to me of nothing but her desire to have the
+book on which the illustrious soldier, the great believer, had prayed.
+She told me of all her heroic resolutions.  Later she went to buy it.
+But the shop was closed; I noticed it on passing, and you certainly went
+there, too .  .  .  .  Is that true?  .  .  .  And, now that I have
+detailed to you the story, explain to me, you who are so just, why you
+cherish an antipathy so bitter and so childish--excuse the word!--for an
+innocent, young girl, who has never speculated on 'Change, who is as
+charitable as a whole convent, and who is fast becoming as devout as
+yourself.  Were it not for her father, who will not listen to the thought
+of conversion before marriage, she would already be a Catholic, and--
+Protestants as they are for the moment--she would never go anywhere but
+to church .  .  .  .  When she is altogether a Catholic, and under the
+protection of a Sainte-Claudine and a Sainte-Francoise, as you are under
+the protection of Saint-Claude and Saint-Francois, you will have to lay
+down your arms, old leaguer, and acknowledge the sincerity of the
+religious sentiments of that child who has never harmed you."
+
+"What!  She has done nothing to me?"  .  .  .  interrupted Montfanon.
+"But it is quite natural that a sceptic should not comprehend what she
+has done to me, what she does to me daily, not to me personally, but to
+my opinions.  When one has, like you, learned intellectual athletics in
+the circus of the Sainte-Beuves and Renans, one must think it fine that
+Catholicism, that grand thing, should serve as a plaything for the
+daughter of a pirate who aims at an aristocratic marriage.  It may, too,
+amuse you that my holy friend, Cardinal Guerillot, should be the dupe of
+that intriguer.  But I, Monsieur, who have received the sacrament by the
+side of a Sonis, I can not admit that one should make use of what was the
+faith of that hero to thrust one's self into the world.  I do not admit
+that one should play the role of dupe and accomplice to an old man whom
+I venerate and whom I shall enlighten, I give you my word."
+
+"And as for this ancient relic," he continued, again showing the volume,
+"you may think it childish that I do not wish it mixed up in the shameful
+comedy.  But no, it shall not be.  They shall not exhibit with words of
+emotion, with tearful eyes, this breviary on which once prayed that grand
+soldier; yes, Monsieur, that great believer.  She has done nothing to
+me," he repeated, growing more and more excited, his red face becoming
+purple with rage, "but they are the quintessence of what I detest the
+most, people like her and her father.  They are the incarnation of the
+modern world, in which there is nothing more despicable than these
+cosmopolitan adventurers, who play at grand seigneur with the millions
+filibustered in some stroke on the Bourse.  First, they have no country.
+What is this Baron Justus Hafner--German, Austrian, Italian?  Do you
+know?  They have no religion.  The name, the father's face, that of the
+daughter, proclaim them Jews, and they are Protestants--for the moment,
+as you have too truthfully said, while they prepare themselves to become
+Mussulmen or what not.  For the moment, when it is a question of God!....
+They have no family.  Where was this man reared?  What did his father,
+his mother, his brothers, his sisters do?  Where did he grow up?  Where
+are his traditions?  Where is his past, all that constitutes, all that
+establishes the moral man?....  Just look.  All is mystery in this
+personage, excepting this, which is very clear: if he had received his
+due in Vienna, at the time of the suit of the 'Credit Austro-Dalmate',
+in 1880, he would be in the galleys, instead of in Rome.  The facts were
+these: there were innumerable failures.  I know something about it.  My
+poor cousin De Saint-Remy, who was with the Comte de Chambord, lost the
+bread of his old age and his daughter's dowry.  There were suicides and
+deeds of violence, notably that of a certain Schroeder, who went mad on
+account of that crash, and who killed himself, after murdering his wife
+and his two children.  And the Baron came out of it unsullied.  It is not
+ten years since the occurrence, and it is forgotten.  When he settled in
+Rome he found open doors, extended hands, as he would have found them in
+Madrid, London, Paris, or elsewhere.  People go to his house; they
+receive him!  And you wish me to believe in the devoutness of that man's
+daughter!....  No, a thousand times no; and you yourself, Dorsenne, with
+your mania for paradoxes and sophisms, you have the right spirit in you,
+and these people horrify you in reality, as they do me."
+
+"Not the least in the world," replied the writer, who had listened to the
+Marquis's tirade; with an unconvinced smile, he repeated: "Not the least
+in the world....  You have spoken of me as an acrobat or an athlete.
+I am not offended, because it is you, and because I know that you love
+me dearly.  Let me at least have the suppleness of one.  First, before
+passing judgment on a financial affair I shall wait until I understand
+it.  Hafner was acquitted.  That is enough, for one thing.  Were he even
+the greatest rogue in the universe, that would not prevent his daughter
+from being an angel, for another.  As for that cosmopolitanism for which
+you censure him, we do not agree there; it is just that which interests
+me in him.  Thirdly,....  I should not consider that I had lost the six
+months spent in Rome, if I had met only him.  Do not look at me as if I
+were one of the patrons of the circus, Uncle Beuve, or poor Monsieur
+Renan himself," he continued, tapping the Marquis's shoulder.  "I swear
+to you that I am very serious.  Nothing interests me more than these
+exceptions to the general rule--than those who have passed through two,
+three, four phases of existence.  Those individuals are my museum, and
+you wish me to sacrifice to your scruples one of my finest subjects....
+Moreover,"--and the malice of the remark he was about to make caused the
+young man's eyes to sparkle "revile Baron Hafner as much as you like,"
+he continued; "call him a thief and a snob, an intriguer and a knave,
+if it pleases you.  But as for being a person who does not know where his
+ancestors lived, I reply, as did Bonhomet when he reached heaven and the
+Lord said to him: 'Still a chimney-doctor, Bonhomet?'--'And you, Lord?'.
+For you were born in Bourgogne, Monsieur de Montfanon, of an ancient
+family, related to all the nobility-upon which I congratulate you--and
+you have lived here in Rome for almost twenty-four years, in the
+Cosmopolis which you revile."
+
+"First of all," replied the Pope's former soldier, holding up his
+mutilated arm, "I might say that I no longer count, I do not live.
+And then," his face became inspired, and the depths of that narrow mind,
+often blinded but very exalted, suddenly appeared, "and then, my Rome to
+me, Monsieur, has nothing in common with that of Monsieur Hafner nor with
+yours, since you are come, it seems, to pursue studies of moral
+teratology.  Rome to me is not Cosmopolis, as you say, it is Metropolis,
+it is the mother of cities....  You forget that I am a Catholic in every
+fibre, and that I am at home here.  I am here because I am a monarchist,
+because I believe in old France as you believe in the modern world; and I
+serve her in my fashion, which is not very efficacious, but which is one
+way, nevertheless....  The post of trustee of Saint Louis, which I
+accepted from Corcelle, is to me my duty, and I will sustain it in the
+best way in my power....  Ah! that ancient France, how one feels her
+grandeur here, and what a part she is known to have had in Christianity!
+It is that chord which I should like to have heard vibrate in a fluent
+writer like you, and not eternally those paradoxes, those sophisms.  But
+what matters it to you who date from yesterday and who boast of it," he
+added, almost sadly, "that in the most insignificant corners of this city
+centuries of history abound?  Does your heart blush at the sight of the
+facade of the church of Saint-Louis, the salamander of Francois I and the
+lilies?  Do you know why the Rue Bargognona is called thus, and that near
+by is Saint-Claudedes-Bourguignons, our church?  Have you visited, you
+who are from the Vosges, that of your province, Saint-Nicolas-des-
+Lorrains?  Do you know Saint-Yves-des-Bretons?"
+
+"But," and here his voice assumed a gay accent, "I have thoroughly
+charged into that rascal of a Hafner.  I have laid him before you without
+any hesitation.  I have spoken to you as I feel, with all the fervor of
+my heart, although it may seem sport to you.  You will be punished, for
+I shall not allow you to escape.  I will take you to the France of other
+days.  You shall dine with me at noon, and between this and then we will
+make the tour of those churches I have just named.  During that time we
+will go back one hundred and fifty years in the past, into that world in
+which there were neither cosmopolites nor dilettantes.  It is the old
+world, but it is hardy, and the proof is that it has endured; while your
+society-look where it is after one hundred years in France, in Italy,
+in England--thanks to that detestable Gladstone, of whom pride has made a
+second Nebuchadnezzar.  It is like Russia, your society; according to the
+only decent words of the obscene Diderot, 'rotten before mature!' Come,
+will you go?"
+
+"You are mistaken," replied the writer, "in thinking that.  I do not love
+your old France, but that does not prevent me from enjoying the new.  One
+can like wine and champagne at the same time.  But I am not at liberty.
+I must visit the exposition at Palais Castagna this morning."
+
+"You will not do that," exclaimed impetuous Montfanon, whose severe face
+again expressed one of those contrarieties which caused it to brighten
+when he was with one of whom he was fond as he was of Dorsenne.  "You
+would not have gone to see the King assassinated in '93?  The selling at
+auction of the old dwelling of Pope Urban VII is almost as tragical!  It
+is the beginning of the agony of what was Roman nobility.  I know.  They
+deserve it all, since they were not killed to the last man on the steps
+of the Vatican when the Italians took the city.  We should have done it,
+we who had no popes among our grand-uncles, if we had not been busy
+fighting elsewhere.  But it is none the less pitiful to see the hammer of
+the appraisers raised above a palace with which is connected centuries of
+history.  Upon my life, if I were Prince d'Ardea--if I had inherited the
+blood, the house, the titles of the Castagnas, and if I thought I should
+leave nothing behind me of that which my fathers had amassed--I swear to
+you, Dorsenne, I should die of grief.  And if you recall the fact that
+the unhappy youth is a spoiled child of eight-and-twenty, surrounded by
+flatterers, without parents, without friends, without counsellors, that
+he risked his patrimony on the Bourse among thieves of the integrity of
+Monsieur Hafner, that all the wealth collected by that succession of
+popes, of cardinals, of warriors, of diplomatists, has served to enrich
+ignoble men, you would think the occurrence too lamentable to have any
+share in it, even as a spectator.  Come, I will take you to Saint-
+Claude."
+
+"I assure you I am expected," replied Dorsenne, disengaging his arm,
+which his despotic friend had already seized.  "It is very strange that I
+should meet you on the way, having the rendezvous I have.  I, who dote on
+contrasts, shall not have lost my morning.  Have you the patience to
+listen to the enumeration of the persons whom I shall join immediately?
+It will not be very long, but do not interrupt me.  You will be angry if
+you will survive the blow I am about to give you.  Ah, you do not wish to
+call your Rome a Cosmopolis; then what do you say to the party with
+which, in twenty minutes, I shall visit the ancient palace of Urban VII?
+First of all, we have your beautiful enemy, Fanny Hafner, and her father,
+the Baron, representing a little of Germany, a little of Austria, a
+little of Italy and a little of Holland.  For it seems the Baron's mother
+was from Rotterdam.  Do not interrupt.  We shall have Countess Steno to
+represent Venice, and her charming daughter, Alba, to represent a small
+corner of Russia, for the Chronicle claims that she was the child, not of
+the defunct Steno, but of Werekiew-Andre, you know, the one who killed
+himself in Paris five or six years ago, by casting himself into the
+Seine, not at all aristocratically, from the Pont de la Concorde.  We
+shall have the painter, the celebrated Lincoln Maitland, to represent
+America.  He is the lover of Steno, whom he stole from Gorka during the
+latter's trip to Poland.  We shall have the painter's wife, Lydia
+Maitland, and her brother, Florent Chapron, to represent a little of
+France, a little of America, and a little of Africa; for their
+grandfather was the famous Colonel Chapron mentioned in the Memorial,
+who, after 1815, became a planter in Alabama.  That old soldier, without
+any prejudices, had, by a mulattress, a son whom he recognized and to
+whom he left--I do not know how many dollars.  'Inde' Lydia and Florent.
+Do not interrupt, it is almost finished.  We shall have, to represent
+England, a Catholic wedded to a Pole, Madame Gorka, the wife of Boleslas,
+and, lastly, Paris, in the form of your servant.  It is now I who will
+essay to drag you away, for were you to join our party, you, the feudal,
+it would be complete....  Will you come?"
+
+"Has the blow satisfied you?"  asked Montfanon.  "And the unhappy man has
+talent," he exclaimed, talking of Dorsenne as if the latter were not
+present, "and he has written ten pages on Rhodes which are worthy of
+Chateaubriand, and he has received from God the noblest gifts--poetry,
+wit, the sense of history; and in what society does he delight!  But,
+come, once for all, explain to me the pleasure which a man of your genius
+can find in frequenting that international Bohemia, more or less gilded,
+in which there is not one being who has standing or a history.  I no
+longer allude to that scoundrel Hafner and his daughter, since you have
+for her, novelist that you are, the eyes of Monsieur Guerillot.  But that
+Countess Steno, who must be at least forty, who has a grown daughter,
+should she not remain quietly in her palace at Venice, respectably,
+bravely, instead of holding here that species of salon for transients,
+through which pass all the libertines of Europe, instead of having lover
+after lover, a Pole after a Russian, an American after a Pole?  And that
+Maitland, why did he not obey the only good sentiment with which his
+compatriots are inspired, the aversion to negro blood, an aversion which
+would prevent them from doing what he has done--from marrying an
+octoroon?  If the young woman knows of it, it is terrible, and if she
+does not it is still more terrible.  And Madame Gorka, that honest
+creature, for I believe she is, and truly pious as well, who has not
+observed for the past two years that her husband was the Countess's
+lover, and who does not see, moreover, that it is now Maitland's turn.
+And that poor Alba Steno, that child of twenty, whom they drag through
+these improper intrigues!  Why does not Florent Chapron put an end to the
+adultery of her sister's husband?  I know him.  He once came to see me
+with regard to a monument he was raising in Saint-Louis in memory of his
+cousin.  He respects the dead, that pleased me.  But he is a dupe in this
+sinister comedy at which you are assisting, you, who know all, while your
+heart does not revolt."
+
+"Pardon, pardon!"  interrupted Dorsenne, "it is not a question of that.
+You wander on and you forget what you have just asked me....  What
+pleasure do I find in the human mosaic which I have detailed to you?
+I will tell you, and we will not talk of the morals, if you please, when
+we are simply dealing with the intellect.  I do not pride myself on being
+a judge of human nature, sir leaguer; I like to watch and to study it,
+and among all the scenes it can present I know of none more suggestive,
+more peculiar, and more modern than this: You are in a salon, at a
+dining-table, at a party like that to which I am going this morning.
+You are with ten persons who all speak the same language, are dressed
+by the same tailor, have read the same morning paper, think the same
+thoughts and feel the same sentiments....  But these persons are like
+those I have just enumerated to you, creatures from very different points
+of the world and of history.  You study them with all that you know of
+their origin and their heredity, and little by little beneath the varnish
+of cosmopolitanism you discover their race, irresistible, indestructible
+race!  In the mistress of the house, very elegant, very cultured, for
+example, a Madame Steno, you discover the descendant of the Doges, the
+patrician of the fifteenth century, with the form of a queen, strength in
+her passion and frankness in her incomparable immorality; while in a
+Florent Chapron or a Lydia you discover the primitive slave, the black
+hypnotized by the white, the unfreed being produced by centuries of
+servitude; while in a Madame Gorka you recognize beneath her smiling
+amiability the fanaticism of truth of the Puritans; beneath the artistic
+refinement of a Lincoln Maitland you find the squatter, invincibly coarse
+and robust; in Boleslas Gorka all the nervous irritability of the Slav,
+which has ruined Poland.  These lineaments of race are hardly visible in
+the civilized person, who speaks three or four languages fluently, who
+has lived in Paris, Nice, Florence, here, that same fashionable,
+monotonous life.  But when passion strikes its blow, when the man is
+stirred to his inmost depths, then occurs the conflict of
+characteristics, more surprising when the people thus brought together
+have come from afar: And that is why," he concluded with a laugh, "I have
+spent six months in Rome without hardly having seen a Roman, busy,
+observing the little clan which is so revolting to you.  It is probably
+the twentieth I have studied, and I shall no doubt study twenty more, for
+not one resembles another.  Are you indulgently inclined toward me, now
+that you have got even with me in making me hold forth at this corner,
+like the hero of a Russian novel?  Well, now adieu."
+
+Montfanon had listened to the discourse with an inpenetrable air.  In the
+religious solitude in which he was awaiting the end, as he said, nothing
+afforded him greater pleasure than the discussion of ideas.  But he was
+inspired by the enthusiasm of a man who feels with extreme ardor, and
+when he was met by the partly ironical dilettanteism of Dorsenne he was
+almost pained by it, so much the more so as the author and he had some
+common theories, notably an extreme fancy for heredity and race.  A sort
+of discontented grimace distorted his expressive face.  He clicked his
+tongue in ill-humor, and said:
+
+"One more question!....  And the result of all that, the object?  To what
+end does all this observation lead you?"
+
+"To what should it lead me?  To comprehend, as I have told you," replied
+Dorsenne.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"There is no then," answered the young man, "one debauchery is like
+another."
+
+"But among the people whom you see living thus," said Montfanon, after a
+pause, "there are some surely whom you like and whom you dislike, for
+whom you entertain esteem and for whom you feel contempt?  Have you not
+thought that you have some duties toward them, that you can aid them in
+leading better lives?"
+
+"That," said Dorsenne, "is another subject which we will treat of some
+other day, for I am afraid now of being late....  Adieu."
+
+"Adieu," said the Marquis, with evident regret at parting.  Then,
+brusquely: "I do not know why I like you so much, for in the main you
+incarnate one of those vices of mind which inspire me with the most
+horror, that dilettanteism set in vogue by the disciples of Monsieur
+Renan, and which is the very foundation of the decline.  You will recover
+from it, I hope.  You are so young!"  Then becoming again jovial and
+mocking: "May you enjoy yourself in your descent of Courtille; I almost
+forgot that I had a message to give to you for one of the supernumeraries
+of your troop.  Will you tell Gorka that I have dislodged the book for
+which he asked me before his departure?"
+
+"Gorka," replied Julien, "has been in Poland three months on family
+business.  I just told you how that trip cost him his mistress."
+
+"What," said Montfanon, "in Poland?  I saw him this morning as plainly as
+I see you.  He passed the Fountain du Triton in a cab.  If I had not been
+in such haste to reach Ribalta's in time to save the Montluc, I could
+have stopped him, but we were both in too great a hurry."
+
+"You are sure that Gorka is in Rome--Boleslas Gorka?"  insisted Dorsenne.
+
+"What is there surprising in that?"  said Montfanon.  "It is quite
+natural that he should not wish to remain away long from a city where he
+has left a wife and a mistress.  I suppose your Slav and your Anglo-Saxon
+have no prejudices, and that they share their Venetian with a
+dilettanteism quite modern.  It is cosmopolitan, indeed....  Well, once
+more, adieu....  Deliver my message to him if you see him, and," his face
+again expressed a childish malice, "do not fail to tell Mademoiselle
+Hafner that her father's daughter will never, never have this volume.
+It is not for intriguers!"  And, laughing like a mischievous schoolboy,
+he pressed the book more tightly under his arm, repeating: "She shall not
+have it.  Listen....  And tell her plainly.  She shall not have it!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BEGINNING OF A DRAMA
+
+"There is an intelligent man, who never questions his ideas, " said
+Dorsenne to himself, when the Marquis had left him.  "He is like the
+Socialists.  What vigor of mind in that old wornout machine!"  And for a
+brief moment he watched, with a glance in which there was at least as
+much admiration as pity, the Marquis, who was disappearing down the Rue
+de la Propagande, and who walked at the rapid pace characteristic of
+monomaniacs.  They follow their thoughts instead of heeding objects.
+However, the care he exercised in avoiding the sun's line for the shade
+attested the instincts of an old Roman, who knew the danger of the first
+rays of spring beneath that blue sky.  For a moment Montfanon paused to
+give alms to one of the numerous mendicants who abound in the
+neighborhood of the Place d'Espagne, meritorious in him, for with his one
+arm and burdened with the prayer-book it required a veritable effort to
+search in his pocket.  Dorsenne was well enough acquainted with that
+original personage to know that he had never been able to say "no" to any
+one who asked charity, great or small, of him.  Thanks to that system,
+the enemy of beautiful Fanny Hafner was always short of cash with forty
+thousand francs' income and leading a simple existence.  The costly
+purchase of the relic of Montluc proved that the antipathy conceived for
+Baron Justus's charming daughter had become a species of passion.  Under
+any other circumstances, the novelist, who delighted in such cases, would
+not have failed to meditate ironically on that feeling, easy enough of
+explanation.  There was much more irrational instinct in it than
+Montfanon himself suspected.  The old leaguer would not have been logical
+if he had not had in point of race an inquisition partiality, and the
+mere suspicion of Jewish origin should have prejudiced him against Fanny.
+But he was just, as Dorsenne had told him, and if the young girl had been
+an avowed Jewess, living up zealously to her religion, he would have
+respected but have avoided her, and he never would have spoken of her
+with such bitterness.
+
+The true motive of his antipathy was that he loved Cardinal Guerillot,
+as was his habit in all things, with passion and with jealousy, and he
+could not forgive Mademoiselle Hafner for having formed an intimacy with
+the holy prelate in spite of him, Montfanon, who had vainly warned the
+old Bishop de Clermont against her whom he considered the most wily of
+intriguers.  For months vainly did she furnish proofs of her sincerity of
+heart, the Cardinal reporting them in due season to the Marquis, who
+persisted in discrediting them, and each fresh good deed of his enemy
+augmented his hatred by aggravating the uneasiness which was caused him,
+notwithstanding all, by a vague sense of his iniquity.
+
+But Dorsenne no sooner turned toward the direction of the Palais Castagna
+than he quickly forgot both Mademoiselle Hafner's and Montfanon's
+prejudices, in thinking only of one sentence uttered by the latter that
+which related to the return of Boleslas Gorka.  The news was unexpected,
+and it awakened in the writer such grave fears that he did not even
+glance at the shop-window of the French bookseller at the corner of the
+Corso to see if the label of the "Fortieth thousand" flamed upon the
+yellow cover of his last book, the Eclogue Mondaine, brought out in the
+autumn, with a success which his absence of six months from Paris, had,
+however, detracted from.  He did not even think of ascertaining if the
+regimen he practised, in imitation of Lord Byron, against embonpoint,
+would preserve his elegant form, of which he was so proud, and yet
+mirrors were numerous on the way from the Place d'Espagne to the Palais
+Castagna, which rears its sombre mass on the margin of the Tiber, at the
+extremity of the Via Giulia, like a pendant of the Palais Sacchetti, the
+masterwork of Sangallo.  Dorsenne did not indulge in his usual pastime of
+examining the souvenirs along the streets which met his eye, and yet he
+passed in the twenty minutes which it took him to reach his rendezvous
+a number of buildings teeming with centuries of historical reminiscences.
+There was first of all the vast Palais Borghese--the piano of the
+Borghese, as it has been called, from the form of a clavecin adopted by
+the architect--a monument of splendor, which was, less than two years
+later, to serve as the scene of a situation more melancholy than that of
+the Palais Castagna.
+
+Dorsenne had not an absent glance for the sumptuous building--he passed
+unheeding the facade of St.-Louis, the object of Montfanon's admiration.
+If the writer did not profess for that relic of ancient France the piety
+of the Marquis, he never failed to enter there to pay his literary
+respects to the tomb of Madame de Beaumont, to that 'quia non sunt' of
+an epitaph which Chateaubriand inscribed upon her tombstone, with more
+vanity, alas, than tenderness.  For the first time Dorsenne forgot it;
+he forgot also to gaze with delight upon the rococo fountain on the Place
+Navonne, that square upon which Domitian had his circus, and which
+recalls the cruel pageantries of imperial Rome.  He forgot, too, the
+mutilated statue which forms the angle of the Palais Braschi, two paces
+farther--two paces still farther, the grand artery of the Corso Victor-
+Emmanuel demonstrated the effort at regeneration of present Rome; two
+paces farther yet, the Palais Farnese recalls the grandeur of modern art,
+and the tragedy of contemporary monarchies.  Does not the thought of
+Michelangelo seem to be still imprinted on the sombre cross-beam of that
+immense sarcophagus, which was the refuge of the last King of Naples?
+But it requires a mind entirely free to give one's self up to the charm
+of historical dilettanteism which cities built upon the past conjure up,
+and although Julien prided himself, not without reason, on being above
+emotion, he was not possessed of his usual independence of mind during
+the walk which took him to his "human mosaic," as he picturesquely
+expressed it, and he pondered and repondered the following questions:
+
+"Boleslas Gorka returned?  And two days ago I saw his wife, who did not
+expect him until next month.  Montfanon is not, however, imaginative.
+Boleslas Gorka returned?  At the moment when Madame Steno is mad over
+Maitland--for she is mad!  The night before last, at her house at dinner,
+she looked at him--it was scandalous.  Gorka had a presentiment of it
+this winter.  When the American attempted to take Alba's portrait the
+first time, the Pole put a stop to it.  It was fine for Montfanon to talk
+of division between these two men.  When Boleslas left here, Maitland and
+the Countess were barely acquainted and now---- If he has returned it is
+because he has discovered that he has a rival.  Some one has warned him--
+an enemy of the Countess, a confrere of Maitland.  Such pieces of infamy
+occur among good friends.  If Gorka, who is a shot like Casal, kills
+Maitland in a duel, it will make one deceiver less.  If he avenges
+himself upon his mistress for that treason, it would be a matter of
+indifference to me, for Catherine Steno is a great rogue....  But my
+little friend, my poor, charming Alba, what would become of her if there
+should be a scandal, bloodshed, perhaps, on account of her mother's
+folly?  Gorka returned?  And he did not write it to me, to me who have
+received several letters from him since he went away; to me, whom he
+selected last autumn as the confidant of his jealousies, under the
+pretext that I knew women, and, with the vain hope of inspiring me....
+His silence and return no longer seem like a romance; they savor rather
+of a drama, and with a Slav, as much a Slav as he is, one may expect
+anything.  I know not what to think of it, for he will be at the Palais
+Castagna.  Poor, charming Alba!"
+
+The monologue did not differ much from a monologue uttered under similar
+circumstances by any young man interested in a young girl whose mother
+does not conduct herself becomingly.  It was a touching situation, but a
+very common one, and there was no necessity for the author to come to
+Rome to study it, one entire winter and spring.  If that interest went
+beyond a study, Dorsenne possessed a very simple means of preventing his
+little friend, as he said, from being rendered unhappy by the conduct of
+that mother whom age did not conquer.  Why not propose for her hand?
+He had inherited a fortune, and his success as an author had augmented
+it.  For, since the first book which had established his reputation, the
+'Etudes de Femmes,' published in 1879, not a single one of the fifteen
+novels or selections from novels had remained unnoticed.  His personal
+celebrity could, strictly speaking, combine with it family celebrity,
+for he boasted that his grandfather was a cousin of that brave General
+Dorsenne whom Napoleon could only replace at the head of his guard by
+Friant.  All can be told in a word.  Although the heirs of the hero of
+the Empire had never recognized the relationship, Julien believed in it,
+and when he said, in reply to compliments on his books, "At my age my
+grand-uncle, the Colonel of the Guard, did greater things," he was
+sincere in his belief.  But it was unnecessary to mention it, for,
+situated as he was, Countess Steno would gladly have accepted him as a
+son-in-law.  As for gaining the love of the young girl, with his handsome
+face, intelligent and refined, and his elegant form, which he had
+retained intact in spite of his thirty-seven years, he might have done
+so.  Nothing, however, was farther from his thoughts than such a project,
+for, as he ascended the steps of the staircase of the palace formerly
+occupied by Urban VII, he continued, in very different terms, his
+monologue, a species of involuntary "copy" which is written instinctively
+in the brain of the man of letters when he is particularly fond of
+literature.
+
+At times it assumes a written form, and it is the most marked of
+professional distortions, the most unintelligible to the illiterate,
+who think waveringly and who do not, happily for them, suffer the
+continual servitude to precision of word and to too conscientious
+thought.
+
+"Yes; poor, charming Alba!"  he repeated to himself.  "How unfortunate
+that the marriage with Countess Gorka's brother could not have been
+arranged four months ago.  Connection with the family of her mother's
+lover would be tolerably immoral!  But she would at least have had less
+chance of ever knowing it; and the convenient combination by which the
+mother has caused her to form a friendship with that wife in order the
+better to blind the two, would have bordered a little more on propriety.
+To-day Alba would be Lady Ardrahan, leading a prosaic English life,
+instead of being united to some imbecile whom they will find for her here
+or elsewhere.  She will then deceive him as her mother deceived the late
+Steno--with me, perhaps, in remembrance of our pure intimacy of to-day.
+That would be too sad!  Do not let us think of it!  It is the future,
+of the existence of which we are ignorant, while we do know that the
+present exists and that it has all rights.  I owe to the Contessina my
+best impressions of Rome, to the vision of her loveliness in this scene
+of so grand a past.  And this is a sensation which is enjoyable; to visit
+the Palais Castagna with the adorable creature upon whom rests the menace
+of a drama.  To enjoy the Countess Steno's kindness, otherwise the house
+would not have that tone and I would never have obtained the little one's
+friendship.  To rejoice that Ardea is a fool, that he has lost his
+fortune on the Bourse, and that the syndicate of his creditors, presided
+over by Monsieur Ancona, has laid hands upon his palace.  For, otherwise,
+I should not have ascended the steps of this papal staircase, nor have
+seen this debris of Grecian sarcophagi fitted into the walls, and this
+garden of so intense a green.  As for Gorka, he may have returned for
+thirty-six other reasons than jealousy, and Montfanon is right: Caterina
+is cunning enough to inveigle both the painter and him.  She will make
+Maitland believe that she received Gorka for the sake of Madame Gorka,
+and to prevent him from ruining that excellent woman at gaming.  She will
+tell Boleslas that there was nothing more between her and Maitland than
+Platonic discussions on the merits of Raphael and Perugino.... And I
+should be more of a dupe than the other two for missing the visit.
+It is not every day that one has a chance to see auctioned, like a simple
+Bohemian, the grand-nephew of a pope."
+
+The second suite of reflections resembled more than the first the real
+Dorsenne, who was often incomprehensible even to his best friends.  The
+young man with the large, black eyes, the face with delicate features,
+the olive complexion of a Spanish monk, had never had but one passion,
+too exceptional not to baffle the ordinary observer, and developed in a
+sense so singular that to the most charitable it assumed either an
+attitude almost outrageous or else that of an abominable egotism and
+profound corruption.
+
+Dorsenne had spoken truly, he loved to comprehend--to comprehend as the
+gamester loves to game, the miser to accumulate money, the ambitious to
+obtain position--there was within him that appetite, that taste, that
+mania for ideas which makes the scholar and the philosopher.  But a
+philosopher united by a caprice of nature to an artist, and by that of
+fortune and of education to a worldly man and a traveller.  The abstract
+speculations of the metaphysician would not have sufficed for him, nor
+would the continuous and simple creation of the narrator who narrates to
+amuse himself, nor would the ardor of the semi-animal of the man-of-
+pleasure who abandons himself to the frenzy of vice.  He invented for
+himself, partly from instinct, partly from method, a compromise between
+his contradictory tendencies, which he formulated in a fashion slightly
+pedantic, when he said that his sole aim was to "intellectualize the
+forcible sensations;" in clearer terms, he dreamed of meeting with, in
+human life, the greatest number of impressions it could give and to think
+of them after having met them.
+
+He thought, with or without reason, to discover in his two favorite
+writers, Goethe and Stendhal, a constant application of a similar
+principle.  His studies had, for the past fourteen years when he had
+begun to live and to write, passed through the most varied spheres
+possible to him.  But he had passed through them, lending his presence
+without giving himself to them, with this idea always present in his
+mind: that he existed to become familiar with other customs, to watch
+other characters, to clothe other personages and the sensations which
+vibrated within them.  The period of his revival was marked by the
+achievement of each one of his books which he composed then, persuaded
+that, once written and construed, a sentimental or social experience was
+not worth the trouble of being dwelt upon.  Thus is explained the
+incoherence of custom and the atmospheric contact, if one may so express
+it, which are the characteristics of his work.  Take, for example, his
+first collection of novels, the 'Etudes de Femmes,' which made him
+famous.  They are about a sentimental woman who loved unwisely, and who
+spent hours from excess of the romantic studying the avowed or disguised
+demi-monde.  By the side of that, 'Sans Dieu,' the story of a drama of
+scientific consciousness, attests a continuous frequenting of the Museum,
+the Sorbonne and the College of France, while 'Monsieur de Premier'
+presents one of the most striking pictures of the contemporary political
+world, which could only have been traced by a familiar of the Palais
+Bourbon.
+
+On the other hand, the three books of travel pretentiously named
+'Tourisime,' 'Les Profils d'Etrangeres' and the 'Eclogue Mondaine,' which
+fluctuated between Florence and London, St.-Moritz and Bayreuth, revealed
+long sojourns out of France; a clever analysis of the Italian, English,
+and German worlds; a superficial but true knowledge of the languages, the
+history and literature, which in no way accords with 'l'odor di femina',
+exhale from every page.  These contrasts are brought out by a mind
+endowed with strangely complex qualities, dominated by a firm will and,
+it must be said, a very mediocre sensibility.  The last point will appear
+irreconcilable with the extreme and almost morbid delicacy of certain of
+Dorsenne's works.  It is thus however.  He had very little heart.  But,
+on the other hand, he had an abundance of nerves and nerves, and their
+irritability suffice for him who desires to paint human passions, above
+all, love, with its joys and its sorrows, of which one does not speak to
+a certain extent when one experiences them.  Success had come to Julien
+too early not to have afforded him occasion for several adventures.
+In each of the centres traversed in the course of his sentimental
+vagabondage he tried to find a woman in whom was embodied all the
+scattered charms of the district.  He had formed innumerable intimacies.
+Some had been frankly affectionate.  The majority were Platonic.  Others
+had consisted of the simple coquetry of friendship, as was the case with
+Mademoiselle Steno.  The young man had never employed more vanity than
+enthusiasm.  Every woman, mistress or friend, had been to him, nine times
+out of ten, a curiosity, then a model.  But, as he held that the model
+could not be recognized by any exterior sign, he did not think that he
+was wrong in making use of his prestige as a writer, for what he called
+his "culture."  He was capable of justice, the defense which he made of
+Fanny Hafner to Montfanon proved it; of admiration, his respect for the
+noble qualities of that same Montfanon testify to it; of compassion, for
+without it he would not have apprehended at once with so much sympathy
+the result which the return of Count Gorka would have on the destiny of
+innocent Alba Steno.
+
+On reaching the staircase of the Palais Castagna, instead of hastening,
+as was natural, to find out at least what meant the return to Rome of the
+lover whom Madame Steno deceived, he collected his startled sensibilities
+before meeting Alba, and, pausing, he scribbled in a note-book which he
+drew from his pocket, with a pencil always within reach of his fingers,
+in a firm hand, precise and clear, this note savoring somewhat of
+sentimentalism:
+
+"25 April, '90.  Palais Castagna.--Marvellous staircase constructed by
+Balthazar Peruzzi; so broad and long, with double rows of stairs, like
+those of Santa Colomba, near Siena.  Enjoyed above all the sight of an
+interior garden so arranged, so designed that the red flowers, the
+regularity of the green shrubs, the neat lines of the graveled walks
+resemble the features of a face.  The idea of the Latin garden, opposed
+to the Germanic or Anglo-Saxon, the latter respecting the irregularity of
+nature, the other all in order, humanizing and administering even to the
+flower-garden."
+
+"Subject the complexity of life to a thought harmonious and clear, a
+constant mark of the Latin genus, for a group of trees as well as an
+entire nation, an entire religion--Catholicism.  It is the contrary in
+the races of the North.  Significance of the word: the forests have
+taught man liberty."
+
+He had hardly finished writing that oddly interpreted memorandum, and was
+closing his note-book, when the sound of a familiar voice caused him to
+turn suddenly.  He had not heard ascend the stairs a personage who waited
+until he finished writing, and who was no other than one of the actors in
+his "troupe" to use his expression, one of the persons of the party of
+that morning organized the day before at Madame Steno's, and just the one
+whom the intolerable marquis had defamed with so much ardor, the father
+of beautiful Fanny Hafner, Baron Justus himself.  The renowned founder of
+the 'Credit Austro-Dalmate' was a small, thin man, with blue eyes of an
+acuteness almost insupportable, in a face of neutral color.  His ever-
+courteous manner, his attire, simple and neat, his speech serious and
+discreet, gave to him that species of distinction so common to old
+diplomatists.  But the dangerous adventurer was betrayed by the glance
+which Hafner could not succeed in veiling with indifferent amiability.
+The man-of-the-world, which he prided himself upon having become, was
+visible through all by certain indefinable trifles, and above all by
+those eyes, of a restlessness so singular in so wealthy a man, indicating
+an enigmatical and obscure past of dark and contrasting struggles,
+of covetous sharpness, of cold calculation and indomitable energy.
+Fanatical Montfanon, who abused the daughter with such unjustness, judged
+the father justly.  The son of a Jew of Berlin and of a Dutch Protestant,
+Justus Hafner was inscribed on the civil state registers as belonging to
+his mother's faith.  But the latter died when Justus was very young,
+and he was not reared in any other liturgy than that of money.  From his
+father, a persevering and skilful jeweller, but too prudent to risk or
+gain much, he learned the business of precious stones, to which he added
+that of laces, paintings, old materials, tapestries, rare furniture.
+
+An infallible eye, the patience of a German united with his Israelitish
+and Dutch extraction, soon amassed for him a small capital, which his
+father's bequest augmented.  At twenty-seven Justus had not less than
+five hundred thousand marks.  Two imprudent operations on the Bourse,
+enterprises to force fortune and to obtain the first million, ruined the
+too-audacious courtier, who began again the building up of his fortune by
+becoming a diamond broker.
+
+He went to Paris, and there, in a wretched little room on the Rue
+Montmartre, in three years, he made his second capital.  He then managed
+it so well that in 1870, at the time of the war, he had made good his
+losses.  The armistice found him in England, where he had married the
+daughter of a Viennese agent, in London, for the purpose of starting a
+vast enterprise of revictualing the belligerent armies.  The enormous
+profits made by the father-in-law and the son-in-law during that year
+determined them to found a banking-house which should have its principal
+seat in Vienna and a branch in Berlin.  Justus Hafner, a passionate
+admirer of Herr von Bismarck, controlled, besides, a newspaper.  He tried
+to gain the favor of the great statesman, who refused to aid the former
+diamond merchant in gratifying political ambitions cherished from an
+early age.
+
+It was a bitter disappointment to the persevering man, who, having tried
+his luck in Prussia, emigrated definitively to Vienna.  The establishment
+of the 'Credit Austro-Dalmate,' launched with extraordinary claims,
+permitted him at length to realize at least one of his chimeras.  His
+wealth, while not equaling that of the mighty financiers of the epoch,
+increased with a rapidity almost magical to a cipher high enough to
+permit him, from 1879, to indulge in the luxurious life which can not be
+led by any one with an income short of five hundred thousand francs.
+Contrary to the custom of speculators of his genus, Hafner in time
+invested his earnings safely.  He provided against the coming demolition
+of the structure so laboriously built up.  The 'Credit Austro-Dalmate'
+had suffered in great measure owing to innumerable public and private
+disasters and scandals, such as the suicide and murder in the Schroeder
+family.
+
+Suits were begun against a number of the founders, among them Justus
+Hafner.  He was acquitted, but with such damage to his financial
+integrity and in the face of such public indignation that he abandoned
+Austria for Italy and Vienna for Rome.  There, heedless of first rebuffs,
+he undertook to realize the third great object of his life, the gaining
+of social position.  To the period of avidity had succeeded, as it
+frequently does with those formidable handlers of money, the period of
+vanity.  Being now a widower, he aimed at his daughter's marriage with a
+strength of will and a complication of combinations equal to his former
+efforts, and that struggle for connection with high life was disguised
+beneath the cloak of the most systematically adopted politeness of
+deportment.  How had he found the means, in the midst of struggles and
+hardships, to refine himself so that the primitive broker and speculator
+were almost unrecognizable in the baron of fifty-four, decorated with
+several orders, installed in a magnificent palace, the father of a
+charming daughter, and himself an agreeable conversationalist,
+a courteous gentleman, an ardent sportsman?  It is the secret of those
+natures created for social conquest, like a Napoleon for war and a
+Talleyrand for diplomacy.  Dorsenne asked himself the question
+frequently, and he could not solve it.  Although he boasted of watching
+the Baron with an intellectual curiosity, he could not restrain a shudder
+of antipathy each time he met the eyes of the man.
+
+And on this particular morning it was especially disagreeable to him that
+those eyes had seen him making his unoffending notes, although there was
+scarcely a shade of gentle condescension--that of a great lord who
+patronizes a great artist--in the manner in which Hafner addressed him.
+
+"Do not inconvenience yourself for me, dear sir," said he to Dorsenne.
+"You work from nature, and you are right.  I see that your next novel
+will touch upon the ruin of our poor Prince d'Ardea.  Do not be too hard
+on him, nor on us."
+
+The artist could not help coloring at that benign pleasantry.  It was all
+the more painful to him because it was at once true and untrue.  How
+should he explain the sort of literary alchemy, thanks to which he was
+enabled to affirm that he never drew portraits, although not a line of
+his fifteen volumes was traced without a living model?  He replied,
+therefore, with a touch of ill-humor:
+
+"You are mistaken, my dear Baron.  I do not make notes on persons."
+
+"All authors say that," answered the Baron, shrugging his shoulders with
+the assumed good-nature which so rarely forsook him, "and they are
+right....  At any rate, it is fortunate that you had something to write,
+for we shall both be late in arriving at a rendezvous where there are
+ladies....  It is almost a quarter past eleven, and we should have been
+there at eleven precisely....  But I have one excuse, I waited for my
+daughter."
+
+"And she has not come?"  asked Dorsenne.
+
+"No," replied Hafner, "at the last moment she could not make up her mind.
+She had a slight annoyance this morning--I do not know what old book she
+had set her heart on.  Some rascal found out that she wanted it, and he
+obtained it first....  But that is not the true cause of her absence.
+The true cause is that she is too sensitive, and she finds it so sad that
+there should be a sale of the possessions of this ancient family....
+I did not insist.  What would she have experienced had she known the late
+Princess Nicoletta, Pepino's mother?  When I came to Rome on a visit for
+the first time, in '75, what a salon that was and what a Princess!....
+She was a Condolmieri, of the family of Eugene IV."
+
+"How absurd vanity renders the most refined man," thought Julien, suiting
+his pace to the Baron's.  "He would have me believe that he was received
+at the house of that woman who was politically the blackest of the black,
+the most difficult to please in the recruiting of her salon....  Life is
+more complex than the Montfanons even know of!  This girl feels by
+instinct that which the chouan of a marquis feels by doctrine, the
+absurdity of this striving after nobility, with a father who forgets the
+broker and who talks of the popes of the Middle Ages as of a trinket!....
+While we are alone, I must ask this old fox what he knows of Boleslas
+Gorka's return.  He is the confidant of Madame Steno.  He should be
+informed of the doings and whereabouts of the Pole."
+
+The friendship of Baron Hafner for the Countess, whose financial adviser
+he was, should have been for Dorsenne a reason for avoiding such a
+subject, the more so as he was convinced of the man's dislike for him.
+The Baron could, by a single word perfidiously repeated, injure him very
+much with Alba's mother.  But the novelist, similar on that point to the
+majority of professional observers, had only the power of analysis of a
+retrospective order.  Never had his keen intelligence served him to avoid
+one of those slight errors of conversation which are important mistakes
+on the pitiful checker-board of life.  Happily for him, he cherished no
+ambition except for his pleasure and his art, without which he would have
+found the means of making for himself, gratuitously, enough enemies to
+clear all the academies.
+
+He, therefore, chose the moment when the Baron arrived at the landing on
+the first floor, pausing somewhat out of breath, and after the agent had
+verified their passes, to say to his companion:
+
+"Have you seen Gorka since his arrival?"
+
+"What?  Is Boleslas here?"  asked Justus Hafner, who manifested his
+astonishment in no other manner than by adding: "I thought he was still
+in Poland."
+
+"I have not seen him myself," said Dorsenne.  He already regretted having
+spoken too hastily.  It is always more prudent not to spread the first
+report.  But the ignorance of that return of Countess Steno's best
+friend, who saw her daily, struck the young man with such surprise that
+he could not resist adding: "Some one, whose veracity I can not doubt,
+met him this morning."  Then, brusquely: "Does not this sudden return
+make you fearful?"
+
+"Fearful?"  repeated the Baron.  "Why so?"  As he uttered those words he
+glanced at the writer with his usual impassive expression, which,
+however, a very slight sign, significant to those who knew him, belied.
+In exchanging those few words the two men had passed into the first room
+of "objects of art," having belonged to the apartment of "His Eminence
+Prince d'Ardea," as the catalogue said, and the Baron did not raise the
+gold glass which he held at the end of his nose when near the smallest
+display of bric-a-brac, as was his custom.  As he walked slowly through
+the collection of busts and statues of that first room, called "Marbles"
+on the catalogue, without glancing with the eye of a practised judge at
+the Gobelin tapestry upon the walls, it must have been that he considered
+as very grave the novelist's revelation.  The latter had said too much
+not to continue:
+
+"Well, I who have not been connected with Madame Steno for years, like
+you, trembled for her when that return was announced to me.  She does not
+know what Gorka is when he is jealous, or of what he is capable."
+
+"Jealous?  Of whom?"  interrupted Hafner.  "It is not the first time I
+have heard the name of Boleslas uttered in connection with the Countess.
+I confess I have never taken those words seriously, and I should not have
+thought that you, a frequenter of her salon, one of her friends, would
+hesitate on that subject.  Rest assured, Gorka is in love with his
+charming wife, and he could not make a better choice.  Countess Caterina
+is an excellent person, very Italian.  She is interested in him, as in
+you, as in Maitland, as in me; in you because you write such admirable
+books, in Maitland because he paints like our best masters, in Boleslas
+on account of the sorrow he had in the death of his first child, in me
+because I have so delicate a charge.  She is more than an excellent
+person, she is a truly superior woman, very superior."  He uttered his
+hypocritical speech with such perfect ease that Dorsenne was surprised
+and irritated.  That Hafner did not believe one treacherous word of what
+he said the novelist was sure, he who, from the indiscreet confidences of
+Gorka, knew what to think of the Venetian's manner, and he; too,
+understood the Baron's glance!  At any other time he would have admired
+the policy of the old stager.  At that moment the novelist was vexed by
+it, for it caused him to play a role, very common but not very elevating,
+that of a calumniator, who has spoken ill of a woman with whom he dined
+the day before.  He, therefore, quickened his pace as much as politeness
+would permit, in order not to remain tete-a-tete with the Baron, and also
+to rejoin the persons of their party already arrived.
+
+They emerged from the first room to enter a second, marked "Porcelain;"
+then a third, "Frescoes of Perino del Vaga," on account of the ceiling
+upon which the master painted a companion to his vigorous piece at Genoa-
+-"Jupiter crushing the Giants"--and, lastly, into a fourth, called "The
+Arazzi," from the wonderful panels with which it was decorated.
+
+A few visitors were lounging there, for the season was somewhat advanced,
+and the date which M. Ancona had chosen for the execution proved either
+the calculation of profound hatred or else the adroit ruse of a syndicate
+of retailers.  All the magnificent objects in the palace were adjudged at
+half the value they would have brought a few months sooner or later.  The
+small group of curios stood out in contrast to the profusion of
+furniture, materials, objects of art of all kinds, which filled the vast
+rooms.  It was the residence of five hundred years of power and of
+luxury, where masterpieces, worthy of the great Medicis, and executed in
+their time, alternated with the gewgaws of the eighteenth century and
+bronzes of the First Empire, with silver trinkets ordered but yesterday
+in London.  Baron Justus could not resist these.  He raised his glass and
+called Dorsenne to show him a curious armchair, the carving of a cartel,
+the embroidery on some material.  One glance sufficed for him to
+judge....  If the novelist had been capable of observing, he would have
+perceived in the detailed knowledge the banker had of the catalogue the
+trace of a study too deep not to accord with some mysterious project.
+
+"There are treasures here," said he.  "See these two Chinese vases with
+convex lids, with the orange ground decorated with gilding.  Those are
+pieces no longer made in China.  It is a lost art.  And this tete-a-tete
+decorated with flowers; and this pluvial cope in this case.  What a
+marvel!  It is as good as the one of Pius Second, which was at Pienza and
+which has been stolen.  I could have bought it at one time for fifteen
+hundred francs.  It is worth fifteen thousand, twenty thousand, all of
+that.  Here is some faience.  It was brought from Spain when Cardinal
+Castagna came from Madrid, when he took the place of Pius Fifth as
+sponsor of Infanta Isabella.  Ah, what treasures!  But you go like the
+wind," he added, "and perhaps it is better, for I would stop, and
+Cavalier Fossati, the auctioneer, to whom those terrible creditors of
+Peppino have given charge of the sale, has spies everywhere.  You notice
+an object, you are marked as a solid man, as they say in Germany.  You
+are noted.  I shall be down on his list.  I have been caught by him
+enough.  Ha!  He is a very shrewd man!  But come, I see the ladies.  We
+should have remembered that they were here," and smiling--but at whom?--
+at Fossati, at himself or his companion?--he made the latter read the
+notice hung on the door of a transversal room, which bore this
+inscription: "Salon of marriage-chests."
+
+There were, indeed, ranged along the walls about fifteen of those wooden
+cases painted and carved, of those 'cassoni' in which it was the fashion,
+in grand Italian families, to keep the trousseaux destined for the
+brides.  Those of the Castagnas proved, by their escutcheons, what
+alliances the last of the grand-nephews of Urban VII, the actual Prince
+d'Ardea, entered into.  Three very elegant ladies were examining the
+chests; in them Dorsenne recognized at once fair and delicate Alba Steno,
+Madame Gorka, with her tall form, her fair hair, too, and her strong
+English profile, and pretty Madame Maitland, with her olive complexion,
+who did not seem to have inherited any more negro blood than just enough
+to tint her delicate face.  Florent Chapron, the painter's brother-in-
+law, was the only man with those three ladies.  Countess Steno and
+Lincoln Maitland were not there, and one could hear the musical voice of
+Alba spelling the heraldry carved on the coffers, formerly opened with
+tender curiosity by young girls, laughing and dreaming by turns like her.
+
+"Look, Maud," said she to Madame Gorka, "there is the oak of the Della
+Rovere, and there the stars of the Altieri."
+
+"And I have found the column of the Colonna," replied Maud Gorka.
+
+"And you, Lydia?"  said Mademoiselle Steno to Madame Maitland.
+
+"And I, the bees of the Barberini."
+
+"And I, the lilies of the Farnese, " said in his turn Florent Chapron,
+who, having raised his head first, perceived the newcomers.  He greeted
+them with a pleasant smile, which was reflected in his eyes and which
+showed his white teeth.  "We no longer expected you, sirs.  Every one has
+disappointed us.  Lincoln did not wish to leave his atelier.  It seems
+that Mademoiselle Hafner excused herself yesterday to these ladies.
+Countess Steno has a headache.  We did not even count on the Baron, who
+is usually promptness personified."
+
+"I was sure Dorsenne would not fail us," said Alba, gazing at the young
+man with her large eyes, of a blue as clear as those of Madame Gorka were
+dark.  "Only that I expected we should meet him on the staircase as we
+were leaving, and that he would say to us, in surprise: 'What, I am not
+on time?'  Ah," she continued, "do not excuse yourself, but reply to the
+examination in Roman history we are about to put you through.  We have to
+follow here a veritable course studying all these old chests.  What are
+the arms of this family?"  she asked, leaning with Dorsenne over one of
+the cassoni.  "You do not know?  The Carafa, famous man!  And what Pope
+did they have?  You do not know that either?  Paul Fourth, sir novelist.
+If ever you visit us in Venice, you will be surprised at the Doges."
+
+She employed so affectionate a grace in that speech, and she was so
+apparently in one of her moods--so rare, alas! of childish joyousness,
+that Dorsenne, preoccupied as he was, felt his heart contract on her
+account.  The simultaneous absence of Madame Steno and Lincoln Maitland
+could only be fortuitous.  But persuaded that the Countess loved
+Maitland, and not doubting that she was his mistress, the absence of both
+appeared singularly suspicious to him.  Such a thought sufficed to render
+the young girl's innocent gayety painful to him.  That gayety would
+become tragical if it were true that the Countess's other lover had
+returned unexpectedly, warned by some one.  Dorsenne experienced genuine
+agitation on asking Madame Gorka:
+
+"How is Boleslas?"
+
+"Very well, I suppose," said his wife.  "I have not had a letter to-day.
+Does not one of your proverbs say, 'No news is good news?'"
+
+Baron Hafner was beside Maud Gorka when she uttered that sentence.
+Involuntarily Dorsenne looked at him, and involuntarily, master as he was
+of himself, he looked at Dorsenne.  It was no longer a question of a
+simple hypothesis.  That Boleslas Gorka had returned to Rome unknown to
+his wife constituted, for any one who knew of his relations with Madame
+Steno, and of the infidelity of the latter, an event full of formidable
+consequences.  Both men were possessed by the same thought.  Was there
+still time to prevent a catastrophe?  But each of them in this
+circumstance, as is so often the case in important matters of life, was
+to show the deepness of his character.  Not a muscle of Hafner's face
+quivered.  It was a question, perhaps, of rendering a service to a woman
+in danger, whom he loved with all the feeling of which he was capable.
+That woman was the mainspring of his social position in Rome.  She was
+still more.  A plan for Fanny's marriage, as yet secret, but on the point
+of being consummated, depended upon Madame Steno.  But he felt it
+impossible to attempt to render her any service before having spent half
+an hour in the rooms of the Palais Castagna, and he began to employ that
+half hour in a manner which would be most profitable to his possible
+purchases, for he turned to Madame Gorka and said to her, with the rather
+exaggerated politeness habitual to him:
+
+"Countess, if you will permit me to advise you, do not pause so long
+before these coffers, interesting as they may be.  First, as I have just
+told Dorsenne, Cavalier Fossati, the agent, has his spies everywhere
+here.  Your position has already been remarked, you may be sure, so that
+if you take a fancy for one, he will know it in advance, and he will
+manage to make you pay double, triple, and more for it.  And then we have
+to see so much, notably a cartoon of twelve designs by old masters, which
+Ardea did not even suspect he had, and which Fossati discovered--would
+you believe?--worm-eaten, in a cupboard in one of the granaries."
+
+"There is some one whom your collection would interest," said Florent,
+"my brother-in-law."
+
+"Well," replied Madame Gorka to Hafner with her habitual good-nature,
+"there are at least two of these coffers that I like and wish to have.
+I said it in so loud a tone that it is not worth the trouble of hoping
+that your Cavalier Fossati does not know it, if he really has that mode
+of espionage in practice.  But forty or fifty pounds more make no
+difference--nor forty thousand even."
+
+"Baron Hafner will warn you that your tone is not low enough," laughed
+Alba Steno, "and he will add his great phrase: 'You will never be
+diplomatic.'  But," added the girl, turning toward Dorsenne, having drawn
+back from silent Lydia Maitland, and arranging to fall behind with the
+young man, "I am about to employ a little diplomacy in order to find out
+whether you have any trouble."  And here her mobile face changed its
+expression, looking into Julien's with genuine anxiety.  "Yes," said she,
+"I have never seen you so preoccupied as you seem to be this morning.
+Do you not feel well?  Have you received ill news from Paris?  What ails
+you?"
+
+"I preoccupied?"  replied Dorsenne.  "You are mistaken.  There is
+absolutely nothing, I assure you."  It was impossible to lie with more
+apparent awkwardness, and if any one merited the scorn of Baron Hafner,
+it was he.  Hardly had Madame Gorka spoken, when he had, with the
+rapidity of men of vivid imagination, seen Countess Steno and Maitland
+surprised by Gorka, at that very moment, in some place of rendezvous,
+and that surprise followed by a challenge, perhaps an immediate murder.
+And, as Alba continued to laugh merrily, his presentiment of her sad fate
+became so vivid that his face actually clouded over.  He felt impelled to
+ascertain, when she questioned him, how great a friendship she bore him.
+But his effort to hide his emotion rendered his voice so harsh that the
+young girl resumed:
+
+"I have vexed you by my questioning?"
+
+"Not the least in the world," he replied, without being able to find a
+word of friendship.  He felt at that moment incapable of talking, as they
+usually did, in that tone of familiarity, partly mocking, partly
+sentimental, and he added: "I simply think this exposition somewhat
+melancholy, that is all."  And, with a smile, "But we shall lose the
+opportunity of having it shown us by our incomparable cicerone," and he
+obliged her, by quickening her pace, to rejoin the group piloted by
+Hafner through the magnificence of the almost deserted apartment.
+
+"See," said the former broker of Berlin and of Paris, now an enlightened
+amateur--" see, how that charlatan of a Fossati has taken care not to
+increase the number of trinkets now that we are in the reception-rooms.
+These armchairs seem to await invited guests.  They are known.  They have
+been illustrated in a magazine of decorative art in Paris.  And that
+dining-room through that door, with all the silver on the table, would
+you not think a fete had been prepared?"
+
+"Baron," said Madame Gorka, "look at this material; it is of the
+eighteenth century, is it not?"
+
+"Baron," asked Madame Maitland, "is this cup with the lid old Vienna or
+Capadimonte?"
+
+"Baron," said Florent Chapron, "is this armor of Florentine or Milanese
+workmanship?"
+
+The eyeglass was raised to the Baron's thin nose, his small eyes
+glittered, his lips were pursed up, and he replied, in words as exact as
+if he had studied all the details of the catalogue verbatim.  Their
+thanks were soon followed by many other questions, in which two voices
+alone did not join, that of Alba Steno and that of Dorsenne.  Under any
+other circumstances, the latter would have tried to dissipate the
+increasing sadness of the young girl, who said no more to him after he
+repulsed her amicable anxiety.  In reality, he attached no great
+importance to it.  Those transitions from excessive gayety to sudden
+depression were so habitual with the Contessina, above all when with him.
+Although they were the sign of a vivid sentiment, the young man saw in
+them only nervous unrest, for his mind was absorbed with other thoughts.
+
+He asked himself if, at any hazard, after the manner in which Madame
+Gorka had spoken, it would not be more prudent to acquaint Lincoln
+Maitland with the secret return of his rival.  Perhaps the drama had not
+yet taken place, and if only the two persons threatened were warned, no
+doubt Hafner would put Countess Steno upon her guard.  But when would he
+see her?  What if he, Dorsenne, should at once tell Maitland's brother-
+in-law of Gorka's return, to that Florent Chapron whom he saw at the
+moment glancing at all the objects of the princely exposition?  The step
+was an enormous undertaking, and would have appeared so to any one but
+Julien, who knew that the relations between Florent Chapron and Lincoln
+Maitland were of a very exceptional nature.  Julien knew that Florent--
+sent when very young to the Jesuits of Beaumont, in England, by a father
+anxious to spare him the humiliation which his blood would call down upon
+him in America--had formed a friendship with Lincoln, a pupil in the same
+school.  He knew that the friendship for the schoolmate had turned to
+enthusiasm for the artist, when the talent of his old comrade had begun
+to reveal itself.  He knew that the marriage, which had placed the
+fortune of Lydia at the service of the development of the painter,
+had been the work of that enthusiasm at an epoch when Maitland, spoiled
+by the unwise government of his mother, and unappreciated by the public,
+was wrung by despair.  The exceptional character of the marriage would
+have surprised a man less heeding of moral peculiarities than was
+Dorsenne, who had observed, all too frequently, the silence and reserve
+of that sister not to look upon her as a sacrifice.  He fancied that
+admiration for his brother-in-law's genius had blinded Florent to such a
+degree that he was the first cause of the sacrifice.
+
+"Drama for drama," said he to himself, as the visit drew near its close,
+and after a long debate with himself.  "I should prefer to have it one
+rather than the other in that family.  I should reproach myself all my
+life for not having tried every means."  They were in the last room,
+and Baron Hafner was just fastening the strings of an album of drawings,
+when the conviction took possession of the young man in a definite
+manner.  Alba Steno, who still maintained silence, looked at him again
+with eyes which revealed the struggle of her interest for him and of her
+wounded pride.  She longed, without doubt, at the moment they were about
+to separate, to ask him, according to their intimate and charming custom,
+when they should meet again.  He did not heed her--any more than he did
+the other pair of eyes which told him to be more prudent, and which were
+those of the Baron; any more than he did the observation of Madame Gorka,
+who, having remarked the ill-humor of Alba, was seeking the cause, which
+she had long since divined was the heart of the young girl; any more than
+the attitude of Madame Maitland, whose eyes at times shot fire equal to
+her brother's gentleness.  He took the latter by the arm, and said to him
+aloud:
+
+"I should like to have your opinion on a small portrait I have noticed in
+the other room, my dear Chapron."  Then, when they were before the canvas
+which had served as a pretext for the aside, he continued, in a low
+voice: "I heard very strange news this morning.  Do you know Boleslas
+Gorka is in Rome unknown to his wife?"
+
+"That is indeed strange," replied Maitland's brother-in-law, adding
+simply, after a silence: "Are you certain of it?"
+
+"As certain as that we are here," said Dorsenne.  "One of my friends,
+Marquis de Montfanon, met him this morning."
+
+A fresh silence ensued between the two, during which Julien felt that
+the arm upon which he rested trembled.  Then they joined the party, while
+Florent said aloud: "It is an excellent piece of painting, which has,
+unfortunately, been revarnished too much."
+
+"May I have done right!"  thought Julien.  "He understood me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BOLESLAS GORKA
+
+Hardly ten minutes had passed since Dorsenne had spoken as he had to
+Florent Chapron, and already the imprudent novelist began to wonder
+whether it would not have been wiser not to interfere in any way in an
+adventure in which his intervention was of the least importance.
+
+The apprehension of an immediate drama which had possessed him, for the
+first time, after the conversation with Montfanon, for the second time,
+in a stronger manner, by proving the ignorance of Madame Gorka on the
+subject of the husband's return--that frightful and irresistible
+evocation in a clandestine chamber, suddenly deluged with blood,
+was banished by the simplest event.  The six visitors exchanged their
+last impressions on the melancholy and magnificence of the Castagna
+apartments, and they ended by descending the grand staircase with the
+pillars, through the windows of which staircase smiled beneath the
+scorching sun the small garden which Dorsenne had compared to a face.
+The young man walked a little in advance, beside Alba Steno, whom he now
+tried, but in vain, to cheer.  Suddenly, at the last turn of the broad
+steps which tempered the decline gradually, her face brightened with
+surprise and pleasure.  She uttered a slight cry and said: "There is my
+mother!"  And Julien saw the Madame Steno, whom he had seen, in an access
+of almost delirious anxiety, surprised, assassinated by a betrayed lover.
+She was standing upon the gray and black mosaic of the peristyle, dressed
+in the most charming morning toilette.  Her golden hair was gathered up
+under a large hat of flowers, over which was a white veil; her hand toyed
+with the silver handle of a white parasol, and in the reflection of that
+whiteness, with her clear, fair complexion, with her lovely blue eyes in
+which sparkled passion and intelligence, with her faultless teeth which
+gleamed when she smiled, with her form still slender notwithstanding the
+fulness of her bust, she seemed to be a creature so youthful, so
+vigorous, so little touched by age that a stranger would never have taken
+her to be the mother of the tall young girl who was already beside her
+and who said to her
+
+"What imprudence!  Ill as you were this morning, to go out in this sun.
+Why did you do so?"
+
+"To fetch you and to take you home!"  replied the Countess gayly.  "I was
+ashamed of having indulged myself!  I rose, and here I am.  Good-day,
+Dorsenne.  I hope you kept your eyes open up there.  A story might be
+written on the Ardea affair.  I will tell it to you.  Good-day, Maud.
+How kind of you to make lazy Alba exercise a little!  She would have
+quite a different color if she walked every morning.  Goodday, Florent.
+Good-day, Lydia.  The master is not here?  And you, old friend, what have
+you done with Fanny?"
+
+She distributed these simple "good-days" with a grace so delicate, a
+smile so rare for each one--tender for her daughter, spirituelle for the
+author, grateful for Madame Gorka, amicably surprised for Chapron and
+Madame Maitland, familiar and confiding for her old friend, as she called
+the Baron.  She was evidently the soul of the small party, for her mere
+presence seemed to have caused animation to sparkle in every eye.
+
+All talked at once, and she replied, as they walked toward the carriages,
+which waited in a court of honor capable of holding seventy gala
+chariots.  One after the other these carriages advanced.  The horses
+pawed the ground; the harnesses shone; the footmen and coachmen were
+dressed in perfect liveries; the porter of the Palais Castagna, with his
+long redingote, on the buttons of which were the symbolical chestnuts of
+the family, had beneath his laced hat such a dignified bearing that
+Julien suddenly found it absurd to have imagined an impassioned drama in
+connection with such people.  The last one left, while watching the
+others depart, he once more experienced the sensation so common to those
+who are familiar with the worst side of the splendor of society and who
+perceive in them the moral misery and ironical gayety.
+
+"You are becoming a great simpleton, my friend, Dorsenne," said he,
+seating himself more democratically in one of those open cabs called in
+Rome a botte.  "To fear a tragical adventure for the woman who is
+mistress of herself to such a degree is something like casting one's self
+into the water to prevent a shark from drowning.  If she had not upon her
+lips Maitland's kisses, and in her eyes the memory of happiness, I am
+very much mistaken.  She came from a rendezvous.  It was written for me,
+in her toilette, in the color upon her cheeks, in her tiny shoes, easy to
+remove, which had not taken thirty steps.  And with what mastery she
+uttered her string of falsehoods!  Her daughter, Madame Gorka, Madame
+Maitland, how quickly she included them all!  That is why I do not like
+the theatre, where one finds the actress who employs that tone to utter
+her: 'Is the master not here?'"
+
+He laughed aloud, then his thoughts, relieved of all anxiety, took a new
+course, and, using the word of German origin familiar to Cosmopolitans,
+to express an absurd action, he said: "I have made a pretty schlemylade,
+as Hafner would say, in relating to Florent Gorka's unexpected arrival.
+It was just the same as telling him that Maitland was the Countess's
+lover.  That is a conversation at which I should like to assist, that
+which will take place between the two brothers-in-law.  Should I be very
+much surprised to learn that this unattached negro is the confidant of
+his great friend?  It is a subject to paint, which has never been well
+treated; the passionate friendships of a Tattet for a Musset, of an
+Eckermann for a Goethe, of an Asselineau for a Beaudelaire, the total
+absorption of the admirer in the admired.  Florent found that the genius
+of the great painter had need of a fortune, and he gave him his sister.
+Were he to find that that genius required a passion in order to develop
+still more, he would not object.  My word of honor!  He glanced at the
+Countess just now with gratitude!  Why not, after all?  Lincoln is a
+colorist of the highest order, although his desire to be with the tide
+has led him into too many imitations.  But it is his race.  Young Madame
+Maitland has as much sense as the handle of a basket; and Madame Steno is
+one of those extraordinary women truly created to exalt the ideals of an
+artist.  Never has he painted anything as he painted the portrait of
+Alba.  I can hear this dialogue:
+
+"'You know the Pole has returned?  What Pole?  The Countess's.  What?
+You believe those calumnies?'  Ah, what comedies here below!  'Gad!  The
+cabman has also committed his 'schlemylade'.  I told him Rue Sistina,
+near La Trinite-des-Monts, and here he is going through Place Barberini
+instead of cutting across Capo le Case.  It is my fault as well.
+I should not have heeded it had there been an earthquake.  Let us at
+least admire the Triton of Bernin.  What a sculptor that man was! yet he
+never thought of nature except to falsify it."
+
+These incoherent remarks were made with a good-nature decidedly
+optimistic, as could be seen, when the fiacre finally drew up at the
+given address.  It was that of a very modest restaurant decorated with
+this signboard: 'Trattoria al Marzocco.'  And the 'Marzocco', the lion
+symbolical of Florence, was represented above the door, resting his paw
+on the escutcheon ornamented with the national lys.  The appearance of
+that front did not justify the choice which the elegant Dorsenne
+had made of the place at which to dine when he did not dine in society.
+But his dilettantism liked nothing better than those sudden leaps from
+society, and M. Egiste Brancadori, who kept the Marzocco, was one of
+those unconscious buffoons of whom he was continually in search in real
+life, one of those whom he called his "Thebans", in reference to King
+Lear.  "I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban," cried the mad
+king, one knows not why, when he meets "poor Tom" on the heath.
+
+That Dorsenne's Parisian friends, the Casals, the Machaults, the De
+Vardes, those habitues of the club, might not judge him too severely, he
+explained that the Theban born in Florence was a cook of the first order
+and that the modest restaurant had its story.  It amused so paradoxical
+an observer as Julien was.  He often said, "Who will ever dare to write
+the truth of the history?"  This, for example: Pope Pius IX, having asked
+the Emperor to send him some troops to protect his dominions, the latter
+agreed to do so--an occupation which bore two results: a Corsican hatred
+of the half of Italy against France and the founding of the Marzocco by
+Egiste Brancadori, says the Theban or the doctor.  It was one of the
+pleasantries of the novelist to pretend to have cured his dyspepsia in
+Italy, thanks to the wise and wholesome cooking of the said Egiste.  In
+reality, and more simply, Brancadori was the old cook of a Russian lord,
+one of the Werekiews, the cousin of pretty Alba Steno's real father.
+That Werekiew, renowned in Rome for the daintiness of his dinners, died
+suddenly in 1866.  Several of the frequenters of his house, advised by a
+French officer of the army of occupation, and tired of clubs, hotels, and
+ordinary restaurants, determined to form a syndicate and to employ his
+former cook.  They, with his cooperation, established a sort of superior
+cafe, to which with some pride they gave the name of the Culinary Club.
+By assuring to each one a minimum of sixteen meals for seven francs, they
+kept for four years an excellent table, at which were to be found all the
+distinguished tourists in Rome.  The year 1870 had disbanded that little
+society of connoisseurs and of conversationalists, and the club was
+metamorphosed into a restaurant, almost unknown, except to a few artists
+or diplomats who were attracted by the ancient splendors of the place,
+and, above all, by the knowledge of the "doctor's" talents.
+
+It was not unusual at eight o'clock for the three small rooms which
+composed the establishment to be full of men in white cravats, white
+waistcoats and evening coats.  To cosmopolitan Dorsenne this was a
+singularly interesting sight; a member of the English embassy here, of
+the Russian embassy farther on, two German attaches elsewhere, two French
+secretaries near at hand from St. Siege, another from the Quirinal.  What
+interested the novelist still more was the conversation of the doctor
+himself, genial Brancadori, who could neither read nor write.  But he had
+preserved a faithful remembrance of all his old customers, and when he
+felt confidential, standing erect upon the threshold of his kitchen, of
+the possession of which he was so insolently proud, he repeated curious
+stories of Rome in the days of his youth.  His gestures, so conformable
+to the appearance of things, his mobile face and his Tuscan tongue, which
+softened into h all the harsh e's between two vowels, gave a savor to his
+stories which delighted a seeker after local truths.  It was in the
+morning especially, when there was no one in the restaurant, that he
+voluntarily left his ovens to chat, and if Dorsenne gave the address of
+the Marzocco to his cabman, it was in the hope that the old cook would in
+his manner sketch for him the story of the ruin of Ardea.  Brancadori was
+standing by the bar where was enthroned his niece, Signorina Sabatina,
+with a charming Florentine face, chin a trifle long, forehead somewhat
+broad, nose somewhat short, a sinuous mouth, large, black eyes, an olive
+complexion and waving hair, which recalled in a forcible manner the
+favorite type of the first of the Ghirlandajos.
+
+"Uncle," said the young girl, as soon as she perceived Dorsenne, "where
+have you put the letter brought for the Prince?"
+
+In Italy every foreigner is a prince or a count, and the profound good-
+nature which reigns in the habit gives to those titles, in the mouths of
+those who employ them, an amiability often free from calculation.  There
+is no country in the world where there is a truer, a more charming
+familiarity of class for class, and Brancadori immediately gave a proof
+of it in addressing as "Carolei"--that is to say, "my dear"--him whom his
+daughter had blazoned with a coronet, and he cried, fumbling in the
+pockets of the alpaca waistcoat which he wore over his apron of office:
+
+"The brain is often lacking in a gray head.  I put it in the pocket of my
+coat in order to be more sure of not forgetting it.  I changed my coat,
+because it was warm, and left it with the letter in my apartments."
+
+"You can look for it after lunch," said Dorsenne.
+
+"No," replied the young girl, rising, "it is not two steps from here;
+I will go.  The concierge of the palace where your Excellency lives
+brought it himself, and said it must be delivered immediately."
+
+"Very well, go and fetch it," replied Julien, who could not suppress a
+smile at the honor paid his dwelling, "and I will remain here and talk
+with my doctor, while he gives me the prescription for this morning--that
+is to say, his bill of fare.  Guess whence I come, Brancadori," he added,
+assured of first stirring the cook's curiosity, then his power of speech.
+"From the Palais Castagna, where they are selling everything."
+
+"Ah! Per Bacco!" exclaimed the Tuscan, with evident sorrow upon his old
+parchment-like face, scorched from forty years of cooking.  "If the
+deceased Prince Urban can see it in the other world, his heart will
+break, I assure you.  The last time he came to dine here, about ten years
+ago, on Saint Joseph's Day, he said to me: 'Make me some fritters,
+Egiste, like those we used to have at Monsieur d'Epinag's, Monsieur
+Clairin's, Fortuny's, and poor Henri Regnault's.'  And he was happy!
+'Egiste,' said he to me, 'I can die contented!  I have only one son, but
+I shall leave him six millions and the palace.  If it was Gigi I should
+be less easy, but Peppino !' Gigi was the other one, the elder, who died,
+the gay one, who used to come here every day--a fine fellow, but bad!
+You should have heard him tell of his visit to Pius Ninth on the day upon
+which he converted an Englishman.  Yes, Excellency, he converted him by
+lending him by mistake a pious book instead of a novel.  The Englishman
+took the book, read it, read another, a third, and became a Catholic.
+Gigi, who was not in favor at the Vatican, hastened to tell the Holy
+Father of his good deed.  'You see, my son,' said Pius Ninth, 'what means
+our Lord God employs!'  Ah, he would have used those millions for his
+amusement, while Peppino!  They were all squandered in signatures.  Just
+think, the name of Prince d'Ardea meant money!  He speculated, he lost,
+he won, he lost again, he drew up bills of exchange after bills of
+exchange.  And every time he made a move such as I am making with my
+pencil--only I can not sign my name--it meant one hundred, two hundred
+thousand francs to go into the world.  And now he must leave his house
+and Rome.  What will he do, Excellency, I ask you?"  With a shake of his
+head he added: "He should reconstruct his fortune abroad.  We have this
+saying: 'He who squanders gold with his hands will search for it with his
+feet.'  But Sabatino is coming!  She has been as nimble as a cat."
+
+The good man's invaluable mimetic art, his proverbs, the story of the
+fete of St. Joseph, the original evocation of the heir of the Castagnas
+continually signing and signing, the coarse explanation of his ruin--very
+true, however--everything in the recital had amused Dorsenne.  He knew
+enough Italian to appreciate the untranslatable passages of the language
+of the man of the people.  He was again on the verge of laughter, when
+the fresco madonna, as he sometimes designated the young girl, handed him
+an envelope the address upon which soon converted his smile into an
+undisguised expression of annoyance.  He pushed aside the day's bill of
+fare which the old cook presented to him and said, brusquely: "I fear I
+can not remain to breakfast."  Then, opening the letter: "No, I can not;
+adieu."  And he went out, in a manner so precipitate and troubled that
+the uncle and niece exchanged smiling glances.  Those typical Southerners
+could not think of any other trouble in connection with so handsome a man
+as Dorsenne than that of the heart.
+
+"Chi ha l'amor nel petto," said Signorina Sabatina.
+
+"Ha lo spron nei fianchi," replied the uncle.
+
+That naive adage which compares the sharp sting which passion drives into
+our breasts to the spurring given the flanks of a horse, was not true of
+Dorsenne.  The application of the proverb to the circumstance was not,
+however, entirely erroneous, and the novelist commented upon it in his
+passion, although in another form, by repeating to himself, as he went
+along the Rue Sistina: "No, no, I can not interfere in that affair, and I
+shall tell him so firmly."
+
+He examined again the note, the perusal of which had rendered him more
+uneasy than he had been twice before that morning.  He had not been
+mistaken in recognizing on the envelope the handwriting of Boleslas
+Gorka, and these were the terms, teeming with mystery under the
+circumstances, in which the brief message was worded:
+
+"I know you to be such a friend to me, dear Julien, and I have for your
+character, so chivalrous and so French, such esteem that I have
+determined to turn to you in an era of my life thoroughly tragical.
+I wish to see you immediately.  I shall await you at your lodging.
+I have sent a similar note to the Cercle de la Chasse, another to the
+bookshop on the Corso, another to your antiquary's.  Wheresoever my
+appeal finds you, leave all and come at once.  You will save more for me
+than life.  For a reason which I will tell you, my return is a profound
+secret.  No one, you understand, knows of it but you.  I need not write
+more to a friend as sincere as you are, and whom I embrace with all my
+heart."
+
+"It is unequalled.!"  said Dorsenne, crumpling the letter with rising
+anger.  "He embraces me with all his heart.  I am his most sincere
+friend!  I am chivalrous, French, the only person he esteems!  What
+disagreeable commission does he wish me to undertake for him?  Into what
+scrape is he about to ask me to enter, if he has not already got me into
+it?  I know that school of protestation.  We are allied for life and
+death, are we not?  Do me a favor!  And they upset your habits, encroach
+upon your time, embark you in tragedies, and when you say 'No' to them-
+then they squarely accuse you of selfishness and of treason!  It is my
+fault, too.  Why did I listen to his confidences?  Have I not known for
+years that a man who relates his love-affairs on so short an acquaintance
+as ours is a scoundrel and a fool?  And with such people there can be no
+possible connection.  He amused me at the beginning, when he told me his
+sly intrigue, without naming the person, as they all do at first.  He
+amused me still more by the way he managed to name her without violating
+that which people in society call honor.  And to think that the women
+believe in that honor and that discretion!  And yet it was the surest
+means of entering Steno's, and approaching Alba....  I believe I am about
+to pay for my Roman flirtation.  If Gorka is a Pole, I am from Lorraine,
+and the heir of the Castellans will only make me do what I agree to,
+nothing more."
+
+In such an ill-humor and with such a resolution, Julien reached the door
+of his house.  If that dwelling was not the palace alluded to by
+Signorina Sabatina, it was neither the usually common house as common
+today in new Rome as in contemporary Paris, modern Berlin, and in certain
+streets of London opened of late in the neighborhood of Hyde Park.  It
+was an old building on the Place de la Trinite-des-Monts, at an angle of
+the two streets Sistina and Gregoriana.  Although reduced to the state of
+a simple pension, more or less bourgeoise, that house had its name marked
+in certain guide-books, and like all the corners of ancient Rome it
+preserved the traces of a glorious, artistic history.  The small columns
+of the porch gave it the name of the tempietto, or little temple, while
+several personages dear to litterateurs had lived there, from the
+landscape painter Claude Lorrain to the poet Francois Coppee.  A few
+paces distant, almost opposite, lived Poussin, and one of the greatest
+among modern English poets, Keats, died quite near by, the John Keats
+whose tomb is to be seen in Rome, with that melancholy epitaph upon it,
+written by himself:
+
+          Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
+
+It was seldom that Dorsenne returned home without repeating to himself
+the translation he had attempted of that beautiful 'Ci-git un don't le
+nom, jut ecrit sur de l'eau'.
+
+Sometimes he repeated, at evening, this delicious fragment:
+
+The sky was tinged with tender green and pink.
+
+This time he entered in a more prosaic manner; for he addressed the
+concierge in the tone of a jealous husband or a debtor hunted by
+creditors:
+
+"Have you given the key to any one, Tonino?"  he asked.
+
+"Count Gorka said that your Excellency asked him to await you here,"
+replied the man, with a timidity rendered all the more comical by the
+formidable cut of his gray moustache and his imperial, which made him a
+caricature of the late King Victor Emmanuel.
+
+He had served in '59 under the Galantuomo, and he paid the homage of a
+veteran of Solferino to that glorious memory.  His large eyes rolled with
+fear at the least confusion, and he repeated:
+
+"Yes, he said that your Excellency asked him to wait," while Dorsenne
+ascended the staircase, saying aloud: "More and more perfect.  But this
+time the familiarity passes all bounds; and it is better so.  I have been
+so surprised and annoyed from the first that I shall be easily able to
+refuse the imprudent fellow what he will ask of me."  In his anger the
+novelist sought to arm himself against his weakness, of which he was
+aware--not the weakness of insufficient will, but of a too vivid
+perception of the motives which the person with whom he was in conflict
+obeyed.  He, however, was to learn that there is no greater dissolvent of
+rancor than intelligent curiosity.  His was, indeed, aroused by a simple
+detail, which consisted in ascertaining under what conditions the Pole
+had travelled; his dressing-case, his overcoat and his hat, still white
+with the dust of travel, were lying upon the table in the antechamber.
+
+Evidently he had come direct from Warsaw to the Place de la Trinite-des-
+Monts.  A prey to what delirium of passion?  Dorsenne had not time to ask
+the question any more than he had presence of mind to compose his manner
+to such severity that it would cut short all familiarity on the part of
+his strange visitor.  At the noise made by the opening of the antechamber
+door, Boleslas started up.  He seized both hands of the man into whose
+apartments he had obtruded himself.  He pressed them.  He gazed at him
+with feverish eyes, with eyes which had not closed for hours, and he
+murmured, drawing the novelist into the tiny salon:
+
+"You have come, Julien, you are here!  Ah, I thank you for having
+answered my call at once!  Let me look at you, for I am sure I have a
+friend beside me, one in whom I can trust, with whom I can speak frankly,
+upon whom I can depend.  If this solitude had lasted much longer I should
+have become mad."
+
+Although Madame Steno's lover belonged to the class of excitable, nervous
+people who exaggerate their feelings by an unconscious wildness of tone
+and of manner, his face bore the traces of a trouble too deep not to be
+startling.
+
+Julien, who had seen him set out, three months before, so radiantly
+handsome, was struck by the change which had taken place during such a
+brief absence.  He was the same Boleslas Gorka, that handsome man, that
+admirable human animal, so refined and so strong, in which was embodied
+centuries of aristocracy--the Counts de Gorka belong to the ancient house
+of Lodzia, with which are connected so many illustrious Polish families,
+the Opalenice-Opalenskis, the Bnin-Bninskis, the Ponin-Poniniskis and
+many others--but his cheeks were sunken beneath his long, brown beard,
+in which were glints of gold; his eyes were heavy as if from wakeful
+nights, his nostrils were pinched and his face was pale.  The travel-
+stains upon his face accentuated the alteration.
+
+Yet the native elegance of that face and form gave grace to his
+lassitude.  Boleslas, in the vigorous and supple maturity of his thirty-
+four years, realized one of those types of manly beauty so perfect that
+they resist the strongest tests.  The excesses of emotion, as those of
+libertinism, seem only to invest the man with a new prestige; the fact is
+that the novelist's room, with its collection of books, photographs,
+engravings, paintings and moldings, invested that form, tortured by the
+bitter sufferings of passion, with a poesy to which Dorsenne could not
+remain altogether insensible.  The atmosphere, impregnated with Russian
+tobacco and the bluish vapor which filled the room, revealed in what
+manner the betrayed lover had diverted his impatience, and in the centre
+of the writing-table a cup with a bacchanal painted in red on a black
+ground, of which Julien was very proud, contained the remains of about
+thirty cigarettes, thrown aside almost as soon as lighted.  Their paper
+ends had been gnawed with a nervousness which betrayed the young man's
+condition, while he repeated, in a tone so sad that it almost called
+forth a shudder:
+
+"Yes, I should have gone mad."
+
+"Calm yourself, my dear Boleslas, I implore you," replied Dorsenne.  What
+had become of his ill-humor?  How could he preserve it in the presence of
+a person so evidently beside himself?  Julien continued, speaking to his
+companion as one speaks to a sick child: "Come, be seated.  Be a little
+more tranquil, since I am here, and you have reason to count on my
+friendship.  Speak to me.  Explain to me what has happened.  If there is
+any advice to give you, I am ready.  I am prepared to render you a
+service.  My God!  In what a state you are!"
+
+"Is it not so?"  said the other, with a sort of ironical pride.  It was
+sufficient that he had a witness of his grief for him to display it with
+secret vanity.  "Is it not so?"  he continued.  "Could you only know how
+I have suffered.  This is nothing," said he, alluding to his haggard
+appearance.  "It is here that you should read," he struck his breast,
+then passing his hands over his brow and his eyes, as if to exorcise a
+nightmare.  "You are right.  I must be calm, or I am lost."
+
+After a prolonged silence, during which he seemed to have gathered
+together his thoughts and to collect his will, for his voice had become
+decided and sharp, he began:  "You know that I am here unknown to any
+one, even to my wife."
+
+"I know it," replied Dorsenne.  "I have just left the Countess.  This
+morning I visited the Palais Castagna with her, Hafner, Madame Maitland,
+Florent Chapron."  He paused and added, thinking it better not to lie on
+minor points, "Madame Steno and Alba were there, too."
+
+"Any one else?"  asked Boleslas, with so keen a glance that the author
+had to employ all his strength to reply:
+
+"No one else."
+
+There was a silence between the two men.
+
+Dorsenne anticipated from his question toward what subject the
+conversation was drifting.  Gorka, now lying rather than sitting upon the
+divan in the small room, appeared like a beast that, at any moment, might
+bound.  Evidently he had come to Julien's a prey to the mad desire to
+find out something, which is to jealousy what thirst is to certain
+punishments.  When one has tasted the bitter draught of certainty, one
+does not suffer less.  Yet one walks toward it, barefooted, on the heated
+pavement, heedless of the heat.  The motives which led Boleslas to choose
+the French novelist as the one from whom to obtain his information,
+demonstrated that the feline character of his physiognomy was not
+deceptive.  He understood Dorsenne much better than Dorsenne understood
+him.  He knew him to be nervous, on the one hand, and perspicacious on
+the other.  If there was an intrigue between Maitland and Madame Steno,
+Julien had surely observed it, and, approached in a certain manner,
+he would surely betray it.  Moreover--for that violent and crafty nature
+abounded in perplexities--Boleslas, who passionately admired the author's
+talent, experienced a sort of indefinable attraction in exhibiting
+himself before him in the role of a frantic lover.  He was one of the
+persons who would have his photograph taken on his deathbed, so much
+importance did he attach to his person.  He would, no doubt, have been
+insulted, if the author of 'Une Eglogue Mondaine' had portrayed in a book
+himself and his love for Countess Steno, and yet he had only approached
+the author, had only chosen him as a confidant with the vague hope of
+impressing him.  He had even thought of suggesting to him some creation
+resembling himself.  Yes, Gorka was very complex, for he was not
+contented with deceiving his wife, he allowed the confiding creature to
+form a friendship with the daughter of her husband's mistress.  Still,
+he deceived her with remorse, and had never ceased bearing her an
+affection as sorrowful as it was respectful.  But it required Dorsenne to
+admit the like anomalies, and the rare sensation of being observed in his
+passionate frenzy attracted the young man to some one who was at once a
+sure confidant, a possible portrayer, a moral accomplice.  It was
+necessary now, but it would not be an easy matter, to make of him his
+involuntary detective.
+
+"You see," resumed he suddenly, "to what miserable, detailed inquiries
+I have descended, I who always had a horror of espionage, as of some
+terrible degradation.  I shall question you frankly, for you are my
+friend.  And what a friend!  I intended to use artifice with you at
+first, but I was ashamed.  Passion takes possession of me and distorts
+me.  No matter what infamy presents itself, I rush into it, and then I am
+afraid.  Yes, I am afraid of myself!  But I have suffered so much!  You
+do not understand?  Well!  Listen," continued he, covering Dorsenne with
+one of those glances so scrutinizing that not a gesture, not a quiver of
+his eyelids, escaped him, "and tell me if you have ever imagined for one
+of your romances a situation similar to mine.  You remember the mortal
+fear in which I lived last winter, with the presence of my brother-in-
+law, and the danger of his denouncing me to my poor Maud, from stupidity,
+from a British sense of virtue, from hatred.  You remember, also, what
+that voyage to Poland cost me, after those long months of anxiety?  The
+press of affairs and the illness of my aunt coming just at the moment
+when I was freed from Ardrahan, inspired me with miserable forebodings.
+I have always believed in presentiments.  I had one.  I was not mistaken.
+From the first letter I received--from whom you can guess--I saw that
+there was taking place in Rome something which threatened me in what I
+held dearest on earth, in that love for which I sacrificed all, toward
+which I walked by trampling on the noblest of hearts.  Was Catherine
+ceasing to love me?  When one has spent two years of one's life in a
+passion--and what years!--one clings to it with every fibre!  I will
+spare you the recital of those first weeks spent in going here and there,
+in paying visits to relatives, in consulting lawyers, in caring for my
+sick aunt, in fulfilling my duty toward my son, since the greater part of
+the fortune will go to him.  And always with this firm conviction: She no
+longer writes to me as formerly, she no longer loves me.  Ah!  if I could
+show you the letter she wrote when I was absent once before.  You have a
+great deal of talent, Julien, but you have never composed anything more
+beautiful."
+
+He paused, as if the part of the confession he was approaching cost him a
+great effort, while Dorsenne interpolated:
+
+"A change of tone in correspondence is not, however, sufficient to
+explain the fever in which I see you."
+
+"No," resumed Gorka, "but it was not merely a change of tone.  I
+complained.  For the first time my complaint found no echo.  I threatened
+to cease writing.  No reply.  I wrote to ask forgiveness.  I received a
+letter so cold that in my turn I wrote an angry one.  Another silence!
+Ah!  You can imagine the terrible effect produced upon me by an unsigned
+letter which I received fifteen days since.  It arrived one morning.  It
+bore the Roman postmark.  I did not recognize the handwriting.  I opened
+it.  I saw two sheets of paper on which were pasted cuttings from a
+French journal.  I repeat it was unsigned; it was an anonymous letter."
+
+"And you read it?"  interrupted Dorsenne.  "What folly!"
+
+"I read it," replied the Count.  "It began with words of startling truth
+relative to my own situation.  That our affairs are known to others we
+may be sure, since we know theirs.  We should, consequently, remember
+that we are at the mercy of their indiscretion, as they are at ours.
+The beginning of the note served as a guarantee of the truth of the end,
+which was a detailed, minute recital of an intrigue which Madame Steno
+had been carrying on during my absence, and with whom?  With the man whom
+I always mistrusted, that dauber who wanted to paint Alba's portrait--but
+whose desires I nipped in the bud--with the fellow who degraded himself
+by a shameful marriage for money, and who calls himself an artist--with
+that American--with Lincoln Maitland!"
+
+Although the childish and unjust hatred of the jealous--the hatred which
+degrades us in lowering the one we love-had poisoned his discourse with
+its bitterness, he did not cease watching Dorsenne.  He partly raised
+himself on the couch and thrust his head forward as he uttered the name
+of his rival, glancing keenly at the novelist meanwhile.  The latter
+fortunately had been rendered indignant at the news of the anonymous
+letter, and he repeated, with an astonishment which in no way aided his
+interlocutor:
+
+"Wait," resumed Boleslas; "that was merely a beginning.  The next day I
+received another letter, written and sent under the same conditions; the
+day after, a third.  I have twelve of them--do you hear?  twelve--in my
+portfolio, and all composed with the same atrocious knowledge of the
+circle in which we move, as was the first.  At the same time I was
+receiving letters from my poor wife, and all coincided, in the terrible
+series, in a frightful concordance.  The anonymous letter told me: 'To-
+day they were together two hours and a quarter,' while Maud wrote: 'I
+could not go out to-day, as agreed upon, with Madame Steno, for she had a
+headache.' Then the portrait of Alba, of which they told me incidentally.
+The anonymous letters detailed to me the events, the prolongation of
+sitting, while my wife wrote: 'We again went to see Alba's portrait
+yesterday.  The painter erased what he had done.' Finally it became
+impossible for me to endure it.  With their abominable minuteness of
+detail, the anonymous letters gave me even the address of their
+rendezvous!  I set out.  I said to myself, 'If I announce my arrival to
+my wife they will find it out, they will escape me.'  I intended to
+surprise them.  I wanted--Do I know what I wanted?  I wanted to suffer no
+longer the agony of uncertainty.  I took the train.  I stopped neither
+day nor night.  I left my valet yesterday in Florence, and this morning
+I was in Rome.
+
+"My plan was made on the way.  I would hire apartments near theirs,
+in the same street, perhaps in the same house.  I would watch them, one,
+two days, a week.  And then--would you believe it?  It was in the cab
+which was bearing me directly toward that street that I saw suddenly,
+clearly within me, and that I was startled.  I had my hand upon this
+revolver."  He drew the weapon from his pocket and laid it upon the
+divan, as if he wished to repulse any new temptation.  "I saw myself as
+plainly as I see you, killing those two beings like two animals, should
+I surprise them.  At the same time I saw my son and my wife.  Between
+murder and me there was, perhaps, just the distance which separated me
+from the street, and I felt that it was necessary to fly at once--to fly
+that street, to fly from the guilty ones, if they were really guilty; to
+fly from myself!  I thought of you, and I have come to say to you, 'My
+friend, this is how things are; I am drowning, I am lost; save me.'"
+
+"You have yourself found the salvation," replied Dorsenne.  "It is in
+your son and your wife.  See them first, and if I can not promise you
+that you will not suffer any more, you will no longer be tempted by that
+horrible idea."  And he pointed to the pistol, which gleamed in the
+sunlight that entered through the casement.  Then he added: "And you will
+have the idea still less when you will have been able to prove 'de visu'
+what those anonymous letters were worth.  Twelve letters in fifteen days,
+and cuttings from how many papers?  And they claim that we invent
+heinousness in our books!  If you like, we will search together for the
+person who can have elaborated that little piece of villany.  It must be
+a Judas, a Rodin, an Iago--or Iaga.  But this is not the moment to waste
+in hypotheses.
+
+"Are you sure of your valet?  You must send him a despatch, and in that
+despatch the copy of another addressed to Madame Gorka, which your man
+will send this very evening.  You will announce your arrival for
+tomorrow, making allusion to a letter written, so to speak, from Poland,
+and which was lost.  This evening from here you will take the train for
+Florence, from which place you will set out again this very night.  You
+will be in Rome again to-morrow morning.  You will have avoided, not only
+the misfortune of having become a murderer, though you would not have
+surprised any one, I am sure, but the much more grave misfortune of
+awakening Madame Gorka's suspicions.  Is it a promise?"
+
+Dorsenne rose to prepare a pen and paper: "Come, write the despatch
+immediately, and render thanks to your good genius which led you to a
+friend whose business consists in imagining the means of solving
+insoluble situations."
+
+"You are quite right," Boleslas replied, after taking in his hand the pen
+which he offered to the other, "it is fortunate."  Then, casting aside
+the pen as he had the revolver, "I can not.  No, I can not, as long as I
+have this doubt within me.  Ah, it is too horrible!  I can see them
+plainly.  You speak to me of my wife; but you forget that she loves me,
+and at the first glance she would read me, as you did.  You can not
+imagine what an effort it has cost me for two years never to arouse
+suspicion.  I was happy, and it is easy to deceive when one has nothing
+to hide but happiness.  To-day we should not be together five minutes
+before she would seek, and she would find.  No, no; I can not.  I need
+something more."
+
+"Unfortunately," replied Julien, "I cannot give it to you.  There is no
+opium to lull asleep doubts such as those horrible anonymous letters have
+awakened.  What I know is this, that if you do not follow my advice
+Madame Gorka will not have a suspicion, but certainty.  It is now perhaps
+too late.  Do you wish me to tell you what I concealed from you on seeing
+you so troubled?  You did not lose much time in coming from the station
+hither, and probably you did not look out of your cab twice.  But you
+were seen.  By whom?  By Montfanon.  He told me so this morning almost
+on the threshold of the Palais Castagna.  If I had not gathered from some
+words uttered by your wife that she was ignorant of your presence in
+Rome, I--do you hear?--I should have told her of it.  Judge now of your
+situation!"
+
+He spoke with an agitation which was not assumed, so much was he troubled
+by the evidence of danger which Gorka's obstinacy presented.  The latter,
+who had begun to collect himself, had a strange light in his eyes.
+Without doubt his companion's nervousness marked the moment he was
+awaiting to strike a decisive blow.  He rose with so sudden a start that
+Dorsenne drew back.  He seized both of his hands, but with such force
+that not a quiver of the muscles escaped him:
+
+"Yes, Julien, you have the means of consoling me, you have it," said he
+in a voice again hoarse with emotion.
+
+"What is it?"  asked the novelist.
+
+"What is it?  You are an honest man, Dorsenne; you are a great artist;
+you are my friend, and a friend allied to me by a sacred bond, almost a
+brother-in-arms; you, the grandnephew of a hero who shed his blood by the
+side of my grandfather at Somo-Sierra.  Give me your word of honor that
+you are absolutely certain Madame Steno is not Maitland's mistress, that
+you never thought it, have never heard it said, and I will believe you,
+I will obey you!  Come," continued he, pressing the writer's hand with
+more fervor, "I see you hesitate!"
+
+"No," said Julien, disengaging himself from the wild grasp, "I do not
+hesitate.  I am sorry for you.  Were I to give you that word, would it
+have any weight with you for five minutes?  Would you not be persuaded
+immediately that I was perjuring myself to avoid a misfortune?"
+
+"You hesitate," interrupted Boleslas.  Then, with a burst of wild
+laughter, he said, "It is then true!  I like that better!  It is
+frightful to know it, but one suffers less-- To know it' As if I did not
+know she had lovers before me, as if it were not written on Alba's every
+feature that she is Werekiew's child, as if I had not heard it said
+seventy times before knowing her that she had loved Branciforte, San
+Giobbe, Strabane, ten others.  Before, during, or after, what difference
+does it make?  Ah, I was sure on knocking at your door--at this door of
+honor--I should hear the truth, that I would touch it as I touch this
+object," and he laid his hand upon a marble bust on the table.
+
+"You see I hear it like a man.  You can speak to me now.  Who knows?
+Disgust is a great cure for passion.  I will listen to you.  Do not spare
+me!"
+
+"You are mistaken, Gorka," replied Dorsenne.  "What I have to say to you,
+I can say very simply.  I was, and I am, convinced that in a quarter of
+an hour, in an hour, tomorrow, the day after, you will consider me a liar
+or an imbecile.  But, since you misinterpreted my silence, it is my duty
+to speak, and I do so.  I give you my word of honor I have never had the
+least suspicion of a connection between Madame Steno and Maitland,
+nor have their relations seemed changed to me for a second since your
+absence.  I give you my word of honor that no one, do you hear, no one
+has spoken of it to me.  And, now, act as you please, think as you
+please.  I have said all I can say."
+
+The novelist uttered those words with a feverish energy which was caused
+by the terrible strain he was making upon his conscience.  But Gorka's
+laugh had terrified him so much the more as at the same instant the
+jealous lover's disengaged hand was voluntarily or involuntarily extended
+toward the weapon which gleamed upon the couch.  The vision of an
+immediate catastrophe, this time inevitable, rose before Julien.  His
+lips had spoken, as his arm would have been out stretched, by an
+irresistible instinct, to save several lives, and he had made the false
+statement, the first and no doubt the last in his life, without
+reflecting.  He had no sooner uttered it than he experienced such an
+excess of anger that he would at that moment almost have preferred not to
+be believed.  It would indeed have been a comfort to him if his visitor
+had replied by one of those insulting negations which permit one man to
+strike another, so great was his irritation.  On the contrary, he saw the
+face of Madame Steno's lover turned toward him with an expression of
+gratitude upon it.  Boleslas's lips quivered, his hands were clasped, two
+large tears gushed from his burning eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
+When he was able to speak, he moaned:
+
+"Ah, my friend, how much good you have done me!  From what a nightmare
+you have relieved me.  Ah!  Now I am saved!  I believe you, I believe
+you.  You are intimate with them.  You see them every day.  If there had
+been anything between them you would know it.  You would have heard it
+talked of.  Ah!  Thanks!  Give me your hand that I may press it.  Forget
+all I said to you just now, the slander I uttered in a moment of
+delirium.  I know very well it was untrue.  And now, let me embrace you
+as I would if you had really saved me from drowning.  Ah, my friend, my
+only friend!"
+
+And he rushed up to clasp to his bosom the novelist, who replied with the
+words uttered at the beginning of this conversation: "Calm yourself, I
+beseech you, calm yourself!"  and repeating to himself, brave and loyal
+man that he was: "I could not act differently, but it is hard!"
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Follow their thoughts instead of heeding objects
+Has as much sense as the handle of a basket
+Mediocre sensibility
+No flies enter a closed mouth
+Pitiful checker-board of life
+Scarcely a shade of gentle condescension
+That you can aid them in leading better lives?
+The forests have taught man liberty
+There is an intelligent man, who never questions his ideas
+Thinking it better not to lie on minor points
+Too prudent to risk or gain much
+Walked at the rapid pace characteristic of monomaniacs
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Cosmopolis, v1,
+by Paul Bourget
+
+
+
+
+
+
+COSMOPOLIS
+
+By PAUL BOURGET
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+APPROACHING DANGER
+
+"I could not act differently," repeated Dorsenne on the evening of that
+eventful day.  He had given his entire afternoon to caring for Gorka.  He
+made him lunch.  He made him lie down.  He watched him.  He took him in a
+closed carriage to Portonaccio, the first stopping-place on the Florence
+line.  Indeed, he made every effort not to leave alone for a moment the
+man whose frenzy he had rather suspended than appeased, at the price,
+alas, of his own peace of mind!  For, once left alone, in solitude and in
+the apartments on the Place de la Trinite, where twenty details testified
+to the visit of Gorka, the weight of the perjured word of honor became a
+heavy load to the novelist, so much the more heavy when he discovered the
+calculating plan followed by Boleslas.  His tardy penetration permitted
+him to review the general outline of their conversation.  He perceived
+that not one of his interlocutor's sentences, not even the most agitated,
+had been uttered at random.  From reply to reply, from confidence to
+confidence, he, Dorsenne, had become involved in the dilemma without
+being able to foresee or to avoid it; he would either have had to accuse
+a woman or to lie with one of those lies which a manly conscience does
+not easily pardon.  He did not forgive himself for it.
+
+"It is so much worse," said he to himself, "as it will prevent nothing.
+A person vile enough to pen anonymous letters will not stop there.  She
+will find the means of again unchaining the madman....  But who wrote
+those letters?  Gorka may have forged them in order to have an
+opportunity to ask me the question he did....  And yet, no....  There are
+two indisputable facts--his state of jealousy and his extraordinary
+return.  Both would lead one to suppose a third, a warning.  But given by
+whom?....  He told me of twelve anonymous letters....  Let us assume that
+he received one or two....  But who is the author of those?"
+
+The immediate development of the drama in which Julien found himself
+involved was embodied in the answer to the question.  It was not easy to
+formulate.  The Italians have a proverb of singular depth which the
+novelist recalled at that moment.  He had laughed a great deal when he
+heard sententious Egiste Brancadori repeat it.  He repeated it to
+himself, and he understood its meaning.  '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.  What irony!....  Let us
+strike off Florent.  He would allow himself to be killed, if necessary,
+like a Mameluke at the door of the room where his genial brother-in-law
+was dallying with the Countess....  Let us strike off the American
+himself.  I have met such a case, a lover weary of a mistress, denouncing
+himself to her in order to be freed from his love-affair.  But he was a
+roue, and had nothing in common with this booby, who has a talent for
+painting as an elephant has a trunk--what irony!  He married this
+octoroon to have money.  But it was a base act which freed him from
+commerce, and permitted him to paint all he wanted, as he wanted.
+He allows Steno to love him because she is diabolically pretty,
+notwithstanding her forty years, and then she is, in spite of all, a real
+noblewoman, which flattered him.  He has not one dollar's-worth of moral
+delicacy in his heart.  But he has an abundance of knavery....  Let us,
+too, strike out his wife.  She is such a veritable slave whom the mere
+presence of a white person annihilates to such a degree that she dares
+not look her husband in the face....  It is not Hafner.  The sly fox is
+capable of doing anything by cunning, but is he capable of undertaking a
+useless and dangerous piece of rascality?  Never....  Fanny is a saint
+escaped from the Golden Legend, no matter what Montfanon thinks!  I have
+now reviewed the entire coterie....  I was about to forget Alba....  It
+is too absurd even to think of her....  Too absurd?  Why?"
+
+Dorsenne was, on formulating that fantastic thought, upon the point of
+retiring.  He took up, as was his habit, one of the books on his table,
+in order to read a few pages, when once in bed.  He had thus within his
+reach the works by which he strengthened his doctrine of intransitive
+intellectuality; they were Goethe's Memoirs; a volume of George Sand's
+correspondence, in which were the letters to Flaubert; the 'Discours de
+la Methode' by Descartes, and the essay by Burckhart on the Renaissance.
+
+But, after turning over the leaves of one of those volumes, he closed it
+without having read twenty lines.  He extinguished his lamp, but he could
+not sleep.  The strange suspicion which crossed his mind had something
+monstrous about it, applied thus to a young girl.  What a suspicion and
+what a young girl!  The preferred friend of his entire winter, she on
+whose account he had prolonged his stay in Rome, for she was the most
+graceful vision of delicacy and of melancholy in the framework of a
+tragical and solemn past.  Any other than Dorsenne would not have
+admitted such an idea without being inspired with horror.  But Dorsenne,
+on the contrary, suddenly began to dive into that sinister hypothesis, to
+help it forward, to justify it.  No one more than he suffered from a
+moral deformity which the abuse of a certain literary work inflicts on
+some writers.  They are so much accustomed to combining artificial
+characters with creations of their imaginations that they constantly
+fulfil an analogous need with regard to the individuals they know best.
+They have some friend who is dear to them, whom they see almost daily,
+who hides nothing from them and from whom they hide nothing.  But if they
+speak to you of him you are surprised to find that, while continuing to
+love that friend, they trace to you in him two contradictory portraits
+with the same sincerity and the same probability.
+
+They have a mistress, and that woman, even in the space sometimes of one
+day, sees them, with fear, change toward her, who has remained the same.
+It is that they have developed in them to a very intense degree the
+imagination of the human soul, and that to observe is to them only a
+pretext to construe.  That infirmity had governed Julien from early
+maturity.  It was rarely manifested in a manner more unexpected than in
+the case of charming Alba Steno, who was possibly dreaming of him at the
+very moment when, in the silence of the night, he was forcing himself to
+prove that she was capable of that species of epistolary parricide.
+
+"After all," he said to himself, for there is iconoclasm in the
+excessively intellectual, and they delight in destroying their dearest
+moral or sentimental idols, the better to prove their strength, "after
+all, have I really understood her relations toward her mother?  When I
+came to Rome in November, when I was to be presented to the Countess,
+what did not only one, but nine or ten persons tell me?  That Madame
+Steno had a liaison with the husband of her daughter's best friend, and
+that the little one was grieving about it.  I went to the house.  I saw
+the child.  She was sad that evening.  I had the curiosity to wish to
+read her heart....  It is six months since then.  We have met almost
+daily, often twice a day.  She is so hermetically sealed that I am no
+farther advanced than I was on the first day.  I have seen her glance at
+her mother as she did this morning, with loving, admiring eyes.  I have
+seen her turn pale at a word, a gesture, on her part.  I have seen her
+embrace Maud Gorka, and play tennis with that same friend so gayly, so
+innocently.  I have seen that she could not bear the presence of Maitland
+in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait....
+Is she guileless?.... Is she a hypocrite?  Or is she tormented by doubt-
+divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother?  Is she
+underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea?  Has she the
+ambiguous mind at once of a Russian and an Italian?....  This would be a
+solution of the problem, that she was a girl of extraordinary inward
+energy, who, both aware of her mother's intrigues and detesting them with
+an equal hatred, had planned to precipitate the two men upon each other.
+For a young girl the undertaking is great.  I will go to the Countess's
+to-morrow night, and I will amuse myself by watching Alba, to see.  .  .
+If she is innocent, my deed will be inoffensive.  If perchance she is
+not?"
+
+It is vain to profess to one's own heart a complaisant dandyism of
+misanthropy.  Such reflections leave behind them a tinge of a remorse,
+above all when they are, as these, absolutely whimsical and founded on a
+simple paradox of dilettantism.  Dorsenne experienced a feeling of shame
+when he awoke the following morning, and, thinking of the mystery of the
+letters received by Gorka, he recalled the criminal romance he had
+constructed around the charming and tender form of his little friend;
+happily for his nerves, which were strained by the consideration of the
+formidable problem.  If it is not some one in the Countess's circle, who
+has written those letters?  He received, on rising, a voluminous package
+of proofs with the inscription: "Urgent."  He was preparing to give to
+the public a collection of his first articles, under the title of
+'Poussiere d'Idees.'
+
+Dorsenne was a faithful literary worker.  Usually, involved titles serve
+to hide in a book-stall shop--made goods, and romance writers or dramatic
+authors who pride themselves on living to write, and who seek inspiration
+elsewhere than in regularity of habits and the work-table, have their
+efforts marked from the first by sterility.  Obscure or famous, rich or
+poor, an artist must be an artisan and practise these fruitful virtues--
+patient application, conscientious technicality, absorption in work.
+When he seated himself at his table Dorsenne was heart and soul in his
+business.  He closed his door, he opened no letters nor telegrams, and he
+spent ten hours without taking anything but two eggs and some black
+coffee, as he did on this particular day, when looking over the essays of
+his twenty-fifth year with the talent of his thirty-fifth, retouching
+here a word, rewriting an entire page, dissatisfied here, smiling there
+at his thought.  The pen flew, carrying with it all the sensibility of
+the intellectual man who had completely forgotten Madame Steno, Gorka,
+Maitland, and the calumniated Contessina, until he should awake from his
+lucid intoxication at nightfall.  As he counted, in arranging the slips,
+the number of articles prepared, he found there were twelve.
+
+"Like Gorka's letters," said he aloud, with a laugh.  He now felt
+coursing through his veins the lightness which all writers of his kind
+feel when they have labored on a work they believe good.  "I have earned
+my evening," he added, still in a loud voice.  "I must now dress and go
+to Madame Steno's.  A good dinner at the doctor's.  A half-hour's walk.
+The night promises to be divine.  I shall find out if they have news of
+the Palatine,"--the name he gave Gorka in his moments of gayety.
+"I shall talk in a loud voice of anonymous letters.  If the author of
+those received by Boleslas is there, I shall be in the best position to
+discover him; provided that it is not Alba....  Decidedly--that would be
+sad!"
+
+It was ten o'clock in the evening, when the young man, faithful to his
+programme, arrived at the door of the large house on the Rue du Vingt
+Septembre occupied by Madame Steno.  It was an immense modern structure,
+divided into two distinct parts; to the left a revenue building and to
+the right a house on the order of those which are to be seen on the
+borders of Park Monceau.  The Villa Steno, as the inscription in gold
+upon the black marble door indicated, told the entire story of the
+Countess's fortune--that fortune appraised by rumor, with its habitual
+exaggeration, now at twenty, now at thirty, millions.  She had in reality
+two hundred and fifty thousand francs' income.  But as, in 1873, Count
+Michel Steno, her husband, died, leaving only debts, a partly ruined
+palace at Venice and much property heavily mortgaged, the amount of that
+income proved the truth of the title, "superior woman," applied by her
+friends to Alba's mother.  Her friends likewise added: "She has been the
+mistress of Hafner, who has aided her with his financial advice," an
+atrocious slander which was so much the more false as it was before ever
+knowing the Baron that she had begun to amass her wealth.  This is how
+she managed it:
+
+At the close of 1873, when, as a young widow, living in retirement in the
+sumptuous and ruined dwelling on the Grand Canal, she was struggling with
+her creditors, one of the largest bankers in Rome came to propose to her
+a very advantageous scheme.  It dealt with a large piece of land which
+belonged to the Steno estate, a piece of land in Rome, in one of the
+suburbs, between the Porta Salara and the Porta Pia, a sort of village
+which the deceased Cardinal Steno, Count Michel's uncle, had begun to lay
+out.  After his demise, the land had been rented in lots to kitchen-
+gardeners, and it was estimated that it was worth about forty centimes a
+square metre.  The financier offered four francs for it, under the
+pretext of establishing a factory on the site.  It was a large sum of
+money.  The Countess required twenty-four hours in which to consider,
+and, at the end of that time, she refused the offer, which won for her
+the admiration of the men of business who knew of the refusal.  In 1882,
+less than ten years later, she sold the same land for ninety francs a
+metre.  She saw, on glancing at a plan of Rome, and in recalling the
+history of modern Italy, first, that the new masters of the Eternal City
+would centre all their ambition in rebuilding it, then that the portion
+comprised between the Quirinal and the two gates of Salara and Pia would
+be one of the principal points of development; finally, that if she
+waited she would obtain a much greater sum than the first offer.  And she
+had waited, applying herself to watching the administration of her
+possessions like the severest of intendants, depriving herself, stopping
+up gaps with unhoped-for profits.  In 1875, she sold to the National
+Gallery a suite of four panels by Carpaccio, found in one of her country
+houses, for one hundred and twenty thousand francs.  She had been as
+active and practical in her material life as she had been light and
+audacious in her sentimental experiences.  The story circulated of her
+infidelity to Steno with Werekiew at St. Petersburg, where the
+diplomatist was stationed, after one year of marriage, was confirmed by
+the wantonness of her conduct, of which she gave evidence as soon as
+free.
+
+At Rome, where she lived a portion of the year after the sale of her
+land, out of which she retained enough to build the double house, she
+continued to increase her fortune with the same intelligence.  A very
+advantageous investment in Acqua Marcia enabled her to double in five
+years the enormous profits of her first operation.  And what proved still
+more the exceptional good sense with which the woman was endowed, when
+love was not in the balance, she stopped on those two gains, just at the
+time when the Roman aristocracy, possessed by the delirium of
+speculation, had begun to buy stocks which had reached their highest
+value.
+
+To spend the evening at the Villa Steno, after spending all the morning
+of the day before at the Palais Castagna, was to realize one of those
+paradoxes of contradictory sensations such as Dorsenne loved, for poor
+Ardea had been ruined in having attempted to do a few years later that
+which Countess Catherine had done at the proper moment.  He, too, had
+hoped for an increase in the value of property.  Only he had bought the
+land at seventy francs a metre, and in '90 it was not worth more than
+twenty-five.  He, too, had calculated that Rome would improve, and on the
+high-priced land he had begun to build entire streets, imagining he could
+become like the Dukes of Bedford and of Westminster in London, the owner
+of whole districts.  His houses finished, they did not rent, however.
+To complete the rest he had to borrow.  He speculated in order to pay his
+debts, lost, and contracted more debts in order to pay the difference.
+His signature, as the proprietor of the Marzocco had said, was put to
+innumerable bills of exchange.  The result was that on all the walls of
+Rome, including that of the Rue Vingt Septembre on which was the Villa
+Steno, were posted multi-colored placards announcing the sale, under the
+management of Cavalier Fossati, of the collection of art and of furniture
+of the Palais Castagna.
+
+"To foresee is to possess power," said Dorsenne to himself, ringing at
+Madame Steno's door and summing up thus the invincible association of
+ideas which recalled to him the palace of the ruined Roman Prince at the
+door of the villa of the triumphant Venetian: "It is the real Alpha and
+Omega."
+
+The comparison between the lot of Madame Steno and that of the heir of
+the Castagnas had almost caused the writer to forget his plan of inquiry
+as to the author of the anonymous letters.  It was to be impressed upon
+him, however, when he entered the hall where the Countess received every
+evening.  Ardea himself was there, the centre of a group composed of Alba
+Steno, Madame Maitland, Fanny Hafner and the wealthy Baron, who, standing
+aloof and erect, leaning against a console, seemed like a beneficent and
+venerable man in the act of blessing youth.  Julien was not surprised on
+finding so few persons in the vast salon, any more than he was surprised
+at the aspect of the room filled with old tapestry, bric-a-brac,
+furniture, flowers, and divans with innumerable cushions.
+
+He had had the entire winter in which to observe the interior of that
+house, similar to hundreds of others in Vienna, Madrid, Florence, Berlin,
+anywhere, indeed, where the mistress of the house applies herself to
+realizing an ideal of Parisian luxury.  He had amused himself many an
+evening in separating from the almost international framework local
+features, those which distinguished the room from others of the same
+kind.  No human being succeeds in being absolutely factitious in his home
+or in his writings.  The author had thus noted that the salon bore a
+date, that of the Countess's last journey to Paris in 1880.  It was to be
+seen in the plush and silk of the curtains.  The general coloring, in
+which green predominated, a liberty egotistical in so brilliant a blonde,
+had too warm a tone and betrayed the Italian.  Italy was also to be found
+in the painted ceiling and in the frieze which ran all around, as well as
+in several paintings scattered about.  There were two panels by Moretti
+de Brescia in the second style of the master, called his silvery manner,
+on account of the delicate and transparent fluidity of the coloring;
+a 'Souper chez le Pharisien' and a 'Jesus ressuscite sur le rivage',
+which could only have come from one of the very old palaces of a very
+ancient family.  Dorsenne knew all that, and he knew, too, for what
+reasons he found almost empty at that time of the year the hall so
+animated during the entire winter, the hall through which he had seen
+pass a veritable carnival of visitors: great lords, artists, political
+men, Russians and Austrians, English and French--pellmell.  The Countess
+was far from occupying in Rome the social position which her
+intelligence, her fortune and her name should have assured her.  For,
+having been born a Navagero, she combined on her escutcheon the cross of
+gold of the Sebastien Navagero who was the first to mount the walls of
+Lepante, with the star of the grand Doge Michel.
+
+But one particular trait of character had always prevented her from
+succeeding on that point.  She could not bear ennui nor constraint, nor
+had she any vanity.  She was positive and impassioned, in the manner of
+the men of wealth to whom their meditated--upon combinations serve to
+assure the conditions of their pleasures.  Never had Madame Steno
+displayed diplomacy in the changes of her passions, and they had been
+numerous before the arrival of Gorka, to whom she had remained faithful
+two years, an almost incomprehensible thing!  Never had she, save in her
+own home, observed the slightest bounds when there was a question of
+reaching the object of her desire.  Moreover, she had not in Rome to
+support her any member of the family to which she belonged, and she had
+not joined either of the two sets into which, since 1870, the society of
+the city was divided.  Of too modern a mind and of a manner too bold, she
+had not been received by the admirable woman who reigns at the Quirinal,
+and who had managed to gather around her an atmosphere of such noble
+elevation.
+
+These causes would have brought about a sort of semi-ostracism, had the
+Countess not applied herself to forming a salon of her own, the recruits
+for which were almost altogether foreigners.  The sight of new faces, the
+variety of conversation, the freedom of manner, all in that moving world,
+pleased the thirst for diversion which, in that puissant, spontaneous,
+and almost manly immoral nature, was joined with very just clear-
+sightedness.  If Julien paused for a moment surprised at the door of the
+hall, it was not, therefore, on finding it empty at the end of the
+season; it was on beholding there, among the inmates, Peppino Ardea, whom
+he had not met all winter.  Truly, it was a strange time to appear in new
+scenes when the hammer of the appraiser was already raised above all
+which had been the pride and the splendor of his name.  But the grand-
+nephew of Urban VII, seated between sublime Fanny Hafner, in pale blue,
+and pretty Alba Steno, in bright red, opposite Madame Maitland, so
+graceful in her mauve toilette, had in no manner the air of a man crushed
+by adversity.
+
+The subdued light revealed his proud manly face, which had lost none of
+its gay hauteur.  His eyes, very black, very brilliant, and very
+unsteady, seemed almost in the same glance to scorn and to smile, while
+his mouth, beneath its brown moustache, wore an expression of disdain,
+disgust, and sensuality.  The shaven chin displayed a bluish shade, which
+gave to the whole face a look of strength, belied by the slender and
+nervous form.  The heir of the Castagnas was dressed with an affectation
+of the English style, peculiar to certain Italians.  He wore too many
+rings on his fingers, too large a bouquet in his buttonhole, and above
+all he made too many gestures to allow for a moment, with his dark
+complexion, of any doubt as to his nationality.  It was he who, of all
+the group, first perceived Julien, and he said to him, or rather called
+out familiarly:
+
+"Ah, Dorsenne!  I thought you had gone away.  We have not seen you at the
+club for fifteen days."
+
+"He has been working," replied Hafner, "at some new masterpiece, at a
+romance which is laid in Roman society, I am sure.  Mistrust him, Prince,
+and you, ladies, disarm the portrayer."
+
+"I," resumed Ardea, laughing pleasantly, "will give him notes upon
+myself, if he wants them, as long as this, and I will illustrate his
+romance into the bargain with photographs which I once had a rage for
+taking....  See, Mademoiselle," he added, turning to Fanny, "that is how
+one ruins one's self.  I had a mania for the instantaneous ones.  It was
+very innocent, was it not?  It cost me thirty thousand francs a year, for
+four years."
+
+Dorsenne had heard that it was a watchword between Peppino Ardea and his
+friends to take lightly the disaster which came upon the Castagna family
+in its last and only scion.  He was not expecting such a greeting.  He
+was so disconcerted by it that he neglected to reply to the Baron's
+remark, as he would have done at any other time.  Never did the founder
+of the 'Credit Austyr-Dalmate' fail to manifest in some such way his
+profound aversion for the novelist.  Men of his species, profoundly
+cynical and calculating, fear and scorn at the same time a certain
+literature.  Moreover, he had too much tact not to be aware of the
+instinctive repulsion with which he inspired Julien.  But to Hafner, all
+social strength was tariffed, and literary success as much as any other.
+As he was afraid, as on the staircase of the Palais Castagna, that he had
+gone too far, he added, laying his hand with its long, supple fingers
+familiarly upon the author's shoulder:
+
+"This is what I admire in him: It is that he allows profane persons,
+such as we are, to plague him, without ever growing angry.  He is the
+only celebrated author who is so simple....  But he is better than an
+author; he is a veritable man-of-the-world."
+
+"Is not the Countess here?"  asked Dorsenne, addressing Alba Steno,
+and without replying any more to the action, so involuntarily insulting,
+of the Baron than he had to his sly malice or to the Prince's facetious
+offer.  Madame Steno's absence had again inspired him with an
+apprehension which the young girl dissipated by replying:
+
+"My mother is on the terrace....  We were afraid it was too cool for
+Fanny."....  It was a very simple phrase, which the Contessina uttered
+very simply, as she fanned herself with a large fan of white feathers.
+Each wave of it stirred the meshes of her fair hair, which she wore
+curled upon her rather high forehead.  Julien understood her too well not
+to perceive that her voice, her gestures, her eyes, her entire being,
+betrayed a nervousness at that moment almost upon the verge of sadness.
+
+Was she still reserved from the day before, or was she a prey to one of
+those inexplicable transactions, which had led Dorsenne in his
+meditations of the night to such strange suspicions?  Those suspicions
+returned to him with the feeling that, of all the persons present, Alba
+was the only one who seemed to be aware of the drama which undoubtedly
+was brewing.  He resolved to seek once more for the solution of the
+living enigma which that singular girl was.  How lovely she appeared to
+him that evening with, those two expressions which gave her an almost
+tragical look!  The corners of her mouth drooped somewhat; her upper lip,
+almost too short, disclosed her teeth, and in the lower part of her pale
+face was a bitterness so prematurely sad!  Why?  It was not the time to
+ask the question.  First of all, it was necessary for the young man to go
+in search of Madame Steno on the terrace, which terminated in a paradise
+of Italian voluptuousness, the salon furnished in imitation of Paris.
+Shrubs blossomed in large terra-cotta vases.  Statuettes were to be seen
+on the balustrade, and, beyond, the pines of the Villa Bonaparte outlined
+their black umbrellas against a sky of blue velvet, strewn with large
+stars.  A vague aroma of acacias, from a garden near by, floated in the
+air, which was light, caressing, and warm.  The soft atmosphere sufficed
+to convict of falsehood the Contessina, who had evidently wished to
+justify the tete-a-tete of her mother and of Maitland.  The two lovers
+were indeed together in the perfume, the mystery and the solitude of the
+obscure and quiet terrace.
+
+It took Dorsenne, who came from the bright glare of the salon, a moment
+to distinguish in the darkness the features of the Countess who, dressed
+all in white, was lying upon a willow couch with soft cushions of silk.
+She was smoking a cigarette, the lighted end of which, at each breath she
+drew, gave sufficient light to show that, notwithstanding the coolness of
+the night, her lovely neck, so long and flexible, about which was clasped
+a collar of pearls, was bare, as well as her fair shoulders and her
+perfect arms, laden with bracelets, which were visible through her wide,
+flowing sleeves.  On advancing, Julien recognized, through the vegetable
+odors of that spring night, the strong scent of the Virginian tobacco
+which Madame Steno had used since she had fallen in love with Maitland,
+instead of the Russian "papyrus" to which Gorka had accustomed her.
+It is by such insignificant traits that amorous women recognize a love
+profoundly, insatiably sensual, the only one of which the Venetian was
+capable.  Their passionate desire to give themselves up still more leads
+them to espouse, so to speak, the slightest habits of the men whom they
+love in that way.  Thus are explained those metamorphoses of tastes, of
+thoughts, even of appearance, so complete, that in six months, in three
+months of separation they become like different people.  By the side of
+that graceful and supple vision, Lincoln Maitland was seated on a low
+chair.  But his broad shoulders, which his evening coat set off in their
+amplitude, attested that before having studied "Art"--and even while
+studying it--he had not ceased to practise the athletic sports of his
+English education.  As soon as he was mentioned, the term "large" was
+evoked.  Indeed, above the large frame was a large face, somewhat red,
+with a large, red moustache, which disclosed, in broad smiles, his large,
+strong teeth.
+
+Large rings glistened on his large fingers.  He presented a type exactly
+opposite to that of Boleslas Gorka.  If the grandson of the Polish
+Castellan recalled the dangerous finesse of a feline, of a slender and
+beautiful panther, Maitland could be compared to one of those mastiffs in
+the legends, with a jaw and muscles strong enough to strangle lions.  The
+painter in him was only in the eye and in the hand, in consequence of a
+gift as physical as the voice to a tenor.  But that instinct, almost
+abnormal, had been developed, cultivated to excess, by the energy of will
+in refinement, a trait so marked in the Anglo-Saxons of the New World
+when they like Europe, instead of detesting it.  For the time being, the
+longing for refinement seemed reduced to the passionate inhalations of
+that divine, fair rose of love which was Madame Steno, a rose almost too
+full-blown, and which the autumn of forty years had begun to fade.  But
+she was still charming.  And how little Maitland heeded the fact that his
+wife was in the room near by, the windows of which cast forth a light
+which caused to stand out more prominently the shadow of the voluptuous
+terrace!  He held his mistress's hand within his own, but abandoned it
+when he perceived Dorsenne, who took particular pains to move a chair
+noisily on approaching the couple, and to say, in a loud voice, with a
+merry laugh:
+
+"I should have made a poor gallant abbe of the last century, for at night
+I can really see nothing.  If your cigarette had not served me as a
+beacon-light I should have run against the balustrade."
+
+"Ah, it is you, Dorsenne," replied Madame Steno, with a sharpness
+contrary to her habitual amiability, which proved to the novelist that
+first of all he was the "inconvenient third" of the classical comedies,
+then that Hafner had reported his imprudent remarks of the day before.
+
+"So much the better," thought he, "I shall have forewarned her.  On
+reflection she will be pleased.  It is true that at this moment there is
+no question of reflection."  As he said those words to himself, he talked
+aloud of the temperature of the day, of the probabilities of the weather
+for the morrow, of Ardea's good-humor.  He made, indeed, twenty trifling
+remarks, in order to manage to leave the terrace and to leave the lovers
+to their tete-a-tete, without causing his withdrawal to become noticeable
+by indiscreet haste, as disagreeable as suggestive.
+
+"When may we come to your atelier to see the portrait finished,
+Maitland?"  he asked, still standing, in order the better to manage his
+retreat.
+
+"Finished?"  exclaimed the Countess, who added, employing a diminutive
+which she had used for several weeks: "Do you then not know that Linco
+has again effaced the head?"
+
+"Not the entire head," said the painter, "but the face is to be done
+over.  You remember, Dorsenne, those two canvases by Pier delta
+Francesca, which are at Florence, Duc Federigo d'Urbino and his wife
+Battista Sforza.  Did you not see them in the same room with La Calomnie
+by Botticelli, with a landscape in the background?  It is drawn like
+this," and he made a gesture with his thumb, "and that is what I am
+trying to obtain, the necessary curve on which all faces depend.  There
+is no better painter in Italy."
+
+"And Titian and Raphael?"  interrupted Madame Steno.
+
+"And the Sienese and the Lorenzetti, of whom you once raved?  You wrote
+to me of them, with regard to my article on your exposition of 'eighty-
+six; do you remember?"  inquired the writer.
+
+"Raphael?"  replied Maitland....  "Do you wish me to tell you what
+Raphael really was?  A sublime builder.  And Titian?  A sublime
+upholsterer.  It is true, I admired the Sienese very much," he added,
+turning toward Dorsenne.  "I spent three months in copying the Simone
+Martini of the municipality, the Guido Riccio, who rides between two
+strongholds on a gray heath, where there is not a sign of a tree or a
+house, but only lances and towers.  Do I remember Lorenzetti?  Above all,
+the fresco at San Francesco, in which Saint Francois presents his order
+to the Pope, that was his best work....  Then, there is a cardinal, with
+his fingers on his lips, thus!" another gesture.  "Well, I remember it,
+you see, because there is an anecdote.  It is portrayed on a wall--oh,
+a grand portrayal, but without the subject, flutt!"....  and he made a
+hissing sound with his lips, "while Pier della Francesca, Carnevale,
+Melozzo,"....  he paused to find a word which would express the very
+complicated thought in his head, and he concluded: "That is painting."
+
+"But the Assumption by Titian, and the Transfiguration by Raphael,"
+resumed the Countess, who added in Italian, with an accent of enthusiasm:
+"Ah, the bellezza!"
+
+"Do not worry, Countess," said Dorsenne, laughing heartily, "those are an
+artist's opinions.  Ten years ago, I said that Victor Hugo was an amateur
+and Alfred de Musset a bourgeois.  But," he added, "as I am not descended
+from the Doges nor the Pilgrim Fathers, I, a poor, degenerate Gallo-
+Roman, fear the dampness on account of my rheumatism, and ask your
+permission to reenter the house."  Then, as he passed through the door of
+the salon: "Raphael, a builder!  Titian, an upholsterer!  Lorenzetti, a
+reproducer!"  he repeated to himself.  "And the descendant of the Doges,
+who listened seriously to those speeches, her ideal should be a madonna
+en chromo!  Of the first order!  As for Gorka, if he had not made me lose
+my entire day yesterday, I should think I had been dreaming, so little is
+there any question of him....  And Ardea, who continues to laugh at his
+ruin.  He is not bad for an Italian.  But he talks too much about his
+affairs, and it is in bad taste!"....  Indeed, as he turned toward the
+group assembled in a corner of the salon, he heard the Prince relating a
+story about Cavalier Fossati, to whom was entrusted the charge of the
+sale:
+
+"How much do you think will be realized on all?"  I asked him, finally.
+"Oh," he replied, "very little....  But a little and a little more end by
+making a great deal.  With what an air he added: 'E gia il moschino e
+conte'--Already the gnat is a count.'  The gnat was himself.  'A few more
+sales like yours, my Prince, and my son, the Count of Fossati, will have
+half a million.  He will enter the club and address you with the familiar
+'thou' when playing 'goffo' against you.  That is what there is in this
+gia (already)....  On my honor, I have not been happier than since I
+have, not a sou."
+
+"You are an optimist, Prince," said Hafner, "and whatsoever our friend
+Dorsenne here present may claim, it is necessary to be optimistic."
+
+"You are attacking him again, father," interrupted Fanny, in a tone of
+respectful reproach.
+
+"Not the man," returned the Baron, "but his ideas--yes, and above all
+those of his school....  Yes, yes," he continued, either wishing to
+change the conversation, which Ardea persisted in turning upon his ruin,
+or finding very well organized a world in which strokes like that of the
+Credit Austro-Dalmate are possible, he really felt a deep aversion to the
+melancholy and pessimism with which Julien's works were tinged.  And he
+continued: "On listening to you, Ardea, just now, and on seeing this
+great writer enter, I am reminded by contrast of the fashion now in vogue
+of seeing life in a gloomy light."
+
+"Do you find it very gay?"  asked Alba, brusquely.
+
+"Good," said Hafner; "I was sure that, in talking against pessimism,
+I should make the Contessina talk....  Very gay?"  he continued.  "No.
+But when I think of the misfortunes which might have come to all of us
+here, for instance, I find it very tolerable.  Better than living in
+another epoch, for example.  One hundred and fifty years ago, Contessina,
+in Venice, you would have been liable to arrest any day under a warrant
+of the Council of Ten....  And you, Dorsenne, would have been exposed to
+the cudgel like Monsieur de Voltaire, by some jealous lord....  And
+Prince d'Ardea would have run the risk of being assassinated or beheaded
+at each change of Pope.  And I, in my quality of Protestant, should have
+been driven from France, persecuted in Austria, molested in Italy, burned
+in Spain."
+
+As can be seen, he took care to choose between his two inheritances.  He
+had done so with an enigmatical good-nature which was almost ironical.
+He paused, in order not to mention what might have come to Madame
+Maitland before the suppression of slavery.  He knew that the very pretty
+and elegant young lady shared the prejudices of her American compatriots
+against negro blood, and that she made every effort to hide the blemish
+upon her birth to the point of never removing her gloves.  It may,
+however, in justice be added, that the slightly olive tinge in her
+complexion, her wavy hair, and a vague bluish reflection in the whites of
+her eyes would scarcely have betrayed the mixture of race.  She did not
+seem to have heeded the Baron's pause, but she arranged, with an absent
+air, the folds of her mauve gown, while Dorsenne replied: "It is a fine
+and specious argument....  Its only fault is that it has no foundation.
+For I defy you to imagine yourself what you would have been in the epoch
+of which you speak.  We say frequently, 'If I had lived a hundred years
+ago.'  We forget that a hundred years ago we should not have been the
+same; that we should not have had the same ideas, the same tastes, nor
+the same requirements.  It is almost the same as imagining that you could
+think like a bird or a serpent."
+
+"One could very well imagine what it would be never to have been born,"
+interrupted.  Alba Steno.
+
+She uttered the sentence in so peculiar a manner that the discussion
+begun by Hafner was nipped in the bud.
+
+The words produced their effect upon the chatter of the idlers who only
+partly believed in the ideas they put forth.  Although there is always a
+paradox in condemning life amid a scene of luxury when one is not more
+than twenty, the Contessina was evidently sincere.  Whence came that
+sincerity?  From what corner of her youthful heart, wounded almost to
+death?  Dorsenne was the only person who asked himself the question, for
+the conversation turned at once, Lydia Maitland having touched with her
+fan the sleeve of Alba, who was two seats from her, to ask her this
+question with an irony as charming, after the young girl's words, as it
+was involuntary:
+
+"It is silk muslin, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," replied the Contessina, who rose and leaned over, to offer to the
+curious gaze of her pretty neighbor her arm, which gleamed frail,
+nervous, and softly fair through the transparent red material, with a bow
+of ribbon of the same color tied at her slender shoulder and her graceful
+wrist, while Ardea, by the side of Fanny, could be heard saying to the
+daughter of Baron Justus, more beautiful than ever that evening, in her
+pallor slightly tinged with pink by some secret agitation:
+
+"You visited my palace yesterday, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+"Ask her why not, Prince," said Hafner.
+
+"Father!"  cried Fanny, with a supplication in her black eyes which Ardea
+had the delicacy to obey, as he resumed:
+
+"It is a pity.  Everything there is very ordinary.  But you would have
+been interested in the chapel.  Indeed, I regret that the most, those
+objects before which my ancestors have prayed so long and which end by
+being listed in a catalogue....  They even took the reliquary from me,
+because it was by Ugolina da Siena.  I will buy it back as soon as I can.
+Your father applauds my courage.  I could not part from those objects
+without real sorrow."
+
+"But it is the feeling she has for the entire palace," said the Baron.
+
+"Father!"  again implored Fanny.
+
+"Come, compose yourself, I will not betray you," said Hafner, while Alba,
+taking advantage of having risen, left the group.  She walked toward a
+table at the other extremity of the room, set in the style of an English
+table, with tea and iced drinks, saying to Julien, who followed her:
+
+"Shall I prepare your brandy and soda, Dorsenne?"
+
+"What ails you, Contessina?"  asked the young man, in a whisper, when
+they were alone near the plateau of crystal and the collection of silver,
+which gleamed so brightly in the dimly lighted part of the room.
+
+"Yes," he persisted, "what ails you?  Are you still vexed with me?"
+
+"With you?"  said she.  "I have never been.  Why should I be?"  she
+repeated.  "You have done nothing to me."
+
+"Some one has wounded you?"  asked Julien.
+
+He saw that she was sincere, and that she scarcely remembered the ill-
+humor of the preceding day.  "You can not deceive a friend such as I am,"
+he continued.  "On seeing you fan yourself, I knew that you had some
+annoyance.  I know you so well."
+
+"I have no annoyance," she replied, with an impatient frown.  "I can not
+bear to hear lies of a certain kind.  That is all!"
+
+"And who has lied?"  resumed Dorsenne.
+
+"Did you not hear Ardea speak of his chapel just now, he who believes in
+God as little as Hafner, of whom no one knows whether he is a Jew or a
+Gentile!....  Did you not see poor Fanny look at him the while?  And did
+you not remark with what tact the Baron made the allusion to the delicacy
+which had prevented his daughter from visiting the Palais Castagna with
+us?  And did that comedy enacted between the two men give you no food for
+thought?"
+
+"Is that why Peppino is here?"  asked Julien.  "Is there a plan on foot
+for the marriage of the heiress of Papa Hafner's millions and the grand-
+nephew of Pope Urban VII?  That will furnish me with a fine subject of
+conversation with some one of my acquaintance!"....  And the mere thought
+of Montfanon learning such news caused him to laugh heartily, while he
+continued, "Do not look at me so indignantly, dear Contessina.
+
+But I see nothing so sad in the story.  Fanny to marry Peppino?  Why not?
+You yourself have told me that she is partly Catholic, and that her
+father is only awaiting her marriage to have her baptized.  She will be
+happy then.  Ardea will keep the magnificent palace we saw yesterday, and
+the Baron will crown his career in giving to a man ruined on the Bourse,
+in the form of a dowry, that which he has taken from others."
+
+"Be silent," said the young girl, in a very grave voice, "you inspire me
+with horror.  That Ardea should have lost all scruples, and that he
+should wish to sell his title of a Roman prince at as high a price as
+possible, to no matter what bidder, is so much the more a matter of
+indifference, for we Venetians do not allow ourselves to be imposed upon
+by the Roman nobility.  We all had Doges in our families when the fathers
+of these people were bandits in the country, waiting for some poor monk
+of their name to become Pope.  That Baron Hafner sells his daughter as he
+once sold her jewels is also a matter of indifference to me.  But you do
+not know her.  You do not know what a creature, charming and
+enthusiastic, simple and sincere, she is, and who will never, never
+mistrust that, first of all, her father is a thief, and, then, that he is
+selling her like a trinket in order to have grand-children who shall be
+at the same time grandnephews of the Pope, and, finally, that Peppino
+does not love her, that he wants her dowry, and that he will have for her
+as little feeling as they have for her."  She glanced at Madame Maitland.
+"It is worse than I can tell you," she said, enigmatically, as if vexed
+by her own words, and almost frightened by them.
+
+"Yes," said Julien, "it would be very sad; but are you sure that you do
+not exaggerate the situation?  There is not so much calculation in life.
+It is more mediocre and more facile.  Perhaps the Prince and the Baron
+have a vague project."
+
+"A vague project?"  interrupted Alba, shrugging her shoulders.  "There is
+never anything vague with a Hafner, you may depend.  What if I were to
+tell you that I am positive--do you hear--positive that it is he who
+holds between his fingers the largest part of the Prince's debts, and
+that he caused the sale by Ancona to obtain the bargain?"
+
+"It is impossible!"  exclaimed Dorsenne.  "You saw him yourself yesterday
+thinking of buying this and that object."
+
+"Do not make me say any more," said Alba, passing over her brow and her
+eyes two or three times her hand, upon which no ring sparkled--that hand,
+very supple and white, whose movements betrayed extreme nervousness.
+"I have already said too much.  It is not my business, and poor Fanny
+is only to me a recent friend, although I think her very attractive and
+affectionate....  When I think that she is on the point of pledging
+herself for life, and that there is no one, that there can be no one,
+to cry: They lie to you!  I am filled with compassion.  That is all.
+It is childish!"
+
+It is always painful to observe in a young person the exact perception of
+the sinister dealings of life, which, once entered into the mind, never
+allows of the carelessness so natural at the age of twenty.
+
+The impression of premature disenchantment Alba Steno had many times
+given to Dorsenne, and it had indeed been the principal attraction to the
+curious observer of the feminine character, who still was struck by the
+terrible absence of illusion which such a view of the projects of Fanny's
+father revealed.  Whence did she know them?  Evidently from Madame Steno
+herself.  Either the Baron and the Countess had talked of them before the
+young girl too openly to leave her in any doubt, or she had divined what
+they did not tell her, through their conversation.  On seeing her thus,
+with her bitter mouth, her bright eyes, so visibly a prey to the fever of
+suppressed loathing, Dorsenne again was impressed by the thought of her
+perfect perspicacity.  It was probable that she had applied the same
+force of thought to her mother's conduct.  It seemed to him that on
+raising, as she was doing, the wick of the silver lamp beneath the large
+teakettle, that she was glancing sidewise at the terrace, where the end
+of the Countess's white robe could be seen through the shadow.  Suddenly
+the mad thoughts which had so greatly agitated him on the previous day
+possessed him again, and the plan he had formed of imitating his model,
+Hamlet, in playing in Madame Steno's salon the role of the Danish prince
+before his uncle occurred to him.  Absently, with his customary air of
+indifference, he continued:
+
+"Rest assured, Ardea does not lack enemies.  Hafner, too, has plenty of
+them.  Some one will be found to denounce their plot, if there is a plot,
+to lovely Fanny.  An anonymous letter is so quickly written."
+
+He had no sooner uttered those words than he interrupted himself with the
+start of a man who handles a weapon which he thinks unloaded and which
+suddenly discharges.
+
+It was, really, to discharge a duty in the face of his own scepticism
+that he had spoken thus, and he did not expect to see another shade of
+sadness flit across Alba's mobile and proud face.
+
+There was in the corners of her mouth more disgust, her eyes expressed
+more scorn, while her hands, busy preparing the tea, trembled as she
+said, with an accent so agitated that her friend regretted his cruel
+plan:
+
+"Ah!  Do not speak of it!  It would be still worse than her present
+ignorance.  At least, now she knows nothing, and if some miserable person
+were to do as you say she would know in part without being sure....
+How could you smile at such a supposition?....  No!  Poor, gentle Fanny!
+I hope she will receive no anonymous letters.  They are so cowardly and
+make so much trouble!"
+
+"I ask your pardon if I have wounded you," replied Dorsenne.  He had
+touched, he felt it, a tender spot in that heart, and perceived with
+grief that not only had Alba Steno not written the anonymous letters
+addressed to Gorka, but that, on the contrary, she had received some
+herself.  From whom?  Who was the mysterious denunciator who had warned
+in that abominable manner the daughter of Madame Steno after the lover?
+Julien shuddered as he continued: "If I smiled, it was because I believe
+Mademoiselle Hafner, in case the misfortune should come to her, sensible
+enough to treat such advice as it merits.  An anonymous letter does not
+deserve to be read.  Any one infamous enough to make use of weapons of
+that sort does not deserve that one should do him the honor even to
+glance at what he has written."
+
+"Is it not so?"  said the girl.  There was in her eyes, the pupils of
+which suddenly dilated, a gleam of genuine gratitude which convinced her
+companion that he had seen correctly.  He had uttered just the words of
+which she had need.  In the face of that proof, he was suddenly
+overwhelmed by an access of shame and of pity--of shame, because in his
+thoughts he had insulted the unhappy girl--of pity, because she had to
+suffer a blow so cruel, if, indeed, her mother had been exposed to her.
+It must have been on the preceding afternoon or that very morning that
+she had received the horrible letter, for, during the visit to the Palais
+Castagna, she had been, by turns, gay and quiet, but so childish, while
+on that particular evening it was no longer the child who suffered, but
+the woman.  Dorsenne resumed:
+
+"You see, we writers are exposed to those abominations.  A book which
+succeeds, a piece which pleases, an article which is extolled, calls
+forth from the envious unsigned letters which wound us or those whom we
+love.  In such cases, I repeat, I burn them unread, and if ever in your
+life such come to you, listen to me, little Countess, and follow the
+advice of your friend, Dorsenne, for he is your friend; you know it, do
+you not, your true friend?"
+
+"Why should I receive anonymous letters?"  asked the girl, quickly.  "I
+have neither fame, beauty, nor wealth, and am not to be envied."
+
+As Dorsenne looked at her, regretting that he had said so much, she
+forced her sad lips to smile, and added: "If you are really my friend,
+instead of making me lose time by your advice, of which I shall probably
+never have need, for I shall never become a great authoress, help me to
+serve the tea, will you?  It should be ready."  And with her slender
+fingers she raised the lid of the kettle, saying: "Go and ask Madame
+Maitland if she will take some tea this evening, and Fanny, too....
+Ardea takes whiskey and the Baron mineral water....  You can ring for his
+glass of vichy....  There....  You have delayed me....  There are more
+callers and nothing is ready....  Ah," she cried, "it is Maud!"--then,
+with surprise, "and her husband!"
+
+Indeed, the folding doors of the hall opened to admit Maud Gorka, a
+robust British beauty, radiant with happiness, attired in a gown of black
+crepe de Chine with orange ribbons, which set off to advantage her fresh
+color.  Behind her came Boleslas.  But he was no longer the traveller
+who, thirty-six hours before, had arrived at the Place de la Trinite-des-
+Monts, mad with anxiety, wild with jealousy, soiled by the dust of
+travel, his hair disordered, his hands and face dirty.  It was, though
+somewhat thinner, the elegant Gorka whom Dorsenne had known--tall,
+slender, and perfumed, in full dress, a bouquet in his buttonhole, his
+lips smiling.  To the novelist, knowing what he knew, the smile and the
+composure had something in them more terrible than the frenzy of the day
+before.  He comprehended it by the manner in which the Pole gave him his
+hand.  One night and a day of reflection had undermined his work, and if
+Boleslas had enacted the comedy to the point of lulling his wife's
+suspicions and of deciding on the visit of that evening, it was because
+he had resolved not to consult any one and to lead his own inquiry.
+He was succeeding in the beginning; he had certainly perceived Madame
+Steno's white gown upon the terrace, while radiant Maud explained his
+unexpected return with her usual ingenuousness.
+
+"This is what comes of sending to a doting father accounts of our boy's
+health....  I wrote him the other day that Luc had a little fever.  He
+wrote to ask about its progress.  I did not receive his letter.  He
+became uneasy, and here he is."
+
+"I will tell mamma," said Alba, passing out upon the terrace, but her
+haste seemed too slow to Dorsenne.  He had such a presentiment of danger
+that he did not think of smiling, as he would have done on any other
+occasion, at the absolute success of the deception which he and Boleslas
+had planned on the preceding day, and of which the Count had said, with a
+fatuity now proven: "Maud will be so happy to see me that she will
+believe all."
+
+It was a scene both simple and tragical--of that order in which in
+society the most horrible incidents occur without a sound, without a
+gesture, amid phrases of conventionality and in a festal framework!  Two
+of the spectators, at least, besides Julien, understood its importance-
+Ardea and Hafner.  For neither the one nor the other had failed to notice
+the relations between Madame Steno and Maitland, much less her position
+with regard to Gorka.  The writer, the grand seigneur, and the business
+man had, notwithstanding the differences of age and of position, a large
+experience of analogous circumstances.
+
+They knew of what presence of mind a courageous woman was capable, when
+surprised, as was the Venetian.  All these have declared since that they
+had never imagined more admirable self-possession, a composure more
+superbly audacious, than that displayed by Madame Steno, at that decisive
+moment.  She appeared on the threshold of the French window, surprised
+and delighted, just in the measure she conformably should be.  Her fair
+complexion, which the slightest emotion tinged with carmine, was
+bewitchingly pink.  Not a quiver of her long lashes veiled her deep blue
+eyes, which gleamed brightly.  With her smile, which exhibited her lovely
+teeth, the color of the large pearls which were twined about her neck,
+with the emeralds in her fair hair, with her fine shoulders displayed by
+the slope of her white corsage, with her delicate waist, with the
+splendor of her arms from which she had removed the gloves to yield them
+to the caresses of Maitland, and which gleamed with more emeralds, with
+her carriage marked by a certain haughtiness, she was truly a woman of
+another age, the sister of those radiant princesses whom the painters of
+Venice evoke beneath the marble porticoes, among apostles and martyrs.
+She advanced to Maud Gorka, whom she embraced affectionately, then,
+pressing Boleslas's hand, she said in a voice so warm, in which at times
+there were deep tones, softened by the habitual use of the caressing
+dialect of the lagoon:
+
+"What a surprise!  And you could not come to dine with us?  Well, sit
+down, both of you, and relate to me the Odyssey of the traveller," and,
+turning toward Maitland, who had followed her into the salon with the
+insolent composure of a giant and of a lover:
+
+"Be kind, my little Linco, and fetch me my fan and my gloves, which I
+left on the couch."
+
+At that moment Dorsenne, who had only one fear, that of meeting Gorka's
+eyes--he could not have borne their glance--was again by the side of Alba
+Steno.  The young girl's face, just now so troubled, was radiant.  It
+seemed as if a great weight had been lifted from the pretty Contessina's
+mind.
+
+"Poor child," thought the writer, "she would not think her mother could
+be so calm were she guilty.  The Countess's manner is the reply to the
+anonymous letter.  Have they written all to her?  My God! Who can it be?"
+
+And he fell into a deep revery, interrupted only by the hum of the
+conversation, in which he did not participate.  It would have satisfied
+him had he observed, instead of meditated, that the truth with regard to
+the author of the anonymous letters might have become clear to him, as
+clear as the courage of Madame Steno in meeting danger--as the blind
+confidence of Madame Gorka--as the disdainful imperturbability of
+Maitland before his rival and the suppressed rage of that rival--as the
+finesse of Hafner in sustaining the general conversation--as the
+assiduous attentions of Ardea to Fanny--as the emotion of the latter--
+as clear as Alba's sense of relief.  All those faces, on Boleslas's
+entrance, had expressed different feelings.  Only one had, for several
+minutes, expressed the joy of crime and the avidity of ultimately
+satisfied hatred.  But as it was that of little Madame Maitland, the
+silent creature, considered so constantly by him as stupid and
+insignificant, Dorsenne had not paid more attention to it than had the
+other witnesses the surprising reappearance of the betrayed lover.
+
+Every country has a metaphor to express the idea that there is no worse
+water than that which is stagnant.  Still waters run deep, say the
+English, and the Italians, Still waters ruin bridges.
+
+These adages would not be accurate if one did not forget them in
+practise, and the professional analyst of the feminine heart had entirely
+forgotten them on that evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+COUNTESS STENO
+
+A woman less courageous than the Countess, less capable of looking a
+situation in the face and of advancing to it, such an evening would have
+marked the prelude to one of those nights of insomnia when the mind
+exhausts in advance all the agonies of probable danger.  Countess Steno
+did not know what weakness and fear were.
+
+A creature of energy and of action, who felt herself to be above all
+danger, she attached no meaning to the word uneasiness.  So she slept,
+on the night which followed that soiree, a sleep as profound,
+as refreshing, as if Gorka had never returned with vengeance in his
+heart, with threats in his eyes.  Toward ten o'clock the following
+morning, she was in the tiny salon, or rather, the office adjoining her
+bedroom, examining several accounts brought by one of her men of
+business.  Rising at seven o'clock, according to her custom, she had
+taken the cold bath in which, in summer as well as winter, she daily
+quickened her blood.  She had breakfasted, 'a l'anglaise', following the
+rule to which she claimed to owe the preservation of her digestion, upon
+eggs, cold meat, and tea.  She had made her complicated toilette, had
+visited her daughter to ascertain how she had slept, had written five
+letters, for her cosmopolitan salon compelled her to carry on an immense
+correspondence, which radiated between Cairo and New York,
+St. Petersburg and Bombay, taking in Munich, London, and Madeira,
+and she was as faithful in friendship as she was inconstant in love.
+Her large handwriting, so elegant in its composition, had covered pages
+and pages before she said: "I have a rendezvous at eleven o'clock with
+Maitland.  Ardea will be here at ten to talk of his marriage.  I have
+accounts from Finoli to examine.  I hope that Gorka will not come, too,
+this morning."....  Persons in whom the feeling of love is very complete,
+but very physical, are thus.  They give themselves and take themselves
+back altogether.  The Countess experienced no more pity than fear in
+thinking of her betrayed lover.  She had determined to say to him, "I no
+longer love you," frankly, openly, and to offer him his choice between a
+final rupture or a firm friendship.
+
+The only annoyance depended upon the word of explanation, which she
+desired to see postponed until afternoon, when she would be free,
+an annoyance which, however, did not prevent her from examining with her
+usual accuracy the additions and multiplications of her intendant,
+who stood near her with a face such as Bonifagio gave to his Pharisees.
+He managed the seven hundred hectares of Piove, near Padua, Madame
+Steno's favorite estate.  She had increased the revenue from it tenfold,
+by the draining of a sterile and often malignant lagoon, which, situated
+a metre below the water-level, had proved of surprising fertility; and
+she calculated the probable operations for weeks in advance with the
+detailed and precise knowledge of rural cultivation which is the
+characteristic of the Italian aristocracy and the permanent cause of its
+vitality.
+
+"Then you estimate the gain from the silkworms at about fifty kilos of
+cocoons to an ounce?"
+
+"Yes, Excellency," replied the intendant.
+
+"One hundred ounces of yellow; one hundred times fifty makes five
+thousand," resumed the Countess.  "At four francs fifty?"
+
+"Perhaps five, Excellency," said the intendant.
+
+"Let us say twenty-two thousand five hundred," said the Countess, "and as
+much for the Japanese....  That will bring us in our outlay for
+building."
+
+"Yes, Excellency.  And about the wine?"
+
+"I am of the opinion, after what you have told me of the vineyard, that
+you should sell as quickly as possible to Kauffmann's agent all that
+remains of the last crop, but not at less than six francs.  You know it
+is necessary that our casks be emptied and cleaned after the month of
+August....  If we were to fail this time, for the first year that we
+manufacture our wine with the new machine, it would be too bad."
+
+"Yes, Excellency.  And the horses?"
+
+"I think that is an opportunity we should not let escape.  My advice is
+that you take the express to Florence to-day at two o'clock.  You will
+reach Verona to-morrow morning.  You will conclude the bargain.  The
+horses will be sent to Piove the same evening....
+
+We have finished just in time," she continued, arranging the intendant's
+papers.  She put them herself in their envelope, which she gave him.
+She had an extremely delicate sense of hearing, and she knew that the
+door of the antechamber opened.  It seemed that the administrator took
+away in his portfolio all the preoccupation of this extraordinary woman.
+For, after concluding that dry conversation, or rather that monologue,
+she had her clearest and brightest smile with which to receive the new
+arrival, who was, fortunately, Prince d'Ardea.  She said to the servant:
+
+"I wish to speak with the Prince.  If any one asks for me, do not admit
+him and do not send any one hither.  Bring me the card."  Then, turning
+toward the young man, "Well, Simpaticone," it was the nickname she gave
+him, "how did you finish your evening?"
+
+"You would not believe me," replied Peppino Ardea, laughing; "I, who no
+longer have anything, not even my bed.  I went to the club and I
+played....  For the first time in my life I won."
+
+He was so gay in relating his childish prank, he jested so merrily about
+his ruin, that the Countess looked at him in surprise, as he had looked
+at her on entering....  We understand ourselves so little, and we know so
+little about our own singularities of character, that each one was
+surprised at finding the other so calm.  Ardea could not comprehend that
+Madame Steno should not be at least uneasy about Gorka's return and the
+consequences which might result therefrom.  She, on the other hand,
+admired the strange youth who, in his misfortune, could find such
+joviality at his command.  He had evidently expended as much care upon
+his toilette as if he had not to take some immediate steps to assure his
+future, and his waistcoat, the color of his shirt, his cravat, his yellow
+shoes, the flower in his buttonhole, all united to make of him an amiable
+and incorrigibly frivolous dandy.  She felt the need which strong
+characters have in the presence of weak ones; that of acting for the
+youth, of aiding him in spite of himself, and she attacked at once the
+question of marriage with Fanny Hafner.  With her usual common-sense,
+and with her instinct of arranging everything, Madame Steno perceived in
+the union so many advantages for every one that she was in haste to
+conclude it as quickly as if it involved a personal affair.
+
+The marriage was earnestly desired by the Baron, who had spoken of it to
+her for months.  It suited Fanny, who would be converted to Catholicism
+with the consent of her father.  It suited the Prince, who at one stroke
+would be freed from his embarrassment.  Finally, it suited the name of
+Castagna.  Although Peppino was its only representative at that time,
+and as, by an old family tradition, he bore a title different from the
+patronymic title of Pope Urban VII, the sale of the celebrated palace had
+called forth a scandal to which it was essential to put an end.  The
+Countess had forgotten that she had assisted, without a protestation,
+in that sale.  Had she not known through Hafner that he had bought at a
+low price an enormous heap of the Prince's bills of exchange?  Did she
+not know the Baron well enough to be sure that M. Noe Ancona, the
+implacable creditor who sold the palace, was only the catspaw of this
+terrible friend?  In a fit of ill-humor at the Baron, had she not herself
+accused him in Alba's presence of this very simple plan, to bring Ardea
+to a final catastrophe in order to offer him salvation in the form of the
+union with Fanny, and to execute at the same time an excellent operation?
+For, once freed from the mortgages which burdened them, the Prince's
+lands and buildings would regain their true value, and the imprudent
+speculator would find himself again as rich, perhaps richer.
+
+"Come," said Madame Steno to the Prince, after a moment's silence and
+without any preamble, "it is now time to talk business.  You dined by the
+side of my little friend yesterday; you had the entire evening in which
+to study her.  Answer me frankly, would she not make the prettiest little
+Roman princess who could kneel in her wedding-gown at the tomb of the
+apostles?  Can you not see her in her white gown, under her veil,
+alighting at the staircase of Saint Peter's from the carriage with the
+superb horses which her father has given her?  Close your eyes and see
+her in your thoughts.  Would she not be pretty?  Would she not?"
+
+"Very pretty," replied Ardea, smiling at the tempting vision Madame
+Steno had conjured up, "but she is not fair.  And you know, to me, a
+woman who is not fair--ah, Countess!  What a pity that in Venice, five
+years ago, on a certain evening--do you remember?"
+
+"How much like you that is!"  interrupted she, laughing her deep, clear
+laugh.  "You came to see me this morning to talk to me of a marriage,
+unhoped for with your reputation of gamester, of supper-giver,
+of 'mauvais sujet'; of a marriage which fulfils conditions most
+improbable, so perfect are they--beauty, youth, intelligence, fortune,
+and even, if I have read my little friend aright, the beginning of an
+interest, of a very deep interest.  And, for a little, you would make a
+declaration to me.  Come, come!"  and she extended to him for a kiss her
+beautiful hand, on which gleamed large emeralds.  "You are forgiven.  But
+answer--yes or no.  Shall I make the proposal?  If it is yes, I will go
+to the Palace Savorelli at two o'clock.  I will speak to my friend
+Hafner.  He will speak to his daughter, and it will not depend upon me
+if you have not their reply this evening or to-morrow morning.  Is it
+yes?  Is it no?"
+
+"This evening?  To-morrow?"  exclaimed the Prince, shaking his head with
+a most comical gesture.  "I can not decide like that.  It is an ambush!
+I come to talk, to consult you."
+
+"And on what?"  asked Madame Steno, with a vivacity almost impatient.
+"Can I tell you anything you do not already know?  In twenty-four hours,
+in forty-eight, in six months, what difference will there be, I pray you?
+We must look at things as they are, however.  To-morrow, the day after,
+the following days, will you be less embarrassed?"
+
+"No," said the Prince, "but--"
+
+"There is no but," she resumed, allowing him to say no more than she had
+allowed her intendant.  The despotism natural to puissant personalities
+scorned to be disguised in her, when there were practical decisions in
+which she was to take part.  "The only serious objection you made to me
+when I spoke to you of this marriage six months ago was that Fanny was
+not a Catholic.  I know today that she has only to be asked to be
+converted.  So do not let us speak of that."
+
+"No," said the Prince, "but--"
+
+"As for Hafner," continued the Countess, "you will say he is my friend
+and that I am partial, but that partiality even is an opinion.  He is
+precisely the father-in-law you need.  Do not shake your head.  He will
+repair all that needs repairing in your fortune.  You have been robbed,
+my poor Peppino.  You told me so yourself....  Become the Baron's son-in-
+law, and you will have news of your robbers.  I know.... There is the
+Baron's origin and the suit of ten years ago with all the 'pettogolezzi'
+to which it gave rise.  All that has not the common meaning.  The Baron
+began life in a small way.  He was from a family of Jewish origin--you
+see, I do not deceive you--but converted two generations back, so that
+the story of his change of religion since his stay in Italy is a calumny,
+like the rest.  He had a suit in which he was acquitted.  You would not
+require more than the law, would you?"
+
+"No, but--"
+
+"For what are you waiting, then?"  concluded Madame Steno.  "That it may
+be too late?  How about your lands?"
+
+"Ah!  let me breathe, let me fan myself," said Ardea, who, indeed, took
+one of the Countess's fans from the desk.  "I, who have never known in
+the morning what I would do in the evening, I, who have always lived
+according to my pleasure, you ask me to take in five minutes the
+resolution to bind myself forever!"
+
+"I ask you to decide what you wish to do," returned the Countess.  "It is
+very amusing to travel at one's pleasure.  But when it is a question of
+arranging one's life, this childishness is too absurd.  I know of only
+one way: to see one's aim and to march directly to it.  Yours is very
+clear--to get out of this dilemma.  The way is not less clear; it is
+marriage with a girl who has five millions dowry.  Yes or no, will you
+have her?....  Ah," said she, suddenly interrupting herself, "I shall not
+have a moment to myself this morning, and I have an appointment at eleven
+o'clock!"....  She looked at the timepiece on her table, which indicated
+twenty-five minutes past ten.  She had heard the door open.  The footman
+was already before her and presented to her a card upon a salver.  She
+took the card, looked at it, frowned, glanced again at the clock, seemed
+to hesitate, then: "Let him wait in the small salon, and say that I will
+be there immediately," said she, and turning again toward Ardea: "You
+think you have escaped.  You have not.  I do not give you permission to
+go before I return.  I shall return in fifteen minutes.  Would you like
+some newspapers?  There are some.  Books?  There are some.  Tobacco?
+This box is filled with cigars....  In a quarter of an hour I shall be
+here and I will have your reply.  I wish it, do you hear?  I wish it"....
+And on the threshold with another smile, using that time a term of patois
+common in Northern Italy and which is only a corruption of 'schiavo' or
+servant: 'Ciao Simpaticone.'
+
+"What a woman!"  said Peppino Ardea, when the door was closed upon the
+Countess.  "Yes, what a pity that five years ago in Venice I was not
+free!  Who knows?  If I had dared, when she took me to my hotel in her
+gondola.  She was about to leave San Giobbe.  She had not yet accepted
+Boleslas.  She would have advised--have directed me.  I should have
+speculated on the Bourse, as she did, with Hafner's counsel.  But not in
+the quality of son-in-law.  I should not have been obliged to marry.  And
+she would not now have such bad tobacco."....  He was on the point of
+lighting one of the Virginian cigarettes, a present from Maitland.  He
+threw it away, making a grimace with his air of a spoiled child, at the
+risk of scorching the rug which lay upon the marble floor; and he passed
+into the antechamber in order to fetch his own case in the pocket of the
+light overcoat he had prudently taken on coming out after eight o'clock.
+
+As he lighted one of the cigarettes in that case, filled with so-called
+Egyptian tobacco, mixed with opium and saltpetre, which he preferred to
+the tobacco of the American, he mechanically glanced at the card which
+the servant had left on going from the room-the card of the unknown
+visitor for whom Madame Steno had left him.
+
+Ardea read upon it, with astonishment, these words:
+
+Count Boleslas Gorka.
+
+"She is better than I thought her," said he, on reentering the deserted
+office.  "She had no need to bid me not to go.  I think I should wait to
+see her return from that conversation."
+
+It was indeed Boleslas whom the Countess found in the salon, which she
+had chosen as the room the most convenient for the stormy explanation
+she anticipated.  It was isolated at the end of the hall, and was like
+a pendant to the terrace.  It formed, with the dining-room, the entire
+ground-floor, or, rather, the entresol of the house.  Madame Steno's
+apartments, as well as the other small salon in which Peppino was, were
+on the first floor, together with the rooms set apart for the Contessina
+and her German governess, Fraulein Weber, for the time being on a
+journey.
+
+The Countess had not been mistaken.  At the first glance exchanged on the
+preceding day with Gorka, she had divined that he knew all.  She would
+have suspected it, nevertheless, since Hafner had told her the few words
+indiscreetly uttered by Dorsenne on the clandestine return of the Pole to
+Rome.  She had not at that time been mistaken in Boleslas's intentions,
+and she had no sooner looked in his face than she felt herself to be in
+peril.  When a man has been the lover of a woman as that man had been
+hers, with the vibrating communion of a voluptuousness unbroken for two
+years, that woman maintains a sort of physiological, quasi-animal
+instinct.  A gesture, the accent of a word, a sigh, a blush, a pallor,
+are signs for her that her intuition interprets with infallible
+certainty.  How and why is that instinct accompanied by absolute oblivion
+of former caresses?  It is a particular case of that insoluble and
+melancholy problem of the birth and death of love.  Madame Steno had no
+taste for reflection of that order.  Like all vigorous and simple
+creatures, she acknowledged and accepted it.  As on the previous day,
+she became aware that the presence of her former lover no longer touched
+in her being the chord which had rendered her so weak to him during
+twenty-five months, so indulgent to his slightest caprices.  It left her
+as cold as the marble of the bas-relief by Mino da Fiesole fitted into
+the wall just above the high chair upon which he leaned.
+
+Boleslas, notwithstanding the paroxysm of lucid fury which he suffered at
+that moment, and which rendered him capable of the worst violence, had on
+his part a knowledge of the complete insensibility in which his presence
+left her.  He had seen her so often, in the course of their long liaison,
+arrive at their morning rendezvous at that hour, in similar toilettes,
+so fresh, so supple, so youthful in her maturity, so eager for kisses,
+tender and ardent.  She had now in her blue eyes, in her smile, in her
+entire person, some thing at once so gracious and so inaccessible, which
+gives to an abandoned lover the mad longing to strike, to murder, a woman
+who smiles at him with such a smile.  At the same time she was so
+beautiful in the morning light, subdued by the lowered blinds, that she
+inspired him with an equal desire to clasp her in his arms whether she
+would or no.  He had recognized, when she entered the room, the aroma of
+a preparation which she had used in her bath, and that trifle alone had
+aroused his passion far more than when the servant told him Madame Steno
+was engaged, and he wondered whether she was not alone with Maitland.
+Those impassioned, but suppressed, feelings trembled in the accent of the
+very simple phrase with which he greeted her.  At certain moments, words
+are nothing; it is the tone in which they are uttered.  And to the
+Countess that of the young man was terrible.
+
+"I am disturbing you?"  he asked, bowing and barely touching with the
+tips of his fingers the hand she had extended to him on entering.
+"Excuse me, I thought you alone.  Will you be pleased to name another
+time for the conversation which I take the liberty of demanding?"
+
+"No, no," she replied, not permitting him to finish his sentence.  "I was
+with Peppino Ardea, who will await me," said she, gently.  "Moreover, you
+know I am in all things for the immediate.  When one has something to
+say, it should be said, one, two, three?....  First, there is not much to
+say, and then it is better said....  There is nothing that will sooner
+render difficult easy explanations and embroil the best of friends than
+delay and maintaining silence."
+
+"I am very happy to find you in such a mind," replied Boleslas, with a
+sarcasm which distorted his handsome face into a smile of atrocious
+hatred.  The good-nature displayed by her cut him to the heart, and he
+continued, already less self-possessed: "It is indeed an explanation
+which I think I have the right to ask of you, and which I have come to
+claim."
+
+"To claim, my dear?"  said the Countess, looking him fixedly in the face
+without lowering her proud eyes, in which those imperative words had
+kindled a flame.
+
+If she had been admirable the preceding evening in facing as she had done
+the return of her discarded lover, on coming direct from the tete-a-tete
+with her new one, perhaps, at that moment, she was doubly so, when she
+did not have her group of intimate friends to support her.  She was not
+sure that the madman who confronted her was not armed, and she believed
+him perfectly capable of killing her, while she could not defend herself.
+But a part had to be played sooner or later, and she played it without
+flinching.  She had not spoken an untruth in saying to Peppino Ardea:
+"I know only one way: to see one's aim and to march directly to it."  She
+wanted a definitive rupture with Boleslas.  Why should she hesitate as to
+the means?
+
+She was silent, seeking for words.  He continued:
+
+"Will you permit me to go back three months, although that is, it seems,
+a long space of time for a woman's memory?  I do not know whether you
+recall our last meeting?  Pardon, I meant to say the last but one, since
+we met last night.  Do you concede that the manner in which we parted
+then did not presage the manner in which we met?"
+
+"I concede it," said the Countess, with a gleam of angry pride in her
+eyes, "although I do not very much like your style of expression.  It is
+the second time you have addressed me as an accuser, and if you assume
+that attitude it will be useless to continue."
+
+"Catherine!"....  That cry of the young man, whose anger was increasing,
+decided her whom he thus addressed to precipitate the issue of a
+conversation in which each reply was to be a fresh burst of rancor.
+
+"Well?"  she inquired, crossing her arms in a manner so imperious that
+he paused in his menace, and she continued: "Listen, Boleslas, we have
+talked ten minutes without saying anything, because neither of us has the
+courage to put the question such as we know and feel it to be.  Instead
+of writing to me, as you did, letters which rendered replies impossible
+to me; instead of returning to Rome and hiding yourself like a
+malefactor; instead of coming to my home last night with that threatening
+face; instead of approaching me this morning with the solemnity of a
+judge, why did you not question me simply, frankly, as one who knows that
+I have loved him very, very much?....  Having been lovers, is that a
+reason for detesting each other when we cease those relations?"
+
+"'When we cease those relations!'" replied Gorka.  "So you no longer love
+me?  Ah, I knew it; I guessed it after the first week of that fatal
+absence!  But to think that you should tell it to me some day like that,
+in that calm voice which is a horrible blasphemy for our entire past.
+No, I do not believe it.  I do not yet believe it.  Ah, it is too
+infamous."
+
+"Why?"  interrupted the Countess, raising her head with still more
+haughtiness....  "There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is
+a falsehood.  Ah, I know it.  You men are not accustomed to meeting true
+women, who have the respect, the religion of their sentiment.  I have
+that respect; I practise that religion.  I repeat that I loved you a
+great deal, Boleslas.  I did not hide it from you formerly.  I was as
+loyal to you as truth itself.  I have the consciousness of being so
+still, in offering you, as I do, a firm friendship, the friendship of man
+for man, who only asks to prove to you the sincerity of his devotion."
+
+"I, a friendship with you, I--I--I?"  exclaimed Boleslas.  "Have I had
+enough patience in listening to you as I have listened?  I heard you lie
+to me and scented the lie in the same breath.  Why do you not ask me as
+well to form a friendship for him with whom you have replaced me?  Ah, so
+you think I am blind, and you fancy I did not see that Maitland near you,
+and that I did not know at the first glance what part he was playing in
+your life?  You did not think I might have good reasons for returning as
+I did?  You did not know that one does not dally with one whom one loves
+as I love you?....  It is not true....  You have not been loyal to me,
+since you took this man for a lover while you were still my mistress.
+You had not the right, no, no, no, you had not the right!....  And what
+a man!....  If it had been Ardea, Dorsenne, no matter whom, that I might
+not blush for you....  But that brute, that idiot, who has nothing in his
+favor, neither good looks, birth, elegance, mind nor talent, for he has
+none--he has nothing but his neck and shoulders of a bull....  It is as
+if you had deceived me with a lackey.... No.....  it is too terrible....
+Ah, Catherine, swear to me that it is not true.  Tell me that you no
+longer love me, I will submit, I will go away, I will accept all,
+provided that you swear to me you do not love that man--swear, swear!"...
+he added, grasping her hands with such violence that she uttered a slight
+exclamation, and, disengaging herself, said to him:
+
+"Cease; you pain me.  You are mad, Gorka; that can be your sole
+excuse....  I have nothing to swear to you.  What I feel, what I think,
+what I do no longer concerns you after what I have told you....  Believe
+what it pleases you to believe....  But," and the irritation of an
+enamored woman, wounded in the man she adores, possessed her, "you shall
+not speak twice of one of my friends as you have just spoken.  You have
+deeply offended me, and I will not pardon you.  In place of the
+friendship I offered you so honestly, we will have no further connections
+excepting those of society.  That is what you desired....  Try not to
+render them impossible to yourself.  Be correct at least in form.
+Remember you have a wife, I have a daughter, and that we owe it to them
+to spare them the knowledge of this unhappy rupture....  God is my
+witness, I wished to have it otherwise."
+
+"My wife!  Your daughter!"  cried Boleslas with bitterness.  "This is
+indeed the hour to remember them and to put them between you and my just
+vengeance!  They never troubled you formerly, the two poor creatures,
+when you began to win my love?....  It was convenient for you that they
+should be friends!  And I lent myself to it!....  I accepted such
+baseness--that to-day you might take shelter behind the two innocents!...
+No, it shall not be.... you shall not escape me thus.  Since it is the
+only point on which I can strike you, I will strike you there.  I hold
+you by that means, do you hear, and I will keep you.  Either you dismiss
+that man, or I will no longer respect anything.  My wife shall know all!
+Her!  So much the better!  For some time I have been stifled by my
+lies....  Your daughter, too, shall know all.  She shall judge you now as
+she would judge you one day."
+
+As he spoke he advanced to her with a manner so cruel that she recoiled.
+A few more moments and the man would have carried out his threat.
+He was about to strike her, to break objects around him, to call forth
+a terrible scandal.  She had the presence of mind of an audacity more
+courageous still.  An electric bell was near at hand.  She pressed it,
+while Gorka said to her, with a scornful laugh, "That was the only
+affront left you to offer me--to summon your servants to defend you."
+
+"You are mistaken," she replied.  "I am not afraid.  I repeat you are
+mad, and I simply wish to prove it to you by recalling you to the reality
+of your situation....  Bid Mademoiselle Alba come down," said she to the
+footman whom her ring had summoned.  That phrase was the drop of cold
+water which suddenly broke the furious jet of vapor.  She had found the
+only means of putting an end to the terrible scene.  For, notwithstanding
+his menace, she knew that Maud's husband always recoiled before the young
+girl, the friend of his wife, of whose delicacy and sensibility he was
+aware.
+
+Gorka was capable of the most dangerous and most cruel deeds, in an
+excess of passion augmented by vanity.
+
+He had in him a chivalrous element which would paralyze his frenzy before
+Alba.  As for the immorality of that combination of defence which
+involved her daughter in her rupture with a vindictive lover, the
+Countess did not think of that.  She often said: "She is my comrade, she
+is my friend."....  And she thought so.  To lean upon her in that
+critical moment was only natural to her.  In the tempest of indignation
+which shook Gorka, the sudden appeal to innocent Alba appeared to him the
+last degree of cynicism.  During the short space of time which elapsed
+between the departure of the footman and the arrival of the young girl,
+he only uttered these words, repeating them as he paced the floor, while
+his former mistress defied him with her bold gaze:
+
+"I scorn you, I scorn you; ah, how I scorn you!"  Then, when he heard the
+door open: "We will resume our conversation, Madame."
+
+"When you wish," replied Countess Steno, and to her daughter, who
+entered, she said: "You know the carriage is to come at ten minutes to
+eleven, and it is now the quarter.  Are you ready?"
+
+"You can see," replied the young girl, displaying her pearl-gray gloves,
+which she was just buttoning, while on her head a large hat of black
+tulle made a dark and transparent aureole around her fair head.  Her
+delicate bust was displayed to advantage in the corsage Maitland had
+chosen for her portrait, a sort of cuirass of a dark-blue material,
+finished at the neck and wrists with bands of velvet of a darker shade.
+The fine lines of cuffs and a collar gave to that pure face a grace of
+youth younger than her age.
+
+She had evidently come at her mother's call, with the haste and the smile
+of that age.  Then, to see Gorka's expression and the feverish brilliance
+of the Countess's eyes had given her what she called, in an odd but very
+appropriate way, the sensation of "a needle in the heart," of a sharp,
+fine point, which entered her breast to the left.  She had slept a sleep
+so profound, after the soiree of the day before, on which she had thought
+she perceived in her mother's attitude between the Polish count and the
+American painter a proof of certain innocence.
+
+She admired her mother so much, she thought her so intelligent, so
+beautiful, so good, that to doubt her was a thought not to be borne!
+There were times when she doubted her.  A terrible conversation about the
+Countess, overheard in a ballroom, a conversation between two men, who
+did not know Alba to be behind them, had formed the principal part of the
+doubt, which, by turns, had increased and diminished, which had abandoned
+and tortured her, according to the signs, as little decisive as Madame
+Steno's tranquillity of the preceding day or her confusion that morning.
+It was only an impression, very rapid, instantaneous, the prick of a
+needle, which merely leaves after it a drop of blood, and yet she had a
+smile with which to say to Boleslas:
+
+"How did Maud rest?  How is she this morning?  And my little friend Luc?"
+
+"They are very well," replied Gorka.  The last stage of his fury,
+suddenly arrested by the presence of the young girl, was manifested, but
+only to the Countess, by the simple phrase to which his eyes and his
+voice lent an extreme bitterness: "I found them as I left them....  Ah!
+They love me dearly....  I leave you to Peppino, Countess," added he,
+walking toward the door.  "Mademoiselle, I will bear your love to Maud."
+....He had regained all the courtesy which a long line of savage 'grands
+seigneurs', but 'grands seigneurs' nevertheless, had instilled in him.
+If his bow to Madame Steno was very ceremonious, he put a special grace
+in the low bow with which he took leave of the Contessina.  It was merely
+a trifle, but the Countess was keen enough to perceive it.  She was
+touched by it, she whom despair, fury, and threats had found so
+impassive.  For an instant she was vaguely humiliated by the success
+which she had gained over the man whom she would, voluntarily, five
+minutes before, have had cast out of doors by her servants.  She was
+silent, oblivious even of her daughter's presence, until the latter
+recalled her to herself by saying:
+
+"Shall I put on my veil and fetch my parasol?"
+
+"You can join me in the office, whither I am going to talk with Ardea,"
+replied her mother; adding, "I shall perhaps have some news to tell you
+in the carriage which will give you pleasure!"....  She had again her
+bright smile, and she did not mistrust while she resumed her conversation
+with Peppino that poor Alba, on reentering her chamber, wiped from her
+pale cheeks two large tears, and that she opened, to re-read it, the
+infamous anonymous letter received the day before.  She knew by heart all
+the perfidious phrases.  Must it not have been that the mind which had
+composed them was blinded by vengeance to such a degree that it had no
+scruples about laying before the innocent child a denunciation which ran
+thus:
+
+     "A true friend of Mademoiselle Steno warns her that she is
+     compromised, more than a marriageable young girl should be, in
+     playing, with regard to M. Maitland the role she has already played
+     with regard to M. Goyka.  There are conditions of blindness so
+     voluntary that they become complicity."
+
+Those words, enigmatical to any one else, but to the Contessina horribly
+clear, had been, like the letters of which Boleslas had told Dorsenne,
+cut from a journal and pasted on a sheet of paper.  How had Alba trembled
+on reading that note for the first time, with an emotion increased by the
+horror of feeling hovering over her and her mother a hatred so
+relentless!  Later in the day how much had the words exchanged with
+Dorsenne comforted her, and how reassured had she been by the Countess's
+imperturbability on the entrance of Boleslas Gorka!  Fragile peace, which
+had vanished when she saw her mother and the husband of her best friend
+face to face, with traces in their eyes, in their gestures, upon their
+countenances, of an angry scene!  The thought "Why were they thus!  What
+had they said?"  again occurred to her to sadden her.  Suddenly she
+crushed in her hand with violence the anonymous letter, which gave a
+concrete form to her sorrow and her suspicion, and, lighting a taper, she
+held it to the paper, which the flames soon reduced to ashes.  She ran
+her fingers through the debris until there was very little left, and
+then, opening the window, she cast it to the winds.
+
+She looked at her glove after doing this--her glove, a few moments
+before, of so delicate a gray, now stained by the smoky dust.  It was
+symbolical of the stain which the letter, even when destroyed, had left
+upon her mind.  The gloves, too, inspired her with horror.  She hastily
+drew them off, and, when she descended to rejoin Madame Steno, it was not
+any more possible to perceive on those hands, freshly gloved, the traces
+of that tragical childishness, than it was possible to discern, beneath
+the large veil which she had tied over her hat, the traces of tears.
+She found the mother for whom she was suffering so much, wearing, too,
+a large sun-hat, but a white one with a white veil, beneath which could
+be seen her fair hair, her sparkling blue eyes and pink-and-white
+complexion; her form was enveloped in a gown of a material and cut more
+youthful than her daughter's, while, radiant with delight, she said to
+Peppino Ardea:
+
+"Well, I congratulate you on having made up your mind.  The step shall be
+taken to-day, and you will be grateful to me all your life!"
+
+"Yet," replied the young man, "I understand myself.  I shall regret my
+decision all the afternoon.  It is true," he added, philosophically,
+"that I should regret it just as much if I had not made it."
+
+"You have guessed that we were talking of Fanny's marriage," said Madame
+Steno to her daughter several minutes later, when they were seated side
+by side, like two sisters, in the victoria which was bearing them toward
+Maitland's studio.
+
+"Then," asked the Contessina, "you think it will be arranged?"
+
+"It is arranged," gayly replied Madame Steno.  "I am commissioned to make
+the proposition....  How happy all three will be!....  Hafner has aimed
+at it this long time!  I remember how, in 1880, after his suit, he came
+to see me in Venice--you and Fanny played on the balcony of the palace--
+he questioned me about the Quirinal, the Vatican and society....  Then he
+concluded, pointing to his daughter, 'I shall make a Roman princess of
+the little one!"
+
+The 'dogaresse' was so delighted at the thought of the success of her
+negotiations, so delighted, too, to go, as she was going, to Maitland's
+studio, behind her two English cobs, which trotted so briskly, that she
+did not see on the sidewalk Boleslas Gorka, who watched her pass.
+
+Alba was so troubled by that fresh proof of her mother's lack of
+conscience that she did not notice Maud's husband either.  Baron Hafner's
+and Prince d'Ardea's manner toward Fanny had inspired her the day before
+with a dolorous analogy between the atmosphere of falsehood in which that
+poor girl lived and the atmosphere in which she at times thought she
+herself lived.  That analogy again possessed her, and she again felt the
+"needle in the heart" as she recalled what she had heard before from the
+Countess of the intrigue by which Baron Justus Hafner had, indeed,
+ensnared his future son-in-law.  She was overcome by infinite sadness,
+and she lapsed into one of her usual silent moods, while the Countess
+related to her Peppino's indecision.  What cared she for Boleslas's anger
+at that moment?  What could he do to her?  Gorka was fully aware of her
+utter carelessness of the scene which had taken place between them, as
+soon as he saw the victoria pass.  For some time he remained standing,
+watching the large white and black hats disappear down the Rue du Vingt
+Septembre.
+
+This thought took possession of him at once.  Madame Steno and her
+daughter were going to Maitland's atelier....  He had no sooner conceived
+that bitter suspicion than he felt the necessity of proving it at once.
+He entered a passing cab, just as Ardea, having left the Villa, Steno
+after him, sauntered up, saying:
+
+"Where are you going?  May I go with you that we may have a few moments'
+conversation?"
+
+"Impossible," replied Gorka.  "I have a very urgent appointment, but in
+an hour I shall perhaps have occasion to ask a service of you.  Where
+shall I find you?"
+
+"At home," said Peppino, "lunching."
+
+"Very well," replied Boleslas, and, raising himself, he whispered in the
+cabman's ear, in a voice too low for his friend to hear what he said:
+"Ten francs for you if in five minutes you drive me to the corner of the
+Rue Napoleon III and the Place de la Victor-Emmanuel."
+
+The man gathered up his reins, and, by some sleight-of-hand, the jaded
+horse which drew the botte was suddenly transformed into a fine Roman
+steed, the botte itself into a light carriage as swift as the Tuscan
+carrozzelle, and the whole disappeared in a cross street, while Peppino
+said to himself:
+
+"There is a fine fellow who would do so much better to remain with his
+friend Ardea than to go whither he is going.  This affair will end in a
+duel.  If I had not to liquidate that folly," and he pointed out with the
+end of his cane a placard relative to the sale of his own palace, "I
+would amuse myself by taking Caterina from both of them.  But those
+little amusements must wait until after my marriage."
+
+As we have seen, the cunning Prince had not been mistaken as to the
+course taken by the cab Gorka had hailed.  It was indeed into the
+neighborhood of the atelier occupied by Maitland that the discarded lover
+hastened, but not to the atelier.  The madman wished to prove to himself
+that the exhibition of his despair had availed him nothing, and that,
+scarcely rid of him, Madame Steno had repaired to the other.  What would
+it avail him to know it and what would the evidence prove?  Had the
+Countess concealed those sittings--those convenient sittings--as the
+jealous lover had told Dorsenne?  The very thought of them caused the
+blood to flow in his veins much more feverishly than did the thoughts of
+the other meetings.  For those he could still doubt, notwithstanding the
+anonymous letters, notwithstanding the tete-a-tete on the terrace,
+notwithstanding the insolent "Linco," whom she had addressed thus before
+him, while of the long intimacies of the studio he was certain.  They
+maddened him, and, at the same time, by that strange contradiction which
+is characteristic of all jealousy, he hungered and thirsted to prove
+them.
+
+He alighted from his cab at the corner he had named to his cabman, and
+from which point he could watch the Rue Leopardi, in which was his
+rival's house.  It was a large structure in the Moorish style, built by
+the celebrated Spanish artist, Juan Santigosa, who had been obliged to
+sell all five years before--house, studio, horses, completed paintings,
+sketches begun--in order to pay immense losses at gaming.  Florent
+Chapron had at the time bought the sort of counterfeit Alhambra, a
+portion of which he rented to his brother-in-law.  During the few moments
+that he stood at the corner, Boleslas Gorka recalled having visited that
+house the previous year, while taking, in the company of Madame Steno,
+Alba, Maud, and Hafner, one of those walks of which fashionable women are
+so fond in Rome as well as in Paris.  An irrational instinct had rendered
+the painter and his paintings antipathetic to him at their first meeting.
+Had he had sufficient cause?  Suddenly, on leaning forward in such a
+manner as to see without being seen, he perceived a victoria which
+entered the Rue Leopardi, and in that victoria the black hat of
+Mademoiselle Steno and the light one of her mother.  In two minutes more
+the elegant carriage drew up at the Moorish structure, which gleamed
+among the other buildings in that street, for the most part unfinished,
+with a sort of insolent, sumptuousness.
+
+The two ladies alighted and disappeared through the door, which closed
+upon them, while the coachman started up his horses at the pace of
+animals which are returning to their stable.  He checked them that they
+might not become overheated, and the fine cobs trembled impatiently in
+their harnesses.  Evidently the Countess and Alba were in the studio for
+a long sitting.  What had Boleslas learned that he did not already know?
+Was he not ridiculous, standing upon the sidewalk of the square in the
+centre of which rose the ruin of an antique reservoir, called, for a
+reason more than doubtful, the trophy of Marius.  With one glance the
+young man took in this scene--the empty victoria turning in the opposite
+direction, the large square, the ruin, the row of high houses, his cab.
+He appeared to himself so absurd for being there to spy out that of which
+he was only too sure, that he burst into a nervous laugh and reentered
+his cab, giving his own address to the cabman: Palazzetto Doria, Place de
+Venise.  The cab that time started off leisurely, for the man
+comprehended that the mad desire to arrive hastily no longer possessed
+his fare.  By a sudden metamorphosis, the swift Roman steed became a
+common nag, and the vehicle a heavy machine which rumbled along the
+streets.  Boleslas yielded to depression, the inevitable reaction of an
+excess of violence such as he had just experienced.  His composure could
+not last.  The studio, in which was Madame Steno, began to take a clear
+form in the jealous lover's mind in proportion as he drove farther from
+it.  In his thoughts he saw his former mistress walking about in the
+framework of tapestry, armor, studies begun, as he had frequently seen
+her walking in his smoking-room, with the smile upon her lips of an
+amorous woman, touching the objects among which her lover lives.  He saw
+impassive Alba, who served as chaperon in the new intrigue of her
+mother's with the same naivete she had formerly employed in shielding
+their liaison.  He saw Maitland with his indifferent glance of the day
+before, the glance of a preferred lover, so sure of his triumph that he
+did not even feel jealous of the former lover.
+
+The absolute tranquillity of one who replaces us in an unfaithful
+mistress's affections augments our fury still more if we have the
+misfortune to be placed in a position similar to Gorka's.  In a moment
+his rival's evocation became to him impossible to bear.  He was very near
+his own home, for he was just at that admirable square encumbered with
+the debris of basilica, the Forum of Trajan, which the statue of St.
+Peter at the summit of the column overlooks.  Around the base of the
+sculptured marble, legends attest the triumph of the humble Galilean
+fisherman who landed at the port of the Tiber 1800 years ago, unknown,
+persecuted, a beggar.  What a symbol and what counsel to say with the
+apostle: "Whither shall we go, Lord?  Thou alone hast the words of
+eternal life!"
+
+But Gorka was neither a Montfanon nor a Dorsenne to hear within his heart
+or his mind the echo of such precepts.  He was a man of passion and of
+action, who only saw his passion and his actions in the position in which
+fortune threw him.  A fresh access of fury recalled to him Maitland's
+attitude of the preceding day.  This time he would no longer control
+himself.  He violently pulled the surprised coachman's sleeve, and called
+out to him the address of the Rue Leopardi in so imperative a tone that
+the horse began again to trot as he had done before, and the cab to go
+quickly through the labyrinth of streets.  A wave of tragical desire
+rolled into the young man's heart.  No, he would not bear that affront.
+He was too bitterly wounded in the most sensitive chords of his being, in
+his love as well as his pride.  Both struggled within him, and another
+instinct as well, urging him to the mad step he was about to take.  The
+ancient blood of the Palatines, with regard to which Dorsenne always
+jested, boiled in his veins.  If the Poles have furnished many heroes for
+dramas and modern romances, they have remained, through their faults, so
+dearly atoned for, the race the most chivalrously, the most madly brave
+in Europe.  When men of so intemperate and so complex an excitability are
+touched to a certain depth, they think of a duel as naturally as the
+descendants of a line of suicides think of killing themselves.
+
+Joyous Ardea, with his Italian keenness, had seen at a glance the end to
+which Gorka's nature would lead him.  The betrayed lover required a duel
+to enable him to bear the treason.  He might wound, he might, perhaps,
+kill his rival, and his passion would be satisfied, or else he would risk
+being killed himself, and the courage he would display braving death
+would suffice to raise him in his own estimation.  A mad thought
+possessed him and caused him to hasten toward the Rue Leopardi, to
+provoke his rival suddenly and before Madame Steno!  Ah, what pleasure it
+would give him to see her tremble, for she surely would tremble when she
+saw him enter the studio!  But he would be correct, as she had so
+insolently asked him to be.  He would go, so to speak, to see Alba's
+portrait.  He would dissemble, then he would be better able to find a
+pretext for an argument.  It is so easy to find one in the simplest
+conversation, and from an argument a quarrel is soon born.  He would
+speak in such a manner that Maitland would have to answer him.  The rest
+would follow.  But would Alba Steno be present?  Ha, so much the better!
+He would be so much more at ease, if the altercation arose before her,
+to deceive his own wife as to the veritable reason of the duel.  Ah, he
+would have his dispute at any price, and from the moment that the seconds
+had exchanged visits the American's fate would be decided.  He knew how
+to render it impossible for the fellow to remain longer in Rome.  The
+young man was greatly wrought up by the romance of the provocation and
+the duel.
+
+"How it refreshes the blood to be avenged upon two fools," said he to
+himself, descending from his cab and inquiring at the door of the Moorish
+house.
+
+"Monsieur Maitland?"  he asked the footman, who at one blow dissipated
+his excitement by replying with this simple phrase, the only one of which
+he had not thought in his frenzy:
+
+"Monsieur is not at home."
+
+"He will be at home to me," replied Boleslas.  "I have an appointment
+with Madame and Mademoiselle Steno, who are awaiting me."
+
+"Monsieur's orders are strict," replied the servant.
+
+Accustomed, as are all servants entrusted with the defence of an artist's
+work, to a certain rigor of orders, he yet hesitated, in the face of the
+untruth which Gorka had invented on the spur of the moment, and he was
+about to yield to his importunity when some one appeared on the staircase
+of the hall.  That some one was none other than Florent Chapron.  Chance
+decreed that the latter should send for a carriage in which to go to
+lunch, and that the carriage should be late.  At the sound of wheels
+stopping at the door, he looked out of one of the windows of his
+apartment, which faced the street.  He saw Gorka alight.  Such a visit,
+at such an hour, with the persons who were in the atelier, seemed to him
+so dangerous that he ran downstairs immediately.  He took up his hat and
+his cane, to justify his presence in the hall by the very natural excuse
+that he was going out.  He reached the middle of the staircase just in
+time to stop the servant, who had decided to "go and see," and, bowing to
+Boleslas with more formality than usual:
+
+"My brother-in-law is not there, Monsieur," said he; and he added,
+turning to the footman, in order to dispose of him in case an altercation
+should arise between the importunate visitor and himself, "Nero, fetch me
+a handkerchief from my room.  I have forgotten mine."
+
+"That order could not be meant for me, Monsieur," insisted Boleslas.
+"Monsieur Maitland has made an appointment with me, with Madame Steno,
+in order to show us Alba's portrait."
+
+"It is no order," replied Florent.  "I repeat to you that my brother-in-
+law has gone out.  The studio is closed, and it is impossible for me to
+undertake to open it to show you the picture, since I have not the key.
+As for Madame and Mademoiselle Steno, they have not been here for several
+days; the sittings have been interrupted."
+
+"What is still more extraordinary, Monsieur," replied the other, "is that
+I saw them with my own eyes, five minutes ago, enter this house and I,
+too, saw their carriage drive away."....  He felt his anger increase and
+direct itself altogether against the watch-dog so suddenly raised upon
+the threshold of his rival's house.
+
+Florent, on his part, had begun to lose patience.  He had within him the
+violent irritability of the negro blood, which he did not acknowledge,
+but which slightly tinted his complexion.  The manner of Madame Steno's
+former lover seemed to him so outrageous that he replied very dryly, as
+he opened the door, in order to oblige the caller to leave:
+
+"You are mistaken,--Monsieur, that is all."
+
+"You are aware, Monsieur," replied Boleslas, "of the fact that you just
+addressed me in a tone which is not the one which I have a right to
+expect from you....  When one charges one's self with a certain business,
+it is at least necessary to introduce a little form."
+
+"And I, Monsieur," replied Chapron, "would be very much obliged to you if,
+when you address me, you would not do so in enigmas.  I do not know what
+you mean by 'a certain business,' but I know that it is unbefitting a
+gentleman to act as you have acted at the door of a house which is not
+yours and for reasons that I can not comprehend."
+
+"You will comprehend them very soon, Monsieur," said Boleslas, beside
+himself, "and you have not constituted yourself your brother's slave
+without motives."
+
+He had no sooner uttered that sentence than Florent, incapable any longer
+of controlling himself, raised his cane with a menacing gesture, which
+the Polish Count arrested just in time, by seizing it in his right hand.
+It was the work of a second, and the two men were again face to face,
+both pale with anger, ready to collar one another rudely, when the sound
+of a door closing above their heads recalled to them their dignity.  The
+servant descended the stairs.  It was Chapron who first regained his
+self-possession, and he said to Boleslas, in a voice too low to be heard
+by any one but him:
+
+"No scandal, Monsieur, eh?  I shall have the honor of sending two of my
+friends to you."
+
+"It is I, Monsieur," replied Gorka, "who will send you two.  You shall
+answer to me for your manner, I assure you."
+
+"Ha!  Whatsoever you like," said the other.  "I accept all your
+conditions in advance....  But one thing I ask of you," he added, "that
+no names be mentioned.  There would be too many persons involved.  Let it
+appear that we had an argument on the street, that we disagreed, and that
+I threatened you."
+
+"So be it," said Boleslas, after a pause.  "You have my word.  There is a
+man," said he to himself five minutes later, when again rolling through
+the streets in his cab, after giving the cabman the address of the Palais
+Castagna.  "Yes, there is a man....  He was very insolent just now, and I
+lacked composure.  I am too nervous.  I should be sorry to injure the
+boy.  But, patience, the other will lose nothing by waiting."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE INCONSISTENCY OF AN OLD CHOUAN
+
+While the madman, Boleslas, hastened to Ardea to ask his cooperation in
+the most unreasonable of encounters, with a species of savage delight,
+Florent Chapron was possessed by only one thought: at any price to
+prevent his brother-in-law from suspecting his quarrel with Madame
+Steno's former lover and the duel which was to be the result.  His
+passionate friendship for Lincoln was so strong that it prevented the
+nervousness which usually precedes a first duel, above all when he who
+appears upon the ground has all his life neglected practising with the
+sword or pistol.  To a fencer, and to one accustomed to the use of
+firearms, a duel means a number of details which remove the thought of
+danger.  The man conceives the possibilities of the struggle, of a deed
+to be bravely accomplished.  That is sufficient to inspire him with a
+composure which absolute ignorance can not inspire, unless it is
+supported by one of those deep attachments often so strong within us.
+Such was the case with Florent.
+
+Dorsenne's instinct, which could so easily read the heart, was not
+mistaken there; the painter had in his wife's brother a friend of self-
+sacrificing devotion.  He could exact anything of the Mameluke, or,
+rather, of that slave, for it was the blood of the slaves, of his
+ancestors, which manifested itself in Chapron by so total an absorption
+of his personality.  The atavism of servitude has these two effects which
+are apparently contradictory: it produces fathomless capacities of
+sacrifice or of perfidy.  Both of these qualities were embodied in the
+brother and in the sister.  As happens, sometimes, the two
+characteristics of their race were divided between them; one had
+inherited all the virtue of self-sacrifice, the other all the puissance
+of hypocrisy.
+
+But the drama called forth by Madame Steno's infidelity, and finally by
+Gorka's rashness, would only expose to light the moral conditions which
+Dorsenne had foreseen without comprehending.  He was completely ignorant
+of the circumstances under which Florent had developed, of those under
+which Maitland and he had met, of how Maitland had decided to marry
+Lydia; finally an exceptional and lengthy history which it is necessary
+to sketch here at least, in order to render clear the singular relations
+of those three beings.
+
+As we have seen, the allusion coarsely made by Boleslas to negro blood
+marked the moment when Florent lost all self-control, to the point even
+of raising his cane to his insolent interlocutor.  That blemish, hidden
+with the most jealous care, represented to the young man what it had
+represented to his father, the vital point of self-love, secret and
+constant humiliation.  It was very faint, the trace of negro blood which
+flowed in their veins, so faint that it was necessary to be told of it,
+but it was sufficient to render a stay in America so much the more
+intolerable to both, as they had inherited all the pride of their name,
+a name which the Emperor mentioned at St. Helena as that of one of his
+bravest officers.  Florent's grandfather was no other, indeed, than the
+Colonel Chapron who, as Napoleon desired information, swam the Dnieper on
+horseback, followed a Cossack on the opposite shore, hunted him like a
+stag, laid him across his saddle and took him back to the French camp.
+When the Empire fell, that hero, who had compromised himself in an
+irreparable manner in the army of the Loire, left his country and,
+accompanied by a handful of his old comrades, went to found in the
+southern part of the United States, in Alabama, a sort of agricultural
+colony, to which they gave the name--which it still preserves--of Arcola,
+a naive and melancholy tribute to the fabulous epoch which, however, had
+been dear to them.
+
+Who would have recognized the brilliant colonel, who penetrated by the
+side of Montbrun the heart of the Grande Redoute, in the planter of
+forty-five, busy with his cotton and his sugar-cane, who made a fortune
+in a short time by dint of energy and good sense?  His success, told of
+in France, was the indirect cause of another emigration to Texas, led by
+General Lallemand, and which terminated so disastrously.  Colonel Chapron
+had not, as can be believed, acquired in roaming through Europe very
+scrupulous notions an the relations of the two sexes.  Having made the
+mother of his child a pretty and sweet-tempered mulattress whom he met on
+a short trip to New Orleans, and whom he brought back to Arcola, he
+became deeply attached to the charming creature and to his son, so much
+the more so as, with a simple difference of complexion and of hair, the
+child was the image of him.  Indeed, the old warrior, who had no
+relatives in his native land, on dying, left his entire fortune to that
+son, whom he had christened Napoleon.  While he lived, not one of his
+neighbors dared to treat the young man differently from the way in which
+his father treated him.
+
+But it was not the same when the prestige of the Emperor's soldier was
+not there to protect the boy against that aversion to race which is
+morally a prejudice, but socially interprets an instinct of preservation
+of infallible surety.  The United States has grown only on that
+condition.
+
+     [Those familiar with the works of Bourget will recognize here again
+     his well known antipathy for the United States of America.  Mark
+     Twain in the late 1800's felt obliged to rebut some of Bourget's
+     prejudice: "What Paul Bourget thinks of us."  D.W.]
+
+The mixture of blood would there have dissolved the admirable Anglo-Saxon
+energy which the struggle against a nature at once very rich and very
+mutinous has exalted to such surprising splendor.  It is not necessary to
+ask those who are the victims of such an instinct to comprehend the legal
+injustice.  They only feel its ferocity.  Napoleon Chapron, rejected in
+several offers of marriage, thwarted in his plans, humiliated under
+twenty trifling circumstances by the Colonel's former companions, became
+a species of misanthrope.  He lived, sustained by a twofold desire, on
+the one hand to increase his fortune, and on the other to wed a white
+woman.  It was not until 1857, at the age of thirty-five, that he
+realized the second of his two projects.  In the course of a trip to
+Europe, he became interested on the steamer in a young English governess,
+who was returning from Canada, summoned home by family troubles.  He met
+her again in London.  He helped her with such delicacy in her distress,
+that he won her heart, and she consented to become his wife.  From that
+union were born, one year apart, Florent and Lydia.
+
+Lydia had cost her mother her life, at the moment when the War of
+Secession jeoparded the fortune of Chapron, who, fortunately for him,
+had, in his desire to enrich himself quickly, invested his money a little
+on all sides.  He was only partly ruined, but that semi-ruin prevented
+him from returning to Europe, as he had intended.  He was compelled to
+remain in Alabama to repair that disaster, and he succeeded, for at his
+death, in 1880, his children inherited more than four hundred thousand
+dollars each.  The incomparable father's devotion had not limited itself
+to the building up of a large fortune.  He had the courage to deprive
+himself of the presence of the two beings whom he adored, to spare them
+the humiliation of an American school, and he sent them after their
+twelfth year to England, the boy to the Jesuits of Beaumont, the girl to
+the convent of the Sacred Heart, at Roehampton.  After four years there,
+he sent them to Paris, Florent to Vaugirard, Lydia to the Rue de Varenne,
+and just at the time that he had realized the amount he considered
+requisite, when he was preparing to return to live near them in a country
+without prejudices, a stroke of apoplexy took him off suddenly.  The
+double wear of toil and care had told upon one of those organisms which
+the mixture of the black and white races often produces, athletic in
+appearance, but of a very keen sensibility, in which the vital resistance
+is not in proportion to the muscular vigor.
+
+Whatever care the man, so deeply grieved by the blemish upon his birth,
+had taken to preserve his children from a similar experience, he had not
+been able to do so, and soon after his son entered Beaumont his trials
+began.  The few boys with whom Florent was thrown in contact, in the
+hotels or in his walks, during his sojourn in America, had already made
+him feel that humiliation from which his father had suffered so much.
+The youth of twelve, silent and absurdly sensitive, who made his
+appearance on the lawn of the peaceful English college on an autumn
+morning, brought with him a self-love already bleeding, to whom it was a
+delightful surprise to find himself among comrades of his age who did not
+even seem to suspect that any difference separated them from him.  It
+required the perception of a Yankee to discern, beneath the nails of the
+handsome boy with the dark complexion, the tiny drops of negro blood, so
+far removed.  Between an octoroon and a creole a European can never tell
+the difference.  Florent had been represented as what he really was, the
+grandson of one of the Emperor's best officers.  His father had taken
+particular pains to designate him as French, and his companions only saw
+in him a pupil like themselves, coming from Alabama--that is to say, from
+a country almost as chimerical as Japan or China.
+
+All who in early youth have known the torture of apprehension will be
+able to judge of the poor child's agony when, after four months of a life
+amid the warmth of sympathy, one of the Jesuit fathers who directed the
+college announced to him, thinking it would afford him pleasure, the
+expected arrival of an American, of young Lincoln Maitland.  This was
+to Florent so violent a shock that he had a fever for forty-eight hours.
+In after years he could remember what thoughts possessed him on the day
+when he descended from his room to the common refectory, sure that as
+soon as he was brought face to face with the new pupil he would have to
+sustain the disdainful glance suffered so frequently in the United
+States.  There was no doubt in his mind that, his origin once discovered,
+the atmosphere of kindness in which he moved with so much surprise would
+soon be changed to hostility.  He could again see himself crossing the
+yard; could hear himself called by Father Roberts--the master who had
+told him of the expected new arrival--and his surprise when Lincoln
+Maitland had given him the hearty handshake of one demi-compatriot who
+meets another.  He was to learn later that that reception was quite
+natural, coming from the son of an Englishman, educated altogether by his
+mother, and taken from New York to Europe before his fifth year, there to
+live in a circle as little American as possible.  Chapron did not reason
+in that manner.  He had an infinitely tender heart.  Gratitude entered
+it--gratitude as impassioned as had been his fear.  One week later
+Lincoln Maitland and he were friends, and friends so intimate that they
+never parted.
+
+The affection, which was merely to the indifferent nature of Maitland a
+simple college episode, became to Florent the most serious, most complete
+sentiment of his life.  Those fraternities of election, the loveliest and
+most delicate of the heart of man, usually dawn thus in youth.  It is the
+ideal age of passionate friendship, that period between ten and sixteen,
+when the spirit is so pure, so fresh, still so virtuous, so fertile in
+generous projects for the future.  One dreams of a companionship almost
+mystical with the friend from whom one has no secret, whose character one
+sees in such a noble light, on whose esteem one depends as upon the
+surest recompense, whom one innocently desires to resemble.  Indeed,
+they are, between the innocent lads who work side by side on a problem
+of geometry or a lesson in history, veritable poems of tenderness at
+which the man will smile later, finding so far different from him in all
+his tastes, him whom he desired to have for a brother.  It happens,
+however, in certain natures of a sensibility particularly precocious and
+faithful at the same time, that the awakening of effective life is so
+strong, so encroaching, that the impassioned friendship persists, first
+through the other awakening, that of sensuality, so fatal to all the
+senses of delicacy, then through the first tumult of social experience,
+not less fatal to our ideal of youth.
+
+That was the case with Florent Chapron, whether his character, at once
+somewhat wild and yet submissive, rendered him more qualified for that
+renunciation of his personality than friendship demands, whether, far
+from his father and his sister and not having any mother, his loving
+heart had need of attaching itself to some one who could fill the place
+of his relatives, or whether Maitland exercised over him a special
+prestige by his opposite qualities.  Fragile and somewhat delicate, was
+he seduced by the strength and dexterity which his friend exhibited in
+all his exercises?  Timid and naturally taciturn, was he governed by the
+assurance of that athlete with the loud laugh, with the invincible
+energy?  Did the surprising tendency toward art which the other one
+showed conquer him, as well as sympathy for the misfortunes which were
+confided to him and which touched him more than they touched him who
+experienced them?
+
+Gordon Maitland, Lincoln's father, of an excellent family of New York,
+had been killed at the battle of Chancellorsville, during the same war
+which had ruined Florent's father in part.  Mrs. Maitland, the poor
+daughter of a small rector of a Presbyterian church at Newport, and who
+had only married her husband for his money, had but one idea, when once a
+widow--to go abroad.  Whither?  To Europe, vague and fascinating spot,
+where she fancied she would be distinguished by her intelligence and her
+beauty.  She was pretty, vain and silly, and that voyage in pursuit of a
+part to play in the Old World caused her to pass two years first in one
+hotel and then in another, after which she married the second son of a
+poor Irish peer, with the new chimera of entering that Olympus of British
+aristocracy of which she had dreamed so much.  She became a Catholic, and
+her son with her, to obtain the result which cost her dear, for not only
+was the lord who had given her his name brutal, a drunkard and cruel, but
+he added to all those faults that of being one of the greatest gamblers
+in the entire United Kingdom.  He kept his stepson away from home, beat
+his wife, and died toward 1880, after dissipating the poor creature's
+fortune and almost all of Lincoln's.  At that time the latter, whom his
+stepfather had naturally left to develop in his own way, and who, since
+leaving Beaumont, had studied painting at Venice, Rome and Paris, was in
+the latter city and one of the first pupils in Bonnat's studio.  Seeing
+his mother ruined, without resources at forty-four years of age,
+persuaded himself of his glorious future, he had one of those magnificent
+impulses such as one has in youth and which prove much less the
+generosity than the pride of life.  Of the fifteen thousand francs of
+income remaining to him, he gave up to his mother twelve thousand five
+hundred.  It is expedient to add that in less than a year afterward he
+married the sister of his college friend and four hundred thousand
+dollars.  He had seen poverty and he was afraid of it.  His action with
+regard to his mother seemed to justify in his own eyes the purely
+interested character of the combination which freed his brush forever.
+There are, moreover, such artistic consciences.  Maitland would not have
+pardoned himself a concession of art.  He considered rascals the painters
+who begged success by compromise in their style, and he thought it quite
+natural to take the money of Mademoiselle Chapron, whom he did not love,
+and for whom, now that he had grown to manhood and knew several of her
+compatriots, he likewise felt the prejudice of race.  "The glory of the
+colonel of the Empire and friendship for that good Florent," as he said,
+"covered all."
+
+Poor and good Florent!  That marriage was to him the romance of his youth
+realized.  He had desired it since the first week that Maitland had given
+him the cordial handshake which had bound them.  To live in the shadow of
+his friend, become at once his brother-in-law and his ideal--he did not
+dream of any other solution of his own destiny.  The faults of Maitland,
+developed by age, fortune, and success--we recall the triumph of his
+'Femme en violet et en jeune' in the Salon of 1884--found Florent as
+blind as at the epoch when they played cricket together in the fields at
+Beaumont.  Dorsenne very justly diagnosed there one of those hypnotisms
+of admiration such as artists, great or small, often inspire around them.
+But the author, who always generalized too quickly, had not comprehended
+that the admirer with Florent was grafted on a friend worthy to be
+painted by La Fontaine or by Balzac, the two poets of friendship, the one
+in his sublime and tragic Cousin Pons, the other in that short but fine
+fable, in which is this verse, one of the most tender in the French
+language:
+
+          Vous metes, en dormant, un peu triste apparu.
+
+Florent did not love Lincoln because he admired him; he admired him
+because he loved him.  He was not wrong in considering the painter as one
+of the most gifted who had appeared for thirty years.  But Lincoln would
+have had neither the bold elegance of his drawing, nor the vivid strength
+of coloring, nor the ingenious finesse of imagination if the other had
+lent himself with less ardor to the service of the work and to the glory
+of the artist.  When Lincoln wanted to travel he found his brother-in-law
+the most diligent of couriers.  When he had need of a model he had only
+to say a word for Florent to set about finding one.  Did Lincoln exhibit
+at Paris or London, Florent took charge of the entire proceeding--seeing
+the journalists and picture dealers, composing letters of thanks for the
+articles, in a handwriting so like that of the painter that the latter
+had only to sign it.  Lincoln desired to return to Rome.  Florent had
+discovered the house on the Rue Leopardi, and he settled it even before
+Maitland, then in Egypt, had finished a large study begun at the moment
+of the departure of the other.
+
+Florent had, by virtue of the affection felt for his brother-in-law, come
+to comprehend the paintings as well as the painter himself.  These words
+will be clear to those who have been around artists and who know what a
+distance separates them from the most enlightened amateur.  The amateur
+can judge and feel.  The artist only, who has wielded the implements,
+knows, before a painting, how it is done, what stroke of the brush has
+been given, and why; in short, the trituration of the matter by the
+workman.  Florent had watched Maitland work so much, he had rendered him
+so many effective little services in the studio, that each of his
+brother-in-law's canvases became animated to him, even to the slightest
+details.  When he saw them on the wall of the gallery they told him of an
+intimacy which was at once his greatest joy and his greatest pride.  In
+short, the absorption of his personality in that of his former comrade
+was so complete that it had led to this anomaly, that Dorsenne himself,
+notwithstanding his indulgence for psychological singularities, had not
+been able to prevent himself from finding almost monstrous: Florent was
+Lincoln's brother-in-law, and he seemed to find it perfectly natural that
+the latter should have adventures outside, if the emotion of those
+adventures could be useful to his talent!
+
+Perhaps this long and yet incomplete analysis will permit us the better
+to comprehend what emotions agitated the young man as he reascended the
+staircase of his house--of their house, Lincoln's and his--after his
+unexpected dispute with Boleslas Gorka.  It will attenuate, at least with
+respect to him, the severity of simple minds.  All passion, when
+developed in the heart, has the effect of etiolating around it the vigor
+of other instincts.  Chapron was too fanatical a friend to be a very
+equitable brother.  It seemed to him very simple and very legitimate that
+his sister should be at the service of the genius of Lincoln, as he
+himself was.  Moreover, if, since the marriage with her brother's friend,
+his sister had been stirred by the tempest of a moral tragedy, Florent
+did not suspect it.  When had he studied Lydia, the silent, reserved
+Lydia, of whom he had once for all formed an opinion, as is the almost
+invariable custom of relative with relative?  Those who have seen us when
+young are like those who see us daily.  The images which they trace of us
+always reproduce what we were at a certain moment--scarcely ever what we
+are.  Florent considered his sister very good, because he had formerly
+found her so; very gentle, because she had never resisted him; not
+intelligent, because she did not seem sufficiently interested in the
+painter's work; as for the suffering and secret rebellion of the
+oppressed creature, crushed between his blind partiality and the
+selfishness of a scornful husband, he did not even suspect them, much
+less the terrible resolution of which that apparent resignation was
+capable.
+
+If he had trembled when Madame Steno began to interest herself in
+Lincoln, it was solely for the work of the latter, so much the more as
+for a year he had perceived not a decline but a disturbance in the
+painting of that artist, too voluntary not to be unequal.  Then Florent
+had seen, on the other hand, the nerve of Maitland reawakened in the
+warmth of that little intrigue.
+
+The portrait of Alba promised to be a magnificent study, worthy of being
+placed beside the famous 'Femme en violet et en jaune,' which those
+envious of Lincoln always remembered.  Moreover, the painter had finished
+with unparalleled ardor two large compositions partly abandoned.  In the
+face of that proof of a fever of production more and more active, how
+would not Florent have blessed Madame Steno, instead of cursing her, so
+much the more that it sufficed him to close his eyes and to know that his
+conscience was in repose when opposite his sister?  He knew all, however.
+The proof of it was in his shudder when Dorsenne announced to him the
+clandestine arrival in Rome of Madame Steno's other lover, and one proof
+still more certain, the impulse which had precipitated him upon Boleslas,
+who was parleying with the servant, and now it was he who had accepted
+the duel which an exasperated rival had certainly come to propose to his
+dear Lincoln, and he thought only of the latter.
+
+"He must know nothing until afterward.  He would take the affair upon
+himself, and I have a chance to kill him, that Gorka--to wound him, at
+least.  In any case, I will arrange it so that a second duel will be
+rendered difficult to that lunatic....  But, first of all, let us make
+sure that we have not spoken too loudly and that they have not heard
+upstairs the ill-bred fellow's loud voice."
+
+It was in such terms that he qualified his adversary of the morrow.  For
+very little more he would have judged Gorka unpardonable not to thank
+Lincoln, who had done him the honor to supplant him in the Countess's
+favor!
+
+In the meantime, let us cast a glance at the atelier!  When the friend,
+devoted to complicity, but also to heroism, entered the vast room, he
+could see at the first glance that he had been mistaken and that no sound
+of voices had reached that peaceful retreat.
+
+The atelier of the American painter was furnished with a harmonious
+sumptuousness which real artists know how to gather around them.  The
+large strip of sky seen through the windows looked down upon a corner
+veritably Roman--of the Rome of to-day, which attests an uninterrupted
+effort toward forming a new city by the side of the old one.  One could
+see an angle of the old garden and the fragment of an antique building,
+with a church steeple beyond.  It was on a background of azure, of
+verdure and of ruins, in a horizon larger and more distant, but composed
+of the same elements, that was to arise the face of the young girl,
+designed after the manner, so sharp and so modelled, of the 'Pier della
+Francesca', with whom Maitland had been preoccupied for six months.
+
+All great composers, of an originality more composite than genitive, have
+these infatuations.
+
+Maitland was at his easel, dressed with that correct elegance which is
+the almost certain mark of Anglo-Saxon artists.  With his little
+varnished shoes, his fine black socks, spotted with red, his coat of
+quilted silk, his light cravat and the purity of his linen, he had the
+air of a gentleman who applied himself to an amateur effort, and not of
+the patient and laborious worker he really was.  But his canvases and his
+studies, hung on all sides, among tapestries, arms and trinkets, bespoke
+patient labor.  It was the history of an energy bent upon the,
+acquisition of a personality constantly fleeting.  Maitland manifested in
+a supreme degree the trait common to almost all his compatriots, even
+those who came in early youth to Europe, that intense desire not to lack
+civilization, which is explained by the fact that the American is a being
+entirely new, endowed with an activity incomparable, and deprived of
+traditional saturation.  He is not born cultivated, matured, already
+fashioned virtually, if one may say so, like a child of the Old World.
+He can create himself at his will.  With superior gifts, but gifts
+entirely physical, Maitland was a self-made man of art, as his grand
+father had been a self-made man of money, as his father had been a self-
+made man of war.  He had in his eye and in his hand two marvellous
+implements for painting, and in his perseverence in developing a still
+more marvellous one.  He lacked constantly the something necessary and
+local which gives to certain very inferior painters the inexpressible
+superiority of a savor of soil.  It could not be said that he was not
+inventive and new, yet one experienced on seeing no matter which one of
+his paintings that he was a creature of culture and of acquisition.  The
+scattered studies in the atelier first of all displayed the influence of
+his first master, of solid and simple Bonnat.  Then he had been tempted
+by the English pre-Raphaelites, and a fine copy of the famous 'Song of
+Love', by Burne-Jones, attested that reaction on the side of an art more
+subtle, more impressed by that poetry which professional painters treat
+scornfully as literary.  But Lincoln was too vigorous for the languors of
+such an ideal, and he quickly turned to other teachings.  Spain conquered
+him, and Velasquez, the colorist of so peculiar a fancy that, after a
+visit to the Museum of the Prado, one carries away the idea that one has
+just seen the only painting worthy of the name.
+
+The spirit of the great Spaniard, that despotic stroke of the brush which
+seems to draw the color in the groundwork of the picture, to make it
+stand out in almost solid lights, his absolute absence of abstract
+intentions and his newness which affects entirely to ignore the past, all
+in that formula of art, suited Maitland's temperament.  To him, too, he
+owed his masterpiece, the 'Femme en violet et en jaune', but the restless
+seeker did not adhere to that style.  Italy and the Florentines next
+influenced him, just those the most opposed to Velasquez; the Pollajuoli,
+Andrea del Castagna, Paolo Uccello and Pier delta Francesca.  Never would
+one have believed that the same hand which had wielded with so free a
+brush the color of the 'Femme en violet...' could be that which sketched
+the contour of the portrait of Alba with so severe, so rigid a drawing.
+
+At the moment Florent entered the studio that work so completely absorbed
+the attention of the painter that he did not hear the door open any more
+than did Madame Steno, who was smoking cigarettes, reclining indolently
+and blissfully upon the divan, her half-closed eyes fixed upon the man
+she loved.  Lincoln only divined another presence by a change in Alba's
+face.  God!  How pale she was, seated in the immobility of her pose in a
+large, heraldic armchair, with a back of carved wood, her hands grasping
+the arms, her mouth so bitter, her eyes so deep in their fixed glance!...
+Did she divine that which she could not, however, know, that her fate was
+approaching with the visitor who entered, and who, having left the studio
+fifteen minutes before, had to justify his return by an excuse.
+
+"It is I," said he.  "I forgot to ask you, Lincoln, if you wish to buy
+Ardea's three drawings at the price they offer."
+
+"Why did you not tell me of it yesterday, my little Linco?"  interrupted
+the Countess.  "I saw Peppino again this morning....  I would have from
+him his lowest figure."
+
+"That would only be lacking," replied Maitland, laughing his large laugh.
+"He does not acknowledge those drawings, dear dogaresse....  They are a
+part of the series of trinkets he carefully subtracted from his
+creditor's inventory and put in different places.  There are some at
+seven or eight antiquaries', and we may expect that for the next ten
+years all the cockneys of my country will be allured by this phrase,
+'This is from the Palais Castagna.  I have it by a little arrangement.'"
+
+His eyes sparkled as he imitated one of the most celebrated bric-a-brac
+dealers in Rome, with the incomparable art of imitation which
+distinguishes all the old habitues of Parisian studios.
+
+"At present these three drawings are at an antiquary's of Babuino, and
+very authentic."
+
+"Except when they are represented as Vincis," said Florent, "when
+Leonardo was left-handed, and their hatchings are made from left to
+right."
+
+"And you think Ardea would not agree with me in it?" resumed the
+Countess.
+
+"Not even with you," said the painter.  "He had the assurance last night,
+when I mentioned them before him, to ask me the address in order to go to
+see them."
+
+"How did you learn their production?"  questioned Madame Steno.
+
+"Ask him," said Maitland, pointing to Chapron with the end of his brush.
+"When there is a question of enriching his old Maitland's collection, he
+becomes more of a merchant than the merchants themselves.  They tell him
+all....  Vinci or no Vinci, it is the pure Lombard style.  Buy them.
+I want them."
+
+"I will go, then," replied Florent.  "Countess.  .  .  .  Contessina."
+
+He bowed to Madame Steno and her daughter.  The mother bestowed upon him
+her pleasantest smile.  She was not one of those mistresses to whom their
+lovers' intimate friends are always enemies.  On the contrary, she
+enveloped them in the abundant and blissful sympathy which love awoke in
+her.  Besides, she was too cunning not to feel that Florent approved of
+her love.  But, on the other hand, the intense aversion which Alba at
+that moment felt toward her mother's suspected intrigues was expressed by
+the formality with which she inclined her head in response to the
+farewell of the young man, who was too happy to have found that the
+dispute had not been heard.
+
+"From now until to-morrow," thought he, on redescending the staircase,
+"there will be no one to warn Lincoln....  The purchase of the drawings
+was an invention to demonstrate my tranquillity....Now I must find two
+discreet seconds."
+
+Florent was a very deliberate man, and a man who had at his command
+perfect evenness of temperament whenever it was not a question of his
+enthusiastic attachment to his brother-in-law.  He had the power of
+observation habitual to persons whose sensitive amour propre has
+frequently been wounded.  He therefore deferred until later his difficult
+choice and went to luncheon, as if nothing had happened, at the
+restaurant where he was expected.  Certainly the proprietor did not
+mistrust, in replying to the questions of his guest relative to the most
+recent portraits of Lenbach, that the young man, so calm, so smiling, had
+on hand a duel which might cost him his life.  It was only on leaving the
+restaurant that Florent, after mentally reviewing ten of his older
+acquaintances, resolved to make a first attempt upon Dorsenne.  He
+recalled the mysterious intelligence given him by the novelist, whose
+sympathy for Maitland had been publicly manifested by an eloquent
+article.  Moreover, he believed him to be madly in love with Alba Steno.
+That was one probability more in favor of his discretion.
+
+Dorsenne would surely maintain silence with regard to a meeting in
+connection with which, if it were known, the cause of the contest would
+surely be mentioned.  It was only too clear that Gorka and Chapron had no
+real reason to quarrel and fight a duel.  But at ten-thirty, that is to
+say, three hours after the unreasonable altercation in the vestibule,
+Florent rang at the door of Julien's apartments.  The latter was at home,
+busy upon the last correction of the proofs of 'Poussiere d'Idees'.  His
+visitor's confidence upset him to such a degree that his hands trembled
+as he arranged his scattered papers.  He remembered the presence of
+Boleslas on that same couch, at the same time of the day, forty-eight
+hours before.  How the drama would progress if that madman went away in
+that mood!  He knew only too well that Maitland's brother-in-law had not
+told him all.
+
+"It is absurd," he cried, "it is madness, it is folly!....  You are not
+going to fight about an argument such as you have related to me?  You
+talked at the corner of the street, you exchanged a few angry words, and
+then, suddenly, seconds, a duel....  Ah, it is absurd."
+
+"You forget that I offered him a violent insult in raising my cane to
+him," interrupted Florent, "and since he demands satisfaction I must give
+it to him."
+
+"Do you believe," said the writer, "that the public will be contented
+with those reasons?  Do you think they will not look for the secret
+motives of the duel?  Do I know the story of a woman?....  You see, I ask
+no questions.  I rely upon what you confide in me.  But the world is the
+world, and you will not escape its remarks."
+
+"It is precisely for that reason that I ask absolute discretion of you,"
+replied Florent, "and for that reason that I have come to ask you to
+serve me as a second....  There is no one in whom I trust as implicitly
+as I do in you....  It is the only excuse for my step."
+
+"I thank you," said Dorsenne.  He hesitated a moment.  Then the image of
+Alba, which had haunted him since the previous day, suddenly presented
+itself to his mind.  He recalled the sombre anguish he had surprised in
+the young girl's eyes, then her comforted glance when her mother smiled
+at once upon Gorka and Maitland.  He recalled the anonymous letter and
+the mysterious hatred which impended over Madame Steno.  If the quarrel
+between Boleslas and Florent became known, there was no doubt that it
+would be said generally that Florent was fighting for his brother-in-law
+on account of the Countess.  No doubt, too, that the report would reach
+the poor Contessina.  It was sufficient to cause the writer to reply:
+"Very well!  I accept.  I will serve you.  Do not thank me.  We are
+losing valuable time.  You will require another second.  Of whom have you
+thought?"
+
+"Of no one," returned Florent.  "I confess I have counted on you to aid
+me."
+
+"Let us make a list," said Julien.  "It is the best way, and then cross
+off the names."
+
+Dorsenne wrote down a number of their acquaintances, and they indeed
+crossed them off, according to his expression, so effectually that after
+a minute examination they had rejected all of them.  They were then as
+much perplexed as ever, when suddenly Dorsenne's eyes brightened, he
+uttered a slight exclamation, and said brusquely:
+
+"What an idea!  But it is an idea!....  Do you know the Marquis de
+Montfanon?"  he asked Florent.
+
+"He with one arm?"  replied the latter.  "I saw him once with reference
+to a monument I put up at Saint Louis des Francais."
+
+"He told me of it," said Dorsenne.  "For one of your relatives, was it
+not?"
+
+"Oh, a distant cousin," replied Florent; "one Captain Chapron, killed in
+'forty-nine in the trenches before Rome."
+
+"Now, to our business," cried Dorsenne, rubbing his hands.  "It is
+Montfanon who must be your second.  First of all, he is an experienced
+duellist, while I have never been on the ground.  That is very important.
+You know the celebrated saying: 'It is neither swords nor pistols which
+kill; it is the seconds.'....  And then if the matter has to be arranged,
+he will have more prestige than your servant."
+
+"It is impossible," said Florent; "Marquis de Montfanon....  He will
+never consent.  I do not exist for him."
+
+"That is my affair," cried Dorsenne.  "Let me take the necessary steps in
+my own name, and then if he agrees you can make it in yours....  Only we
+have no time to lose.  Do not leave your house until six o'clock.  By
+that time I shall know upon what to depend."
+
+If, at first, the novelist had felt great confidence in the issue of his
+strange attempt with reference to his old friend, that confidence changed
+to absolute apprehension when he found himself, half an hour later, at
+the house which Marquis Claude Francois occupied in one of the oldest
+parts of Rome, from which location he could obtain an admirable view of
+the Forum.  How many times had Julien come, in the past six months, to
+that Marquis who dived constantly in the sentiment of the past, to gaze
+upon the tragical and grand panorama of the historical scene!  At the
+voice of the recluse, the broken columns rose, the ruined temples were
+rebuilt, the triumphal view was cleared from its mist.  He talked, and
+the formidable epopee of the Roman legend was evoked, interpreted by the
+fervent Christian in that mystical and providential sense, which all,
+indeed, proclaims in that spot, where the Mamertine prison relates the
+trial of St.  Peter, where the portico of the temple of Faustine serves
+as a pediment to the Church of St. Laurent, where Ste.-Marie-Liberatrice
+rises upon the site of the Temple of Vesta--'Sancta Maria, libera nos a
+poenis inferni'--Montfanon always added when he spoke of it, and he
+pointed out the Arch of Titus, which tells of the fulfilment of the
+prophecies of Our Lord against Jerusalem, while, opposite, the groves
+reveal the out lines of a nunnery upon the ruins of the dwellings of the
+Caesars.  And, at the extreme end, the Coliseum recalls to mind the
+ninety thousand spectators come to see the martyrs suffer.
+
+Such were the sights where lived the former pontifical zouave, and, on
+ringing the bell of the third etage, Julien said to himself: "I am a
+simpleton to come to propose to such a man what I have to propose.  Yet
+it is not to be a second in an ordinary duel, but simply to prevent an
+adventure which might cost the lives of two men in the first place, then
+the honor of Madame Steno, and, lastly, the peace of mind of three
+innocent persons, Madame Gorka, Madame Maitland and my little friend
+Alba....  He alone has sufficient authority to arrange all.  It will be
+an act of charity, like any other....  I hope he is at home," he
+concluded, hearing the footstep of the servant, who recognized the
+visitor and who anticipated all questions.
+
+"The Marquis went out this morning before eight o'clock.  He will not
+return until dinner-time."
+
+"Do you know where he has gone?"
+
+"To hear mass in a catacomb, and to be present at a procession," replied
+the footman, who took Dorsenne's card, adding: "The Trappists of Saint
+Calixtus certainly know where the Marquis is.... He lunched with them."
+
+"We shall see," said the young man to himself, somewhat disappointed.
+His carriage rolled in the direction of Porte St. Sebastien, near which
+was the catacomb and the humble dwelling contiguous to it--the last
+morsel of the Papal domains kept by the poor monks.  "Montfanon will have
+taken communion this morning," thought he, "and at the very word duel he
+will listen to nothing more.  However, the matter must be arranged; it
+must be....  What would I not give to know the truth of the scene between
+Gorka and Florent?  By what strange and diabolical ricochet did the
+Palatine hit upon the latter when his business was with the brother-in-
+law?....  Will he be angry that I am his adversary's second?....  Bah!...
+After our conversation of the other day our friendship is ended....
+Good, I am already at the little church of 'Domine, quo vadis.'--[Lord,
+whither art thou going?"]-- I might say to myself: 'Juliane, quo vadis?'
+'To perform an act a little better than the majority of my actions,' I
+might reply."
+
+That impressionable soul which vibrated at the slightest contact was
+touched by the souvenir of one of the innumerable pious legends which
+nineteen centuries of Catholicism have suspended at all the corners of
+Rome and its surrounding districts.  He recalled the touching story of
+St. Peter flying from persecution and meeting our Lord: "Lord, whither
+art thou going?"  asked the apostle.  "To be crucified a second time,"
+replied the Saviour, and Peter was ashamed of his weakness and returned
+to martyrdom.  Montfanon himself had related that episode to the
+novelist, who again began to reflect upon the Marquis's character and the
+best means of approaching him.  He forgot to glance at the vast solitude
+of the Roman suburbs before him, and so deep was his reverie that he
+almost passed unheeded the object of his search.  Another disappointment
+awaited him at the first point in his voyage of exploration.
+
+The monk who came at his ring to open the door of the inclosure
+contiguous to St. Calixtus, informed him that he of whom he was in
+search had left half an hour before.
+
+"You will find him at the Basilica of Saint Neree and Saint Achilles,"
+added the Trappist; "it is the fete of those two saints, and at five
+o'clock there will be a procession in their catacombs....  It is a
+fifteen minutes' ride from here, near the tower Marancia, on the Via
+Ardeatina."
+
+"Shall I miss him a third time?"  thought Dorsenne, alighting from the
+carriage finally, and proceeding on foot to the opening which leads to
+the subterranean Necropolis dedicated to the two saints who were the
+eunuchs of Domitilla, the niece of Emperor Vespasian.  A few ruins and a
+dilapidated house alone mark the spot where once stood the pious
+Princess's magnificent villa.  The gate was open, and, meeting no one who
+could direct him, the young man took several steps in the subterranean
+passage.  He perceived that the long gallery was lighted.  He entered
+there, saying to himself that the row of tapers, lighted every ten paces,
+assuredly marked the line which the procession would follow, and which
+led to the central basilica.  Although his anxiety as to the issue of his
+undertaking was extreme, he could not help being impressed by the
+grandeur of the sight presented by the catacomb thus illuminated.  The
+uneven niches reserved for the dead, asleep in the peace of the Lord for
+so many centuries, made recesses in the corridors and gave them a solemn
+and tragical aspect.  Inscriptions were to be seen there, traced on the
+stone, and all spoke of the great hope which those first Christians had
+cherished, the same which believers of our day cherish.
+
+Julien knew enough of symbols to understand the significance of the
+images between which the persecuted of the primitive church had laid
+their fathers.  They are so touching and so simple!  The anchor
+represents safety in the storm; the gentle dove and the ewe, symbols of
+the soul, which flies away and seeks its shepherd; the phoenix, whose
+wings announce the resurrection.  Then there were the bread and the wine,
+the branches of the olive and the palm.  The silent cemetery was filled
+with a faint aroma of incense, noticed by Dorsenne on entering.  High
+mass, celebrated in the morning, left the sacred perfume diffused among
+those bones, once the forms of human beings who kneeled there amid the
+same holy aroma.  The contrast was strong between that spot, where
+everything spoke of things eternal, and the drama of passion, worldly and
+culpable, the progress of which agitated even Dorsenne.  At that moment
+he appeared to himself in the light of a profaner, although he was
+obeying generous and humane instincts.  He experienced a sense of relief
+when, at a bend in one of the corridors which he had selected from among
+many others, he found himself face to face with a priest, who held in his
+hand a basket filled with the petals of flowers, destined, no doubt, for
+the procession.  Dorsenne inquired of him the way to the Basilica in
+Italian, while the reply was given in perfect French.
+
+"Perhaps you know the Marquis de Montfanon, father?"  asked the novelist.
+
+"I am one of the chaplains of Saint Louis," said the priest, with a
+smile, adding: "You will find him in the Basilica."
+
+"Now, the moment has come," thought Dorsenne, "I must be subtle....
+After all, it is charity I am about to ask him to do....  Here I am.
+I recognize the staircase and the opening above."
+
+A corner of the sky, indeed, was to be seen, and a ray of light entered
+which permitted the writer to distinguish him whom he was seeking among
+the few persons assembled in the ruined chapel, the most venerable of all
+those which encircle Rome with a hidden girdle of sanctuaries.
+Montfanon, too recognizable, alas!  by the empty sleeve of his black
+redingote, was seated on a chair, not very far from the altar, on which
+burned enormous tapers.  Priests and monks were arranging baskets filled
+with petals, like those of the chaplain, whom Dorsenne had just met.  A
+group of three curious visitors commented in whispers upon the paintings,
+scarcely visible on the discolored stucco of the ceiling.  Montfanon was
+entirely absorbed in the book which he held in his one hand.  The large
+features of his face, ennobled and almost transfigured by the ardor of
+devotion, gave him the admirable expression of an old Christian soldier.
+'Bonus miles Christi'--a good soldier of Christ--had been inscribed upon
+the tomb of the chief under whom he had been wounded at Patay.  One would
+have taken him for a guardian layman of the tombs of the martyrs, capable
+of confessing his faith like them, even to the death.  And when Julien
+determined to approach and to touch him lightly on the shoulder, he saw
+that, in the nobleman's clear, blue eyes, ordinarily so gay, and
+sometimes so choleric, sparkled unshed tears.  His voice, too, naturally
+sharp, was softened by the emotion of the thought which his reading, the
+place, the time, the occupation of his day had awakened within him.
+
+"Ah, you here?"  said he to his young friend, without any astonishment.
+"You have come for the procession.  That is well.  You will hear sung the
+lovely lines: 'Hi sunt quos fatue mundus abhorruit."  He pronounced ou as
+u, 'a l'Italienne'; for his liturgic training had been received in Rome.
+"The season is favorable for the ceremonies.  The tourists have gone.
+There will only be people here who pray and who feel, like you....  And
+to feel is half of prayer.  The other half is to believe.  You will
+become one of us.  I have always predicted it.  There is no peace but
+here."
+
+"I would gladly have come only for the procession," replied Dorsenne,
+"but my visit has another motive, dear friend," said he, in a still lower
+tone.  "I have been seeking for you for more than an hour, that you might
+aid me in rendering a great service to several people, in preventing a
+very great misfortune, perhaps."
+
+"I can help you to prevent a very great misfortune?"  repeated Montfanon.
+
+"Yes," replied Dorsenne, "but this is not the place in which to explain
+to you the details of the long and terrible adventure....  At what hour
+is the ceremony?  I will wait for you, and tell it to you on leaving
+here."
+
+"It does not begin until five o'clock-five-thirty," said Montfanon,
+looking at his watch, "and it is now fifteen minutes past four.  Let us
+leave the catacomb, if you wish, and you can repeat your story to me up
+above.  A very great misfortune?  Well," he added, pressing the hand of
+the young man whom, personally, he liked as much as he detested his
+views, "rest assured, my dear child, we will prevent it!"
+
+There was in the manner in which he uttered those words the tranquillity
+of a mind which knows not uneasiness, that of a believer who feels sure
+of always accomplishing all that he wishes to do.  It would not have been
+Montfanon, that is to say, a species of visionary, who loved to argue
+with Dorsenne, because he knew that in spite of all he was understood,
+if he had not continued, as they walked along the lighted corridor,
+while remounting toward daylight:
+
+"If it is all the same to you, sir apologist of the modern world, I
+should like to pause here and ask you frankly: Do you not feel yourself
+more contemporary with all the dead who slumber within these walls than
+with a radical elector or a free-mason deputy?  Do you not feel that if
+these martyrs had not come to pray beneath these vaults eighteen hundred
+years ago, the best part of your soul would not exist?  Where will you
+find a poetry more touching than that of these symbols and of these
+epitaphs?  That admirable De Rossi showed me one at Saint Calixtus last
+year.  My tears flow as I recall it.  'Pete pro Phoebe et pro virginio
+ejus'.  Pray for Phoebus and for--How do you translate the word
+'virginius', the husband who has known only one wife, the virgin husband
+of a virgin spouse?  Your youth will pass, Dorsenne.  You will one day
+feel what I feel, the happiness which is wanting on account of bygone
+errors, and you will comprehend that it is only to be found in Christian
+marriage, whose entire sublimity is summed up in thus prayer: 'Pro
+virginio ejus'....  You will be like me then, and you will find in this
+book," he held up 'l'Eucologe', which he clasped in his hand, "something
+through which to offer up to God your remorse and your regrets.  Do you
+know the hymn of the Holy Sacrament, 'Adoro te, devote'?  No.  Yet you
+are capable of feeling what is contained in these lines.  Listen.  It is
+this idea: That on the cross one sees only the man, not the God; that in
+the host one does not even see the man, and that yet one believes in the
+real presence.
+
+               In cruce latebat sola Deitas.
+               At hic latet simul et humanitas.
+               Ambo tamen credens atque confitens....
+
+"And now this last verse:
+
+               Peto quod petivit latro poenitens!
+
+          [I ask that which the penitent thief asked.]
+
+"What a cry!  Ah, but it is beautiful!  It is beautiful!  What words to
+say in dying!  And what did the poor thief ask, that Dixmas of whom the
+church has made a saint for that one appeal: 'Remember me, Lord, in Thy
+kingdom!'  But we have arrived.  Stoop, that you may not spoil your hat.
+Now, what do you want with me?  You know the motto of the Montfanons:
+'Excelsior et firmior'--Always higher and always firmer.... One can never
+do too many good deeds.  If it be possible, 'present', as we said to the
+rollcall."
+
+A singular mixture of fervor and of good-nature, of enthusiastic
+eloquence and of political or religious fanaticism, was Montfanon.  But
+the good-nature rapidly vanished from his face, at once so haughty and so
+simple, in proportion as Dorsenne's story proceeded.  The writer, indeed,
+did not make the error of at once formulating his proposition.  He felt
+that he could not argue with the pontifical zouave of bygone days.
+Either the latter would look upon it as monstrous and absurd, or he would
+see in it a charitable duty to be accomplished, and then, whatever
+annoyance the matter might occasion him, he would accept it, as he would
+bestow alms.  It was that chord of generosity which Julien, diplomatic
+for once in his life, essayed to touch by his confidence.  Gaining
+authority by their conversation of a few days before, he related all he
+could of Gorka's visit, concealing the fact of that word of honor so
+falsely given, which still oppressed him with a mortal weight.  He told
+how he had soothed the madman, how he conducted him to the station, then
+he described the meeting of the two rivals twenty-four hours later.  He
+dwelt upon Alba's manner that evening and the infamy of the anonymous
+letters written to Madame Steno's discarded lover and to her daughter.
+And after he had reported the mysterious quarrel which had suddenly
+arisen between Gorka and Chapron:
+
+"I, therefore, promised to be his second," he concluded, "because I
+believe it my absolute duty to do all I can to prevent the duel from
+taking place.  Only think of it.  If it should take place, and if one of
+them is killed or wounded, how can the affair be kept secret in this
+gossiping city of Rome?  And what remarks it will call forth!  It is
+evident that these two boys have quarrelled only on account of the
+relations between Madame Steno and Maitland.  By what strange
+coincidence?  Of that I know nothing.
+
+"But there will not be a doubt in public opinion.  And can you not see
+additional anonymous letters written to Alba, Madame Gorka, Madame
+Maitland?....  The men I do not care for....  Two out of three merit all
+that comes to them.  But those innocent creatures--is it not frightful?"
+
+"Frightful, indeed," replied Montfanon; "it is that which renders those
+adulterous adventures so hideous.  There are many people who are affected
+by it besides the guilty ones....  You see that, you who thought that
+society so pleasant, so refined, so interesting, the day before
+yesterday?  But it does no good to recriminate.  I understand.  You have
+come to ask me to advise you in your role of second.  My follies of youth
+will enable me to direct you....  Correctness in the slightest detail and
+no nerves, when one has to arrange a duel.  Oh!  You will have trouble.
+Gorka is mad.  I know the Poles.  They have great faults, but they are
+brave.  Lord, but they are brave!  And little Chapron, I know him, too;
+he has one of those stubborn natures, which would allow their breasts to
+be pierced without saying 'Ouf!'  And 'amour propre'.  He has good
+soldier's blood in his veins, that child, notwithstanding the mixture.
+And with that mixture, do you not see what a hero the first of the three
+Dumas, the mulatto general, has been?....  Yes.  You have there a hard
+job, my good Dorsenne....  You will need another second to assist you,
+who will have the same views as you and--pardon me--more experience,
+perhaps."
+
+"Marquis," replied Julien, whose voice trembled with anxiety, "there is
+only one person in Rome who would be respected enough, venerated by all,
+so that his intervention in that delicate and dangerous matter be
+decisive, one person who could suggest excuses to Chapron, or obtain them
+from the other....  In short, there is only one person who has the
+authority of a hero before whom they will remain silent when he speaks of
+honor, and that person is you."
+
+"I," exclaimed Montfanon, "I, you wish me to be--"
+
+"One of Chapron's seconds," interrupted Dorsenne.  "Yes.  It is true.  I
+come on his part and for that.  Do not tell me what I already know, that
+your position will not allow of such a step.  It is because it is what it
+is, that I thought of coming to you.  Do not tell me that your religious
+principles are opposed to duels.  It is that there may be no duel that I
+conjure you to accept....  It is essential that it does not take place.
+I swear to you, that the peace of too many innocent persons is
+concerned."
+
+And he continued, calling into service at that moment all the
+intelligence and all the eloquence of which he was capable.  He could
+follow on the face of the former duellist, who had become the most ardent
+of Catholics and the most monomaniacal of old bachelors, twenty diverse
+expressions.  At length Montfanon laid his hand with veritable solemnity
+on his interlocutor's arm and said to him:
+
+"Listen, Dorsenne, do not tell me any more....  I consent to what you ask
+of me, but on two conditions.  They are these: The first is that Monsieur
+Chapron will trust absolutely to my judgment, whatsoever it may be; the
+second is that you will retire with me if these gentlemen persist in
+their childishness....  I promise to aid you in fulfilling a mission of
+charity, and not anything else; I repeat, not anything else.  Before
+bringing Monsieur Chapron to me you will repeat to him what I have said,
+word for word."
+
+"Word for word," replied the other, adding: "He is at home awaiting the
+result of my undertaking."
+
+"Then," said the Marquis, "I will return to Rome with you at once.  He
+has probably already received Gorka's seconds, and if they really wish to
+arrange a duel the rule is not to put it off....  I shall not see my
+procession, but to prevent misfortune is to do a good deed, and it is one
+way of praying to God."
+
+"Let me press your hand, my noble friend," said Dorsenne; "never have I
+better understood what a truly brave man is."
+
+When the writer alighted, three-quarters of an hour later, at the house
+on the Rue Leopardi, after having seen Montfanon home, he felt sustained
+by such moral support that was almost joyous.  He found Florent in his
+species of salon-smoking-room, arranging his papers with methodical
+composure.
+
+"He accepts," were the first words the young men uttered, almost
+simultaneously, while Dorsenne repeated Montfanon's words.
+
+"I depend absolutely on you two," replied the other.  "I have no thirst
+for Monsieur de Gorka's blood....  But that gentleman must not accuse the
+grandson of Colonel Chapron of cowardice....  For that I rely upon the
+relative of General Dorsenne and on the old soldier of Charette."
+
+As he spoke, Florent handed a letter to Julien, who asked: "From whom is
+this?"
+
+"This," said Florent, "is a letter addressed to you, on this very table
+half an hour ago by Baron Hafner....  There is some news.  I have
+received my adversary's seconds.  The Baron is one, Ardea the other."
+
+"Baron Hafner!"  exclaimed Dorsenne.  "What a singular choice!"  He
+paused, and he and Florent exchanged glances.  They understood one
+another without speaking.  Boleslas could not have found a surer means of
+informing Madame Steno as to the plan he intended to employ in his
+vengeance.  On the other hand, the known devotion of the Baron for the
+Countess gave one chance more for a pacific solution, at the same time
+that the fanaticism of Montfanon would be confronted with Fanny's father,
+an episode of comedy suddenly cast across Gorka's drama of jealousy.
+
+Julien resumed with a smile: "You must watch Montfanon's face when we
+inform him of those two witnesses.  He is a man of the fifteenth century,
+you know, a Montluc, a Duc d'Alba, a Philippe II.  I do not know which he
+detests the most, the Freemasons, the Free-thinkers, the Protestants, the
+Jews, or the Germans.  And as this obscure and tortuous Hafner is a
+little of everything, he has vowed hatred against him!....  Leaving that
+out of the question, he suspects him of being a secret agent in the
+service of the Triple Alliance!  But let us see the letter."
+
+He opened and glanced through it.  "This craftiness serves for something,
+it is equivalent almost to kindness.  He, too, has felt that it is
+necessary to end our affair, were it only to avoid scandal.  He appoints
+a meeting at his house between six and seven o'clock with me and your
+second.  Come, time is flying.  You must come to the Marquis to make your
+request officially.  Begin this way.  Obtain his promise before
+mentioning Hafner's name.  I know him.  He will not retract his word.
+But it is just."
+
+The two friends found Montfanon awaiting them in his office, a large room
+filled with books, from which could be obtained a fine view of the
+panorama of the Forum, more majestic still on that afternoon when the
+shadows of the columns and arches grew longer on the sidewalk.  The room
+with its brick floor had no other comfort than a carpet under the large
+desk littered with papers--no doubt fragments of the famous work on the
+relations of the French nobility and the Church.  A crucifix stood upon
+the desk.  On the wall were two engravings, that of Monseigneur Pie, the
+holy Bishop of Poitiers, and that of General de Sonis, on foot, with his
+wooden leg, and a painting representing St. Francois, the patron of the
+house.  Those were the only artistic decorations of the modest
+habitation.  The nobleman often said: "I have freed myself from the
+tyranny of objects."  But with that marvellous background of grandiose
+ruins and that sky, the simple spot was an incomparable retreat in which
+to end in meditation and renouncement a life already shaken by the
+tempests of the senses and of the world.
+
+The hermit of that Thebaide rose to greet his two visitors, and pointing
+out to Chapron an open volume on his table, he said to him:
+
+"I was thinking of you.  It is Chateauvillars's book on duelling.  It
+contains a code which is not very complete.  I recommend it to you,
+however, if ever you have to fulfil a mission like ours," and he pointed
+to Dorsenne and himself, with a gesture which constituted the most
+amicable of acceptations.  "It seems you had too hasty a hand....  Ha!
+ha!  Do not defend yourself.  Such as you see me, at twenty-one I threw
+a plate in the face of a gentleman who bantered Comte de Chambord before
+a number of Jacobins at a table d'hote in the provinces.  See," continued
+he, raising his white moustache and disclosing a scar, "this is the
+souvenir.  The fellow was once a dragoon; he proposed the sabre.  I
+accepted, and this is what I got, while he lost two fingers....  That
+will not happen to us this time at least....  Dorsenne has told you our
+conditions."
+
+"And I replied that I was sure I could not intrust my honor to better
+hands," replied Florent.
+
+"Cease!"  replied Montfanon, with a gesture of satisfaction.  "No more
+phrases.  It is well.  Moreover, I judged you, sir, from the day on which
+you spoke to me at Saint Louis.  You honor your dead.  That is why I
+shall be happy, very happy, to be useful to you."
+
+"Now tell me very clearly the recital you made to Dorsenne."
+
+Then Florent related concisely that which had taken place between him and
+Gorka--that is to say, their argument and his passion, carefully omitting
+the details in which the name of his brother-in-law would be mixed.
+
+"The deuce!" said Montfanon, familiarly, "the affair looks bad, very
+bad....  You see, a second is a confessor.  You have had a discussion in
+the street with Monsieur Gorka, but about what?  You can not reply?  What
+did he say to you to provoke you to the point of wishing to strike him?
+That is the first key to the position."
+
+"I can not reply," said Florent.
+
+"Then," resumed the Marquis, after a silence, "there only remains to
+assert that the gesture on your part was--how shall I say?  Unmeditated
+and unfinished.  That is the second key to the position....  You have no
+special grudge against Monsieur Gorka?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Nor he against you?"
+
+"None."
+
+"The affair looks better," said Montfanon, who was silent for a time, to
+resume, in the voice of a man who is talking to himself, "Count Gorka
+considers himself offended?  But is there any offence?  It is that which
+we should discuss....  An assault or the threat of an assault would
+afford occasion for an arrangement....  But a gesture restrained, since
+it was not carried into effect....  Do not interrupt me," he continued.
+
+"I am trying to understand it clearly....  We must arrive at a solution.
+We shall have to express our regret, leaving the field open to another
+reparation, if Gorka requires it....  And he will not require it.  The
+entire problem now rests on the choice of his seconds....  Whom will he
+select?"
+
+"I have already received visits from them," said Florent.  "Half an hour
+ago.  One is Prince d'Ardea."
+
+"He is a gentleman," replied Montfanon.  "I shall not be sorry to see him
+to tell him my feelings with regard to the public sale of his palace, to
+which he should never have allowed himself to be driven....  And the
+other?"
+
+"The other?"  interrupted Dorsenne.  "Prepare yourself for a blow....
+I swear to you I did not know his name when I went in search of you at
+the catacomb.  It is--in short--it is Baron Hafner."
+
+"Baron Hafner!"  exclaimed Montfanon.  "Boleslas Gorka, the descendant of
+the Gorkas, of that grand Luc Gorka who was Palatine of Posen and Bishop
+of Cujavie, has chosen for his second Monsieur Justus Hafner, the thief,
+the scoundrel, who had the disgraceful suit!....  No, Dorsenne, do not
+tell me that; it is not possible."  Then, with the air of a combatant:
+"We will challenge him; that is all, for his lack of honor.  I take it
+upon myself, as well as to tell of his deeds to Boleslas.  We will spend
+an enjoyable quarter of an hour there, I promise you."
+
+"You will not do that," said Dorsenne, quickly.  "First, with regard to
+official honor, there is only one law, is there not?  Hafner was
+acquitted and his adversaries condemned.  You told me so the other
+day....  And then, you forget the conversation we just had."
+
+"Pardon," interrupted Florent, in his turn.  "Monsieur de Montfanon, in
+promising to assist me, has done me a great honor, which I shall never
+forget.  If there should result from it any annoyance to him I should be
+deeply grieved, and I am ready to release him from his promise."
+
+"No," said the Marquis, after another silence.  "I will not take it
+back."....  He was so magnanimous when his two or three hobbies were not
+involved that the slightest delicacy awoke an echo in him.  He again
+extended his hand to Chapron and continued, but with an accent which
+betrayed suppressed irritation: "After all, it does not concern us if
+Monsieur Gorka has chosen to be represented in an affair of honor by one
+whom he should not even salute....  You will, then, give our two names to
+those two gentlemen....  and Dorsenne and I will await them, as is the
+rule....  It is their place to come, since they are the proxies of the
+person insulted."
+
+"They have already arranged a meeting for this evening," replied
+Chapron.
+
+"What's arranged?  With whom?  For whom?"  exclaimed Montfanon, a prey to
+a fresh access of choler.  "With you?....  For us?....  Ah, I do not like
+such conduct where such grave matters are concerned....  The code is
+absolute on that subject....  Their challenge once made, to which you,
+Monsieur Chapron, have to reply by yes or no, these gentlemen should
+withdraw immediately....  It is not your fault, it is Ardea's, who has
+allowed that dabbler in spurious dividends to perform his part of
+intriguer....  But we will rectify all in the right way, which is the
+French....  And where is the rendezvous?"
+
+"I will read to you the letter which the Baron left for me with Florent,"
+said Dorsenne, who indeed read the very courteous note Hafner had written
+to him, in which he excused himself for choosing his own house as a
+rendezvous for the four witnesses.  "One can not ignore so polite a
+note."
+
+"There are too many dear sirs, and too many compliments," said
+Montfanon, brusquely.  "Sit here," he continued, relinquishing his
+armchair to Florent, "and inform the two men of our names and address,
+adding that we are at their service and ignoring the first inaccuracy on
+their part.  Let them return!....  And you, Dorsenne, since you are
+afraid of wounding that gentleman, I will not prevent you from going to
+his house--personally, do you hear--to warn him that Monsieur Chapron,
+here present, has chosen for his first second a disagreeable person, an
+old duellist, anything you like, but who desires strict form, and, first
+of all, a correct call made upon us by them, in order to settle
+officially upon a rendezvous."
+
+"What did I tell you?"  asked Dorsenne, when he with Florent descended
+Montfanon's staircase.  "He is a different man since you mentioned the
+Baron to him.  The discussion between them will be a hot one.  I hope he
+will not spoil all by his folly.  On my honor, if I had guessed whom
+Gorka would choose I should not have suggested to you the old leaguer,
+as I call him."
+
+"And I, if Monsieur de Montfanon should make me fight at five paces,"
+replied Chapron, with a laugh, "would be grateful to you for having
+brought me into relations with him.  He is a whole-souled man, as was my
+poor father, as is Maitland.  I adore such people."
+
+"Is there no means of having at once heart and head?"  said Julien to
+himself, on reaching the Palais Savorelli, where Hafner lived, and
+recalling the Marquis's choler on the one hand, and on the other the
+egotism of Maitland, of which Florent's last words reminded him.  His
+apprehension of the afternoon returned in a greater degree, for he knew
+Montfanon to be very sensitive on certain points, and it was one of those
+points which would be wounded to the quick by the forced relations with
+Gorka's witnesses.  "I do not trust Hafner," thought he; "if the cunning
+fellow has accepted the mission utterly contrary to his tastes, his
+habits, almost to his age, it must be to connive with his future son-in-
+law and to conciliate all.  Perhaps even the marriage had been already
+settled?  I hope not.  The Marquis would be so furious he would require
+the duel to a letter."
+
+The young man had guessed aright.  Chance, which often brings one event
+upon another, decreed that Ardea, at the very moment that he was
+deliberating with Gorka as to the choice of another second, received a
+note from Madame Steno containing simply these words: "Your proposal has
+been made, and the answer is yes.  May I be the first to embrace you,
+Simpaticone?"
+
+An ingenious idea occurred to him; to have arranged by his future father-
+in-law the quarrel which he considered at once absurd, useless, and
+dangerous.  The eagerness with which Gorka had accepted Hafner's name,
+proved, as Dorsenne and Florent had divined, his desire that his
+perfidious mistress should be informed of his doings.  As for the Baron,
+he consented--oh, irony of coincidences!--by saying to Peppino Ardea
+words almost identical with those which Montfanon had uttered to
+Dorsenne:
+
+"We will draw up, in advance, an official plan of conciliation, and, if
+the matter can not be arranged, we will withdraw."
+
+It was in such terms that the memorable conversation was concluded, a
+conversation truly worthy of the combinazione which poor Fanny's marriage
+represented.  There had been less question of the marriage itself than
+that of the services to be rendered to the infidelity of the woman who
+presided over the sorry traffic!  Is it necessary to add that neither
+Ardea nor his future father-in-law had made the shadow of an allusion to
+the true side of the affair?  Perhaps at any other time the excessive
+prudence innate to the Baron and his care never to compromise himself
+would have deterred him from the possible annoyances which might arise
+from an interference in the adventure of an exasperated and discarded
+lover.  But his joy at the thought that his daughter was to become a
+Roman princess--and with what a name!--had really turned his brain.
+
+He had, however, the good sense to say to the stunned Ardea: "Madame
+Steno must know nothing of it, at least beforehand.  She would not fail
+to inform Madame Gorka, and God knows of what the latter would be
+capable."
+
+In reality, the two men were convinced that it was essential, directly or
+indirectly, to beware of warning Maitland.  They employed the remainder
+of the afternoon in paying their visit to Florent, then in sending
+telegram after telegram to announce the betrothal, with which charming
+Fanny seemed more satisfied since Cardinal Guerillot had consented, at
+simply a word from her, to preside at her baptism.  The Baron, in the
+face of that consent, could not restrain his joy.  He loved his daughter,
+strange man, somewhat in the manner in which a breeder loves a favorite
+horse which has won the Grand Prix for him.  When Dorsenne arrived,
+bearing Chapron's note and Montfanon's message, he was received with a
+cordiality and a complaisance which at once enlightened him upon the
+result of the matrimonial intrigue of which Alba had spoken to him.
+
+"Anything that your friend wishes, my dear sir....  Is it not so,
+Peppino?"  said the Baron, seating himself at his table.  "Will you
+dictate the letter yourself, Dorsenne?....  See, is this all right?  You
+will understand with what sentiments we have accepted this mission when
+you learn that Fanny is betrothed to Prince Ardea, here present.  The
+news dates from three o'clock.  So you are the first to know it, is he
+not, Peppino?"  He had drawn up not less than two hundred despatches.
+"Return whenever you like with the Marquis....  I simply ask, under the
+circumstances, that the interview take place, if it be possible, between
+six and seven, or between nine and ten, in order not to interfere with
+our little family dinner."
+
+"Let us say nine o'clock," said Dorsenne.  "Monsieur de Montfanon is
+somewhat formal.  He would like to have your reply by letter."
+
+"Prince Ardea to marry Mademoiselle Hafner!"  That cry which the news
+brought by Julien wrested from Montfanon was so dolorous that the young
+man did not think of laughing.  He had thought it wiser to prepare his
+irascible friend, lest the Baron might make some allusion to the grand
+event during the course of the conversation, and that the other might not
+make some impulsive remark.
+
+"Did I not tell you that the girl's Catholicism was a farce?  Did I not
+tell Monseigneur Guerillot?  This was what she aimed at all those years,
+with such perfect hypocrisy?  It was the Palais Castagna.  And she will
+enter there as mistress!....  She will bring there the dishonor of that
+pirated gold on which there are stains of blood!  Warn them, that they do
+not speak to me of it, or I will not answer for myself....  The second of
+a Gorka, the father-in-law of an Ardea, he triumphs, the thief who should
+by rights be a convict!....  But we shall see.  Will not all the other
+Roman princes who have no blots upon their escutcheons, the Orsinis, the
+Colonnas, the Odeschalchis, the Borgheses, the Rospigliosis, not combine
+to prevent this monstrosity?  Nobility is like love, those who buy those
+sacred things degrade them in paying for them, and those to whom they are
+given are no better than mire....  Princess d'Ardea!  That creature!
+Ah, what a disgrace!....  But we must remember our engagement relative to
+that brave young Chapron.  The boy pleases me; first, because very
+probably he is going to fight for some one else and out of a devotion
+which I can not very well understand!  It is devotion all the same, and
+it is chivalry!....  He desires to prevent that miserable Gorka from
+calling forth a scandal which would have warned his sister....  And then,
+as I told him, he respects the dead....  Let us....  I have my wits no
+longer about me, that intelligence has so greatly disturbed me....
+Princess d'Ardea!....  Well, write that we will be at Monsieur Hafner's
+at nine o'clock....  I do not want any of those people at my house....
+At yours it would not be proper; you are too young.  And I prefer going
+to the father-in-law's rather than to the son-inlaw's.  The rascal has
+made a good bargain in buying what he has bought with his stolen
+millions.  But the other....  And his great-great-uncle might have been
+Jules Second, Pie Fifth, Hildebrand; he would have sold all just the
+same!....  He can not deceive himself!  He has heard the suit against
+that man spoken of!  He knows whence come those millions!  He has heard
+their family, their lives spoken of!  And he has not been inspired with
+too great a horror to accept the gold of that adventurer.  Does he not
+know what a name is?  Our name!  It is ourselves, our honor, in the
+mouths, in the thoughts, of others!  How happy I am, Dorsenne, to have
+been fifty-two years of age last month.  I shall be gone before having
+seen what you will see, the agony of all the aristocrats and royalties.
+It was only in blood that they fell!  But they do not fall.  Alas!  They
+fix themselves upon the ground, which is the saddest of all.  Still, what
+matters it?  The monarchy, the nobility, and the Church are everlasting.
+The people who disregard them will die, that is all.  Come, write your
+letter, which I will sign.  Send it away, and you will dine with me.  We
+must go into the den provided with an argument which will prevent this
+duel, and sustaining our part toward our client.  There must be an
+arrangement which I would accept myself.  I like him, I repeat."
+
+The excitement which began to startle Dorsenne was only augmented during
+dinner, so much the more so as, on discussing the conditions of that
+arrangement he hoped to bring about, the recollection of his terrible
+youth filled the thoughts and the discourse of the former duellist.  Was
+it, indeed, the same personage who recited the verses of a hymn in the
+catacombs a few hours before?  It only required the feudal in him to be
+reawakened to transform him.  The fire in his eyes and the color in his
+face betrayed that the duel in which he had thought best to engage, out
+of charity, intoxicated him on his own statement.  It was the old
+amateur, the epicure of the sword, very ungovernable, which stirred
+within that man of faith, in whom passion had burned and who had loved
+all excitement, including that of danger, as to-day he loved his ideas,
+as he loved his flagi mmoderately.  He no longer thought of the three
+women to be spared suspicion, nor of the good deed to be accomplished.
+He saw all his old friends and their talent for fighting, the thrusts of
+this one, the way another had of striking, the composure of a third, and
+then this refrain interrupted constantly his warlike anecdotes: "But why
+the deuce has Gorka chosen that Hafner for his second?....  It is
+incomprehensible."....  On entering the carriage which was to bear them
+to their interview, he heard Dorsenne say to the coachman: "Palais
+Savorelli."
+
+"That is the final blow," said he, raising his arm and clenching his
+fist.  "The adventurer occupies the Pretender's house, the house of the
+Stuarts."....  He repeated: "The house of the Stuarts!"  and then lapsed
+into a silence which the writer felt to be laden with more storminess
+than his last denunciation.  He did not emerge from his meditations until
+ushered into the salon of the ci-devant jeweller, now a grand seigneur--
+into one of the salons, rather, for there were five.  There Montfanon
+began to examine everything around him, with an air of such contempt and
+pride that, notwithstanding his anxiety, Dorsenne could not resist
+laughing and teasing him by saying:
+
+"You will not pretend to say that there are no pretty things here?  These
+two paintings by Moroni, for example?"
+
+"Nothing that is appropriate," replied Montfanon.  "Yes, they are two
+magnificent portraits of ancestors, and this man has no ancestors!....
+There are some weapons in that cupboard, and he has never touched a
+sword!  And there is a piece of tapestry representing the miracles of the
+loaves, which is a piece of audacity!  You may not believe me, Dorsenne,
+but it is making me ill to be here....  I am reminded of the human toil,
+of the human soul in all these objects, and to end here, paid for how?
+Owned by whom?  Close your eyes and think of Schroeder and of the others
+whom you do not know.  Look into the hovels where there is neither
+furniture, fire, nor bread.  Then, open your eyes and look at this."
+
+"And you, my dear friend," replied the novelist, "I conjure you to think
+of our conversation in the catacombs, to think of the three ladies in
+whose names I besought you to aid Florent."
+
+"Thank you," said Montfanon, passing his hand over his brow, "I promise
+you to be calm."
+
+He had scarcely uttered those words when the door opened, disclosing to
+view another room, lighted also, and which, to judge by the sound of
+voices, contained several persons.  No doubt Madame Steno and Alba,
+thought Julien; and the Baron entered, accompanied by Peppino Ardea.
+While going through the introductions, the writer was struck by the
+contrast offered between his three companions.  Hafner and Ardea in
+evening dress, with buttonhole bouquets, had the open and happy faces of
+two citizens who had clear consciences.  The usually sallow complexion of
+the business man was tinged with excitement, his eyes, as a rule so hard,
+were gentler.  As for the Prince, the same childish carelessness lighted
+up his jovial face, while the hero of Patay, with his coarse boots, his
+immense form enveloped in a somewhat shabby redingote, exhibited a face
+so contracted that one would have thought him devoured by remorse.
+A dishonest intendant, forced to expose his accounts to generous and
+confiding masters, could not have had a face more gloomy or more anxious.
+He had, moreover, put his one arm behind his back in a manner so formal
+that neither of the two men who entered offered him their hands.  That
+appearance was without doubt little in keeping with what the father and
+the fiance of Fanny had expected; for there was, when the four men were
+seated, a pause which the Baron was the first to break.  He began in his
+measured tones, in a voice which handles words as the weight of a usurer
+weighs gold pieces to the milligramme:
+
+"Gentlemen, I believe I shall express our common sentiment in first of
+all establishing a point which shall govern our meeting....  We are here,
+it is understood, to bring about the work of reconciliation between two
+men, two gentlemen whom we know, whom we esteem--I might better say, whom
+we all love."....  He turned, in pronouncing those words, successively to
+each of his three listeners, who all bowed, with the exception of the
+Marquis.  Hafner examined the nobleman, with his glance accustomed to
+read the depths of the mind in order to divine the intentions.  He saw
+that Chapron's first witness was a troublesome customer, and he
+continued: "That done, I beg to read to you this little paper."  He drew
+from his pocket a sheet of folded paper and placed upon the end of his
+nose his famous gold 'lorgnon': "It is very trifling, one of those
+directives, as Monsieur de Moltke says, which serve to guide operations,
+a plan of action which we will modify after discussion.  In short, it is
+a landmark that we may not launch into space."
+
+"Pardon, sir," interrupted Montfanon, whose brows contracted still more
+at the mention of the celebrated field-marshal, and, stopping by a
+gesture the reader, who, in his surprise, dropped his lorgnon upon the
+table on which his elbow rested.  "I regret very much," he continued, "to
+be obliged to tell you that Monsieur Dorsenne and I"--here he turned to
+Dorsenne, who made an equivocal gesture of vexation"--can not admit the
+point of view in which you place yourself....  You claim that we are here
+to arrange a reconciliation.  That is possible....  I concede that it is
+desirable....  But I know nothing of it and, permit me to say, you do not
+know any more.  I am here--we are here, Monsieur Dorsenne and I, to
+listen to the complaints which Count Gorka has commissioned you to
+formulate to Monsieur Florent Chapron's proxies.  Formulate those
+complaints, and we will discuss them.  Formulate the reparation you claim
+in the name of your client and we will discuss it.  The papers will
+follow, if they follow at all, and, once more, neither you nor we know
+what will be the issue of this conversation, nor should we know it,
+before establishing the facts."
+
+"There is some misunderstanding, sir," said Ardea, whom Montfanon's words
+had irritated somewhat.  He could not, any more than Hafner, understand
+the very simple, but very singular, character of the Marquis, and he
+added: "I have been concerned in several 'rencontres'--four times as
+second, and once as principal--and I have seen employed without
+discussion the proceeding which Baron Hafner has just proposed to you,
+and which of itself is, perhaps, only a more expeditious means of
+arriving at what you very properly call the establishment of facts."
+
+"I was not aware of the number of your affairs, sir," replied Montfanon,
+still more nervous since Hafner's future son-in-law joined in the
+conversation; "but since it has pleased you to tell us I will take the
+liberty of saying to you that I have fought seven times, and that I have
+been a second fourteen....  It is true that it was at an epoch when the
+head of your house was your father, if I remember right, the deceased
+Prince Urban, whom I had the honor of knowing when I served in the
+zouaves.  He was a fine Roman nobleman, and did honor to his name.  What
+I have told you is proof that I have some competence in the matter of a
+duel....  Well, we have always held that seconds were constituted to
+arrange affairs that could be arranged, but also to settle affairs, as
+well as they can, that seem incapable of being arranged.  Let us now
+inquire into the matter; we are here for that, and for nothing else."
+
+"Are these gentlemen of that opinion?"  asked Hafner in a conciliatory
+voice, turning first to Dorsenne, then to Ardea: "I do not adhere to my
+method," he continued, again folding his paper.  He slipped it into his
+vest-pocket and continued: "Let us establish the facts, as you say.
+Count Gorka, our friend, considers himself seriously, very seriously,
+offended by Monsieur Florent Chapron in the course of the discussion in a
+public street.  Monsieur Chapron was carried away, as you know, sirs,
+almost to--what shall I say?--hastiness, which, however, was not followed
+by consequences, thanks to the presence of mind of Monsieur Gorka....
+But, accomplished or not, the act remains.  Monsieur Gorka was insulted,
+and he requires satisfaction....  I do not believe there is any doubt
+upon that point which is the cause of the affair, or, rather, the whole
+affair."
+
+"I again ask your pardon, sir," said Montfanon, dryly, who no longer took
+pains to conceal his anger, "Monsieur Dorsenne and I can not accept your
+manner of putting the question....  You say that Monsieur Chapron's
+hastiness was not followed by consequences by reason of Monsieur Gorka's
+presence of mind.  We claim that there was only on the part of Monsieur
+Chapron a scarcely indicated gesture, which he himself restrained.  In
+consequence you attribute to Monsieur Gorka the quality of the insulted
+party; you are over-hasty.  He is merely the plaintiff, up to this time.
+It is very different."
+
+"But by rights he is the insulted party," interrupted Ardea.  "Restrained
+or not, it constitutes a threat of assault.  I did not wish to claim to
+be a duellist by telling you of my engagements.  But this is the A B C of
+the 'codice cavalleresco', if the insult be followed by an assault, he
+who receives the blow is the offended party, and the threat of an assault
+is equivalent to an actual assault.  The offended party has the choice of
+a duel, weapons and conditions.  Consult your authors and ours:
+Chateauvillars, Du Verger, Angelini and Gelli, all agree."
+
+"I am sorry for their sakes," said Montfanon, and he looked at the Prince
+with a contraction of the brows almost menacing, "but it is an opinion
+which does not hold good generally, nor in this particular case.  The
+proof is that a duellist, as you have just said," his voice trembled as
+he emphasized the insolence offered by the other, "a bravo, to use the
+expression of your country, would only have to commit a justifiable
+murder by first insulting him at whom he aims with rude words.  The
+insulted person replies by a voluntary gesture, on the signification of
+which one may be mistaken, and you will admit that the bravo is the
+offended party, and that he has the choice of weapons."
+
+"But, Marquis," resumed Hafner, with evident disgust, so greatly did the
+cavilling and the ill-will of the nobleman irritate him, "where are you
+wandering to?  What do you mean by bringing up chicanery of this sort?"
+
+"Chicanery!"  exclaimed Montfanon, half rising.
+
+"Montfanon!"  besought Dorsenne, rising in his turn and forcing the
+terrible man to be seated.
+
+"I retract the word," said the Baron, "if it has insulted you.  Nothing
+was farther from my thoughts....  I repeat that I apologize, Marquis....
+But, come, tell us what you want for your client, that is very simple....
+And then we will do all we can to make your demands agree with those of
+our client.... It is a trifling matter to be adjusted."
+
+"No, sir," said Montfanon, with insolent severity, "it is justice to be
+rendered, which is very different.  What we, Monsieur Dorsenne and I,
+desire," he continued in a severe voice, "is this: Count Gorka has
+gravely insulted Monsieur Chapron.  Let me finish," he added upon a
+simultaneous gesture on the part of Ardea and of Hafner.  "Yes, sirs,
+Monsieur Chapron, known to us all for his perfect courtesy, must have
+been very gravely insulted, even to make the improper gesture of which
+you just spoke.  But it was agreed upon between these two gentlemen, for
+reasons of delicacy which we had to accept--it was agreed, I say, that
+the nature of the insult offered by Monsieur Gorka to Monsieur Chapron
+should not be divulged....  We have the right, however, and I may add the
+duty devolves upon us, to measure the gravity of that insult by the
+excess of anger aroused in Monsieur Chapron....  I conclude from it that,
+to be just, the plan of reconciliation, if we draw it up, should contain
+reciprocal concessions.  Count Gorka will retract his words and Monsieur
+Chapron apologize for his hastiness."
+
+"It is impossible," exclaimed the Prince; "Gorka will never accept that."
+
+"You, then, wish to have them fight the duel?"  groaned Hafner.
+
+"And why not?"  said Montfanon, exasperated.  "It would be better than
+for the one to nurse his insults and the other his blow."
+
+"Well, sirs," replied the Baron, rising after the silence which followed
+that imprudent whim of a man beside himself, "we will confer again with
+our client.  If you wish, we will resume this conversation tomorrow at
+ten o'clock, say here or in any place convenient to you....  You will
+excuse me, Marquis.  Dorsenne has no doubt told you under what
+circumstances--"
+
+"Yes, he has told me," interrupted Montfanon, who again glanced at the
+Prince, and in a manner so mournful that the latter felt himself blush
+beneath the strange glance, at which, however, it was impossible to feel
+angry.  Dorsenne had only time to cut short all other explanations by
+replying to Justus Hafner himself.
+
+"Would you like the meeting at my house?  We shall have more chance to
+escape remarks."
+
+"You have done well to change the place," said Montfanon, five minutes
+later, on entering the carriage with his young friend.
+
+They had descended the staircase without speaking, for the brave and
+unreasonable Marquis regretted his strangely provoking attitude of the
+moment before.
+
+"What would you have?"  he added.  "The profaned palace, the insolent
+luxury of that thief, the Prince who has sold his family, the Baron whose
+part is so sinister.  I could no longer contain myself!  That Baron,
+above all, with his directives!  Words to repeat when one is German,
+to a French soldier who fought in 1870, like those words of Monsieur de
+Moltke!  His terms, too, applied to honor and that abominable politeness
+in which there is servility and insolence!.... Still, I am not satisfied
+with myself.  I am not at all satisfied."
+
+There was in his voice so much good-nature, such evident remorse at not
+having controlled himself in so grave a situation, that Dorsenne pressed
+his hand instead of reproaching him, as he said:
+
+"It will do to-morrow.... We will arrange all; it has only been
+postponed."
+
+"You say that to console me," said the Marquis, "but I know it was very
+badly managed.  And it is my fault!  Perhaps we shall have no other
+service to render our brave Chapron than to arrange a duel for him under
+the most dangerous conditions.  Ah, but I became inopportunely angry!....
+But why the deuce did Gorka select such a second?  It is
+incomprehensible!....  Did you see what the cabalistic word gentleman
+means to those rascals: Steal, cheat, assassinate, but have carriages
+perfectly appointed, a magnificent mansion, well-served dinners, and fine
+clothes!....  No, I have suffered too much!  Ah, it is not right; and on
+what a day, too?  God!  That the old man might die!"....  he added, in a
+voice so low that his companion did not hear his words.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity
+Despotism natural to puissant personalities
+Egyptian tobacco, mixed with opium and saltpetre
+Have never known in the morning what I would do in the evening
+I no longer love you
+Imagine what it would be never to have been born
+Melancholy problem of the birth and death of love
+Only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood
+Words are nothing; it is the tone in which they are uttered
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Cosmopolis, v2
+by Paul Bourget
+
+
+
+
+
+
+COSMOPOLIS
+
+By PAUL BOURGET
+
+
+
+BOOK 3.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A LITTLE RELATIVE OF IAGO
+
+The remorse which Montfanon expressed so naively, once acknowledged to
+himself, increased rapidly in the honest man's heart.  He had reason to
+say from the beginning that the affair looked bad.  A quarrel, together
+with assault, or an attempt at assault, would not be easily set right.
+It required a diplomatic miracle.  The slightest lack of self-possession
+on the part of the seconds is equivalent to a catastrophe.  As happens in
+such circumstances, events are hurried, and the pessimistic anticipations
+of the irritable Marquis were verified almost as soon as he uttered them.
+Dorsenne and he had barely left the Palais Savorelli when Gorka arrived.
+The energy with which he repulsed the proposition of an arrangement which
+would admit of excuses on his part, served prudent Hafner, and the not
+less prudent Ardea, as a signal for withdrawal.  It was too evident to
+the two men that no reconciliation would result from a collision of such
+a madman with a personage so difficult as the most authorized of
+Florent's proxies had shown himself to be.  They then asked Gorka to
+relieve them from their duty.  They had too plausible an excuse in
+Fanny's betrothal for Boleslas to refuse to release them.  That
+retirement was a second catastrophe.  In his impatience to find other
+seconds who would be firm, Gorka hastened to the Cercle de la Chasse.
+Chance willed that he should meet with two of his comrades--a Marquis
+Cibo, Roman, and a Prince Pietrapertoso, Neapolitan, who were assuredly
+the best he could have chosen to hasten the simplest affair to its worst
+consequences.
+
+Those two young men of the best Italian families, both very intelligent,
+very loyal and very good, belonged to that particular class which is to
+be met with in Vienna, Madrid, St. Petersburg, as in Milan and in Rome,
+of foreign club-men hypnotized by Paris.  And what a Paris!  That of
+showy and noisy fetes, that which passes the morning in practising the
+sports in fashion, the afternoons in racing, in frequenting fencing-
+schools, the evening at the theatre and the night at the gaming-table!
+That Paris which emigrates by turns, according to the season, to Monte
+Carlo for the 'Tir aux Pigeons', to Deauville for the race week, to Aix-
+les-Bains for the baccarat season; that Paris which has its own customs,
+its own language, its own history, even its own cosmopolitanism, for it
+exercises over certain minds, throughout Europe, so despotic a rule that
+Cibo, for example, and his friend Pietrapertoso never opened a French
+journal that was not Parisian.
+
+They sought the short paragraphs in which were related, in detail, the
+doings of the demi-monde, the last supper given by some well-known
+viveur, the details of some large party in such and such a fashionable
+club, the result of a shooting match, or of a fencing match between
+celebrated fencers!  There were between them subjects of conversation of
+which they never wearied; to know if spirituelle Gladys Harvey was more
+elegant than Leona d'Astri, if Machault made "counters" as rapid as those
+of General Garnier, if little Lautrec would adhere or would not adhere to
+the game he was playing.  Imprisoned in Rome by the scantiness of their
+means, and also by the wishes, the one of his uncle, the other of his
+grandfather, whose heirs they were, their entire year was summed up in
+the months which they spent at Nice in the winter, and in the trip they
+took to Paris at the time of the Grand Prix for six weeks.  Jealous one
+of the other, with the most comical rivalry, of the least occurrence at
+the 'Cercle des Champs-Elysees' or of the Rue Royale in the Eternal City,
+they affected, in the presence of their colleagues of la chasse, the
+impassive manner of augurs when the telegraph brought them the news of
+some Parisian scandal.  That inoffensive mania which had made of stout,
+ruddy Cibo, and of thin, pale Pietrapertoso two delightful studies for
+Dorsenne during his Roman winter, made of them terrible proxies in the
+service of Gorka's vengeance.
+
+With what joy and what gravity they accepted that mission all those who
+have studied swordsmen will understand after this simple sketch, and with
+what promptness they presented themselves to confer at nine o'clock in
+the morning with their client's adversary!  In short, at half-past twelve
+the duel was arranged in its slightest detail.  The energy employed by
+Montfanon had only ended in somewhat tempering the conditions--four balls
+to be exchanged at twenty-five paces at the word of command.  The duel
+was fixed for the following morning, in the inclosure which Cibo owned,
+with an inn adjoining, not very far distant from the classical tomb of
+Cecilia Metella.  To obtain that distance and the use of new weapons it
+required the prestige with which the Marquis suddenly clothed himself in
+the eyes of Gorka's seconds by pronouncing the name, still legendary in
+the provinces and to the foreigner, of Gramont-Caderousse--'Sic transit
+gloria mundi'! On leaving that rendezvous the excellent man really had
+tears in his eyes.
+
+"It is my fault," he moaned, "it is my fault.  With that Hafner we
+should have obtained such a fine official plan by mixing in a little of
+ours.  He offered it to us himself....  Brave Chapron!  It is I who have
+brought him into this dilemma!....  I owe it to him not to abandon him,
+but to follow him to the end....  Here I shall be assisting at a duel, at
+my age!....  Did you see how those young snobs lowered their voices when
+I mentioned my encounter with poor Caderousse?....  Fifty-two years and a
+month, and not to know yet how to conduct one's self!  Let us go to the
+Rue Leopardi.  I wish to ask pardon of our client, and to give him some
+advice.  We will take him to one of my old friends who has a garden near
+the Villa Pamphili, very secluded.  We will spend the rest of the
+afternoon practising....  Ah!  Accursed choler!  Yes, it would have been
+so simple to accept the other's plan yesterday.  By the exchange of two
+or three words, I am sure it could have been arranged."
+
+"Console yourself, Marquis," replied Florent, when the unhappy nobleman
+had described to him the deplorable result of his negotiations.  "I like
+that better.  Monsieur Gorka needs correction.  I have only one regret,
+that of not having given it to him more thoroughly....  Since I shall
+have to fight a duel, I would at least have had my money's worth!"
+
+"And you have never used a pistol?"  asked Montfanon.
+
+"Bah!  I have hunted a great deal and I believe I can shoot."
+
+"That is like night and day," interrupted the Marquis.  "Hold yourself in
+readiness.  At three o'clock come for me and I will give you a lesson.
+And remember there is a merciful God for the brave!"
+
+Although Florent deserved praise for the cheerfulness of which his reply
+was proof, the first moments which he spent alone after the departure of
+his two witnesses were very painful.
+
+That which Chapron experienced during those few moments was simply very
+natural anxiety, the enervation caused by looking at the clock, and
+saying:
+
+"In twenty-four hours the hand will be on this point of the dial.  And
+shall I still be living?"....  He was, however, manly, and knew how to
+control himself.  He struggled against the feeling of weakness, and,
+while awaiting the time to rejoin his friends, he resolved to write his
+last wishes.  For years his intention had been to leave his entire
+fortune to his brother-in-law.  He, therefore, made a rough draft of his
+will in that sense, with a pen at first rather unsteady, then quite firm.
+His will completed, he had courage enough to write two letters, addressed
+the one to that brother-in-law, the other to his sister.  When he had
+finished his work the hands of the clock pointed to ten minutes of three.
+
+"Still seventeen hours and a half to wait," said he, "but I think I have
+conquered my nerves.  A short walk, too, will benefit me."
+
+So he decided to go on foot to the rendezvous named by Montfanon.  He
+carefully locked the three envelopes in the drawer of his desk.  He saw,
+on passing, that Lincoln was not in his studio.  He asked the footman if
+Madame Maitland was at home.  The reply received was that she was
+dressing, and that she had ordered her carriage for three o'clock.
+
+"Good," said he, "neither of them will have the slightest suspicion; I am
+saved."
+
+How astonished he would have been could he, while walking leisurely
+toward his destination, have returned in thought to the smoking-room he
+had just left!  He would have seen a woman glide noiselessly through the
+open door, with the precaution of a malefactor!  He would have seen her
+examine, without disarranging, all the papers on the table.  She frowned
+on seeing Dorsenne's and the Marquis's cards.  She took from the
+blotting-case some loose leaves and held them in front of the glass,
+trying to read there the imprint left upon them.  He would have seen
+finally the woman draw from her pocket a bunch of keys.  She inserted one
+of them in the lock of the drawer which Florent had so carefully turned,
+and took from that drawer the three unsealed envelopes he had placed
+within it.  And the woman who thus read, with a face contracted by
+anguish, the papers discovered in such a manner, thanks to a ruse the
+abominable indelicacy of which gave proof of shameful habits of
+espionage, was his own sister, the Lydia whom he believed so gentle and
+so simple, to whom he had penned an adieu so tender in case he should be
+killed--the Lydia who would have terrified him had he seen her thus, with
+passion distorting the face which was considered insignificant!  She
+herself, the audacious spy, trembled as if she would fall, her eyes
+dilated, her bosom heaved, her teeth chattered, so greatly was she
+unnerved by what she had discovered, by the terrible consequences which
+she had brought about.
+
+Had she not written the anonymous letters to Gorka, denouncing to him
+the intrigue between Maitland and Madame Steno?  Was it not she who had
+chosen, the better to poison those terrible letters, phrases the most
+likely to strike the betrayed lover in the most sensitive part of his
+'amour propre'?  Was it not she who had hastened the return of the
+jealous man with the certain hope of drawing thus a tragical vengeance
+upon the hated heads of her husband and the Venetian?  That vengeance,
+indeed, had broken.  But upon whom?  Upon the only person Lydia loved in
+the world, upon the brother whom she saw endangered through her fault;
+and that thought was to her so overwhelming that she sank into the
+armchair in which Florent had been seated fifteen minutes before,
+repeating, with an accent of despair: "He is going to fight a duel.  He
+is going to fight instead of the other!"
+
+All the moral history of that obscure and violent soul was summed up in
+the cry in which passionate anxiety for her brother was coupled with a
+fierce hatred of her husband.  That hatred was the result of a youth and
+a childhood without the story of which a duplicity so criminal in a being
+so young would be unintelligible.  That youth and that childhood had
+presaged what Lydia would one day be.  But who was there to train the
+nature in which the heredity of an oppressed race manifested itself, as
+has been already remarked, by the two most detestable characteristics--
+hypocrisy and perfidy?  Who, moreover, observes in children the truth, as
+much neglected in practise as it is common in theory, that the defects of
+the tenth year become vices in the thirtieth?  When quite a child Lydia
+invented falsehoods as naturally as her brother spoke the truth....
+Whosoever observed her would have perceived that those lies were all told
+to paint herself in a favorable light.  The germ, too, of another defect
+was springing up within her--a jealousy instinctive, irrational, almost
+wicked.  She could not see a new plaything in Florent's hands without
+sulking immediately.  She could not bear to see her brother embrace her
+father without casting herself between them, nor could she see him amuse
+himself with other comrades.
+
+Had Napoleon Chapron been interested in the study of character as deeply
+as he was in his cotton and his sugarcane, he would have perceived, with
+affright, the early traces of a sinful nature.  But, on that point, like
+his son, he was one of those trustful men who did not judge when they
+loved.  Moreover, Lydia and Florent, to his wounded sensibility of a
+demi-pariah, formed the only pleasant corner in his life--were the fresh
+and youthful comforters of his widowerhood and of his misanthropy.  He
+cherished them with the idolatry which all great workers entertain for
+their children, which is one of the most dangerous forms of paternal
+tenderness; Lydia's incipient vices were to the planter delightful
+fancies!  Did she lie?  The excellent man exclaimed: What an imagination
+she has!  Was she jealous?  He would sigh, pressing to his broad breast
+the tiny form: How sensitive she is!....  The result of that selfish
+blindness--for to love children thus is to love them for one's self and
+not for them--was that the girl, at the time of her entrance at
+Roehampton, was spoiled in the essential traits of her character.  But
+she was so pretty, she owed to the singular mixture of three races an
+originality of grace so seductive that only the keen glance of a
+governess of genius could have discerned, beneath that exquisite
+exterior, the already marked lines of her character.  Such governesses
+are rare, still more so at convents than elsewhere.  There was none at
+Roehampton when Lydia entered that pious haven which was to prove fatal
+to her, for a reason precisely contrary to that which transformed for
+Florent the lawns of peaceful Beaumont into a radiant paradise of
+friendship.
+
+Among the pupils with whom Lydia was to be educated were four young girls
+from Philadelphia, older than the newcomer by two years, and who, also,
+had left America for the first time.  They brought with them the
+unconquerable aversion to negro blood and that wonderful keenness in
+discovering it, even in the most infinitesimal degree, which
+distinguishes real Yankees.  Little Lydia Chapron, having been entered as
+French, they at first hesitated in the face of a suspicion speedily
+converted into a certainty and that certainty into an aversion, which
+they could not conceal.  They would not have been children had they not
+been unfeeling.  They, therefore, began to offer poor Lydia petty
+affronts.  Convents and colleges resemble other society.  There, too,
+unjust contempt is like that "ferret of the woods," which runs from hand
+to hand and which always returns to its point of setting out.  All the
+scornful are themselves scorned by some one--a merited punishment, which
+does not correct our pride any more than the other punishments which
+abound in life cure our other faults.  Lydia's persecutors were
+themselves the objects of outrages practised by their comrades born in
+England, on account of certain peculiarities in their language and for
+the nasal quality of their voices.  The drama was limited, as we can
+imagine, to a series of insignificant episodes and of which the
+superintendents only surprised a demi-echo.
+
+Children nurse passions as strong as ours, but so much interrupted by
+playfulness that it is impossible to measure their exact strength.
+Lydia's 'amour propre' was wounded in an incurable manner by that
+revelation of her own peculiarity.  Certain incidents of her American
+life recurred to her, which she comprehended more clearly.  She recalled
+the portrait of her grandmother, the complexion, the hands, the hair of
+her father, and she experienced that shame of her birth and of her family
+much more common with children than our optimism imagines.  Parents of
+humble origin give their sons a liberal education, expose them to the
+demoralization which it brings with it in their positions, and what
+social hatreds date from the moment when the boy of twelve blushes in
+secret at the condition of his relatives!  With Lydia, so instinctively
+jealous and untruthful, those first wounds induced falsehood and
+jealousy.  The slightest superiority even, noticed in one of her
+companions, became to her a cause for suffering, and she undertook to
+compensate by personal triumphs the difference of blood, which, once
+discovered, wounds a vain nature.  In order to assure herself those
+triumphs she tried to win all the persons who approached her, mistresses
+and comrades, and she began to practise that continued comedy of attitude
+and of sentiment to which the fatal desire to please, so quickly leads-
+that charming and dangerous tendency which borders much less on goodness
+than falseness.  At eighteen, submitted to a sort of continual
+cabotinage, Lydia was, beneath the most attractive exterior, a being
+profoundly, though unconsciously, wicked, capable of very little
+affection--she loved no one truly but her brother--open to the invasion
+of the passions of hatred which are the natural products of proud and
+false minds.  It was one of these passions, the most fatal of all, which
+marriage was to develop within her--envy.
+
+That hideous vice, one of those which govern the world, has been so
+little studied by moralists, as all too dishonorable for the heart of
+man, no doubt, that this statement may appear improbable.  Madame
+Maitland, for years, had been envious of her husband, but envious as one
+of the rivals of an artist would be, envious as one pretty woman is of
+another, as one banker is of his opponent, as a politician of his
+adversary, with the fierce, implacable envy which writhes with physical
+pain in the face of success, which is transported with a sensual joy in
+the face of disaster.  It is a great mistake to limit the ravages of that
+guilty passion to the domain of professional emulation.  When it is deep,
+it does not alone attack the qualities of the person, but the person
+himself, and it was thus that Lydia envied Lincoln.  Perhaps the analysis
+of this sentiment, very subtle in its ugliness, will explain to some a
+few of the antipathies against which they have struck in their relatives.
+For it is not only between husband and wife that these unavowed envies
+are met, it is between lover and mistress, friend and friend, brother and
+brother, sometimes, alas, father and son, mother and daughter!  Lydia had
+married Lincoln Maitland partly out of obedience to her brother's wishes,
+partly from vanity, because the young man was an American, and because it
+was a sort of victory over the prejudices of race, of which she thought
+constantly, but of which she never spoke.
+
+It required only three months of married life to perceive that Maitland
+could not forgive himself for that marriage.  Although he affected to
+scorn his compatriots, and although at heart he did not share any of the
+views of the country in which he had not set foot since his fifth year,
+he could not hear remarks made in New York upon that marriage without a
+pang.  He disliked Lydia for the humiliation, and she felt it.  The birth
+of a child would no doubt have modified that feeling, and, if it would
+not have removed it, would at least have softened the embittered heart of
+the young wife.  But no child was born to them.  They had not returned
+from their wedding tour, upon which Florent accompanied them, before
+their lives rolled along in that silence which forms the base of all
+those households in which husband and wife, according to a simple and
+grand expression of the people, do not live heart against heart.
+
+After the journey through Spain, which should have been one continued
+enchantment, the wife became jealous of the evident preference which
+Florent showed for Maitland.  For the first time she perceived the hold
+which that impassioned friendship had taken upon her brother's heart.
+He loved her, too, but with a secondary love.  The comparison annoyed her
+daily, hourly, and it did not fail to become a real wound.  Returned to
+Paris, where they spent almost three years, that wound was increased by
+the sole fact that the puissant individuality of the painter speedily
+relegated to the shade the individuality of his wife, simply, almost
+mechanically, like a large tree which pushes a smaller one into the
+background.  The composite society of artists, amateurs, and writers who
+visited Lincoln came there only for him.  The house they had rented was
+rented only for him.  The journeys they made were for him.  In short,
+Lydia was borne away, like Florent, in the orbit of the most despotic
+force in the world--that of a celebrated talent.  An entire book would be
+required to paint in their daily truth the continued humiliations which
+brought the young wife to detest that talent and that celebrity with as
+much ardor as Florent worshipped them.  She remained, however, an honest
+woman, in the sense in which the word is construed by the world, which
+sums up woman's entire dishonor in errors of love.
+
+But within Lydia's breast grew a rooted aversion toward Lincoln.  She
+detested him for the pure blood which made of that large, fair, and
+robust man so admirable a type of Anglo-Saxon beauty, by the side of her,
+so thin, so insignificant indeed, in spite of the grace of her pretty,
+dark face.  She detested him for his taste, for the original elegance
+with which he understood how to adorn the places in which he lived,
+while she maintained within her a barbarous lack of taste for the least
+arrangement of materials and of colors.  When she was forced to
+acknowledge progress in the painter, bitter hatred entered her heart.
+When he lamented over his work, and when she saw him a prey to the
+dolorous anxiety of an artist who doubts himself, she experienced a
+profound joy, marred only by the evident sadness into which Lincoln's
+struggles plunged Florent.  Never had she met the eyes of Chapron fixed
+upon Maitland with that look of a faithful dog which rejoices in the joy
+of its master, or which suffers in his sadness, without enduring, like
+Alba Steno, the sensation of a "needle in the heart."
+
+The idolatrous worship of her brother for the painter caused her to
+suffer still more as she comprehended, with the infallible perspicacity
+of antipathy, the immense dupery.  She read the very depths of the souls
+of the two old comrades of Beaumont.  She knew that in that friendship,
+as is almost always the case, one alone gave all to receive in exchange
+only the most brutal recognition, that with which a huntsman or a master
+gratifies a faithful dog!  As for enlightening Florent with regard to
+Lincoln's character, she had vainly tried to do so by those fine and
+perfidious insinuations in which women excel.  She only recognized her
+impotence, and myriads of hateful impressions were thus accumulated in
+her heart, to be summed up in one of those frenzies of taciturn rancor
+which bursts on the first opportunity with terrifying energy.  Crime
+itself has its laws of development.  Between the pretty little girl who
+wept on seeing a new toy in her brother's hand and the Lydia Maitland,
+forcer of locks, author of anonymous letters, driven by the thirst for
+vengeance, even to villainy, no dramatic revolution of character had
+taken place.  The logical succession of days had sufficed.
+
+The occasion to gratify that deep and mortal longing to touch Lincoln on
+some point truly sensitive, how often Lydia had sought it in vain, before
+Madame Steno obtained an ascendancy over the painter.  She had been
+reduced by it to those meannesses of feminine animosity to manage, as if
+accidentally, that her husband might read all the disagreeable articles
+written about his paintings, innocently to praise before him the rivals
+who had given him offense, to repeat to him with an air of embarrassment
+the slightest criticisms pronounced on one of his exhibits--all the
+unpleasantnesses which had the result of irritating Florent, above all,
+for Maitland was one of those artists too well satisfied with the results
+of his own work for the opinion of others to annoy him very much.  On the
+other hand, before the passion for the dogaresse had possessed him, he
+had never loved.  Many painters are thus, satisfying with magnificent
+models an impetuosity of temperament which does not mount from the senses
+to the heart.  Accustomed to regard the human form from a certain point,
+they find in beauty, which would appear to us simply animal, principles
+of plastic emotion which at times suffice for their amorous requirements.
+They are only more deeply touched by it, when to that rather coarse
+intoxication is joined, in the woman who inspires them, the refined
+graces of mind, the delicacy of elegance and the subtleties of sentiment.
+
+Such was Madame Steno, who at once inspired the painter with a passion as
+complete as a first love.  It was really such.  The Countess, who was
+possessed of the penetration of voluptuousness, was not mistaken there.
+Lydia, who was possessed of the penetration of hatred, was not mistaken
+either.  She knew from the first day how matters stood in the beginning,
+because she was as observing as she was dissimulating; then, thanks to
+means less hypothetic, she had always had the habit of making those
+abominable inquiries which are natural, we venture to avow, to nine women
+out of ten!  And how many men are women, too, on this point, as said the
+fabulist.  At school Lydia was one of those who ascended to the
+dormitory, or who reentered the study to rummage in the cupboards and
+open trunks of her companions.  When mature, never had a sealed letter
+passed through her hands without her having ingeniously managed to read
+through the envelope, or at least to guess from the postmark, the seal,
+the handwriting of the address, who was the author of it.  The instinct
+of curiosity was so strong that she could not refrain, at a telegraph
+office, from glancing over the shoulders of the persons before her, to
+learn the contents of their despatches.  She never had her hair dressed
+or made her toilette without minutely questioning her maid as to the
+goings-on in the pantry and the antechamber.  It was through a story of
+that kind that she learned the altercation between Florent and Gorka in
+the vestibule, which proves, between parentheses, that these espionages
+by the aid of servants are often efficacious.  But they reveal a native
+baseness, which will not recoil before any piece of villainy.
+
+When Madame Maitland suspected the liaison of Madame Steno and her
+husband, she no more hesitated to open the latter's secretary than she
+later hesitated to open the desk of her brother.  The correspondence
+which she read in that way was of a nature which exasperated her desire
+for vengeance almost to frenzy.  For not only did she acquire the
+evidence of a happiness shared by them which humiliated in her the woman
+barren in all senses of the word, a stranger to voluptuousness as well as
+to maternity, but she gathered from it numerous proofs that the Countess
+cherished, with regard to her, a scorn of race as absolute as if Venice
+had been a city of the United States....  That part of the Adriatic
+abounds in prejudices of blood, as do all countries which serve as
+confluents for every nation.  It is sufficient to convince one's self of
+it, to have heard a Venetian treat of the Slavs as 'Cziavoni', and the
+Levantines as 'Gregugni'.
+
+Madame Steno, in those letters she had written with all the familiarity
+and all the liberty of passion, never called Lydia anything but La
+Morettina, and by a very strange illogicalness never was the name of the
+brother of La Morettina mentioned without a formula of friendship.  As
+the mistress treated Florent in that manner, it must be that she
+apprehended no hostility on the part of her lover's brother-in-law.
+Lydia understood it only too well, as well as the fresh proof of
+Florent's sentiments for Lincoln.  Once more he gave precedence to the
+friend over the sister, and on what an occasion!  The most secret wounds
+in her inmost being bled as she read.  The success of Alba's portrait,
+which promised to be a masterpiece, ended by precipitating her into a
+fierce and abominable action.  She resolved to denounce Madame Steno's
+new love to the betrayed lover, and she wrote the twelve letters, wisely
+calculated and graduated, which had indeed determined Gorka's return.
+His return had even been delayed too long to suit the relative of Iago,
+who had decided to aim at Madame Steno through Alba by a still more
+criminal denunciation.  Lydia was in that state of exasperation in which
+the vilest weapons seem the best, and she included innocent Alba in her
+hatred for Maitland, on account of the portrait, a turn of sentiment
+which will show that it was envy by which that soul was poisoned above
+all.  Ah, what bitter delight the simultaneous success of that double
+infamy had procured for her!  What savage joy, mingled with bitterness
+and ecstacy, had been hers the day before, on witnessing the nervousness
+of poor Alba and the suppressed fury of Boleslas!
+
+In her mind she had seen Maitland provoked by the rival whom she knew to
+be as adroit with the sword as with the pistol.  She would not have been
+the great-grandchild of a slave of Louisiana, if she had not combined
+with the natural energy of her hatreds a considerable amount of
+superstition.  A fortune-teller had once foretold, from the lines in her
+palm, that she would cause the violent death of some person.  "It will be
+he," she had thought, glancing at her husband with a horrible tremor of
+hope....  And now she had the proof, the indisputable proof, that her
+plot for vengeance was to terminate in the danger of another.  Of what
+other?
+
+The letter and will made by Florent disclosed to her the threat of a
+fatal duel suspended over the head which was the dearest to her.  So she
+had driven to a tragical encounter the only being whom she loved....  The
+disappointment of the heart in which palpitated the wild energies of a
+bestial atavism was so sudden, so acute, so dolorous, that she uttered an
+inarticulate cry, leaning upon her brother's desk, and, in the face of
+those sheets of paper which had revealed so much, she repeated:
+
+"He is going to fight a duel!  He!.... And I am the cause!".... Then,
+returning the letters and the will to the drawer, she closed it and rose,
+saying aloud:
+
+"No.  It shall not be.  I will prevent it, if I have to cast myself
+between them.  I do not wish it!  I do not wish it!"
+
+It was easy to utter such words.  But the execution of them was less
+easy.  Lydia knew it, for she had no sooner uttered that vow than she
+wrung her hands in despair--those weak hands which Madame Steno compared
+in one of her letters to the paws of a monkey, the fingers were so supple
+and so long--and she uttered this despairing cry: "But how?".... which so
+many criminals have uttered before the issue, unexpected and fatal to
+them, of their shrewdest calculations.  The poet has sung it in the words
+which relate the story of all our faults, great and small:
+
+         "The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
+          Make instruments to plague us."
+
+It is necessary that the belief in the equity of an incomprehensible
+judge be well grounded in us, for the strongest minds are struck by a
+sinister apprehension when they have to brave the chance of a misfortune
+absolutely merited.  The remembrance of the soothsayer's prediction
+suddenly occurred to Lydia.  She uttered another cry, rubbing her hands
+like a somnambulist.  She saw her brother's blood flowing....  No, the
+duel should not take place!  But how to prevent it?  How-how?  she
+repeated.  Florent was not at home.  She could, therefore, not implore
+him.  If he should return, would there still be time?  Lincoln was not at
+home.  Where was he?  Perhaps at a rendezvous with Madame Steno.
+
+The image of that handsome idol of love clasped in the painter's arms,
+plunged in the abyss of intoxication which her ardent letters described,
+was presented to the mind of the jealous wife.  What irony to perceive
+thus those two lovers, whom she had wished to strike, with the ecstacy of
+bliss in their eyes!  Lydia would have liked to tear out their eyes, his
+as well as hers, and to trample them beneath her heel.  A fresh flood of
+hatred filled her heart.  God!  how she hated them, and with what a
+powerless hatred!  But her time would come; another need pressed sorely
+--to prevent the meeting of the following day, to save her brother.  To
+whom should she turn, however?  To Dorsenne?  To Montfanon?  To Baron
+Hafner?  To Peppino Ardea?  She thought by turns of the four personages
+whose almost simultaneous visits had caused her to believe that they were
+the seconds of the two champions.  She rejected them, one after the
+other, comprehending that none of them possessed enough authority to
+arrange the affair.  Her thoughts finally reverted to Florent's
+adversary, to Boleslas Gorka, whose wife was her friend and whom she had
+always found so courteous.  What if she should ask him to spare her
+brother?  It was not Florent against whom the discarded lover bore a
+grudge.  Would he not be touched by her tears?  Would he not tell her
+what had led to the quarrel and what she should ask of her brother that
+the quarrel might be conciliated?  Could she not obtain from him the
+promise to discharge his weapon in the air, if the duel was with pistols,
+or, if it was with swords, simply to disarm his enemy?
+
+Like nearly all persons unversed in the art, she believed in infallible
+fencers, in marksmen who never missed their aim, and she had also ideas
+profoundly, absolutely inexact on the relations of one man with another
+in the matter of an insult.  But how can women admit that inflexible
+rigor in certain cases, which forms the foundation of manly relations,
+when they themselves allow of a similar rigor neither in their arguments
+with men, nor in their discussions among themselves?  Accustomed always
+to appeal from convention to instinct and from reason to sentiment, they
+are, in the face of certain laws, be they those of justice or of honor,
+in a state of incomprehension worse than ignorance.  A duel, for example,
+appears to them like an arbitrary drama, which the wish of one of those
+concerned can change at his fancy.  Ninety-nine women out of a hundred
+would think like Lydia Maitland of hastening to the adversary of the man
+they love, to demand, to beg for his life.  Let us add, however, that the
+majority would not carry out that thought.  They would confine themselves
+to sewing in the vest of their beloved some blessed medal, in
+recommending him to the Providence, which, for them, is still the
+favoritism of heaven.  Lydia felt that if ever Florent should learn of
+her step with regard to Gorka, he would be very indignant.  But who would
+tell him?  She was agitated by one of those fevers of fear and of remorse
+which are too acute not to act, cost what it might.  Her carriage was
+announced, and she entered it, giving the address of the Palazzetto
+Doria.  In what terms should she approach the man to whom she was about
+to pay that audacious and absurd visit?  Ah, what mattered it?  The
+circumstances would inspire her.  Her desire to cut short the duel was so
+strong that she did not doubt of success.
+
+She was greatly disappointed when the footman at the palace told her that
+the Count had gone out, while at the same moment a voice interrupted him
+with a gay laugh.  It was Countess Maud Gorka, who, returning from her
+walk with her little boy, recognized Lydia's coup, and who said to her:
+
+"What a lucky idea I had of returning a little sooner.  I see you were
+afraid of a storm, as you drove out in a closed carriage.  Will you come
+upstairs a moment?"  And, perceiving that the young woman, whose hand she
+had taken, was trembling: "What ails you?  I should think you were ill!
+You do not feel well?  My God, what ails her!  She is ill, Luc," she
+added, turning to her son; "run to my room and bring me the large bottle
+of English salts; Rose knows which one.  Go, go quickly."
+
+"It is nothing," replied Lydia, who had indeed closed her eyes as if on
+the point of swooning.  "See, I am better already.  I think I will return
+home; it will be wiser."
+
+"I shall not leave you," said Maud, seating herself, too, in the
+carriage; and, as they handed her the bottle of salts, she made Madame
+Maitland inhale it, talking to her the while as to a sick child: "Poor
+little thing!"
+
+"How her cheeks burn!  And you pay visits in this state.  It is very
+venturesome!  Rue Leopardi," she called to the coachman, "quickly."
+
+The carriage rolled away, and Madame Gorka continued to press the tiny
+hands of Lydia, to whom she gave the tender name, so ironical under the
+circumstances, of "Poor little one!"  Maud was one of those women like
+whom England produces many, for the honor of that healthy and robust
+British civilization, who are at once all energy and all goodness.  As
+large and stout as Lydia was slender, she would rather have borne her to
+her bed in her vigorous arms than to have abandoned her in the troubled
+state in which she had surprised her.  Not less practical and, as her
+compatriots say, as matter-of-fact as she was charitable, she began to
+question her friend on the symptoms which had preceded that attack, when
+with astonishment she saw that altered face contract, tears gushing from
+the closed eyes, and the fragile form convulsed by sobs.  Lydia had a
+nervous attack caused by anxiety, by the fresh disappointment of
+Boleslas's absence from home, and no doubt, too, by the gentleness with
+which Maud addressed her, and tearing her handkerchief with her white
+teeth, she moaned:
+
+"No, I am not ill.  But it is that thought which I can not bear.  No, I
+can not.  Ah, it is maddening!"  And turning toward her companion, she in
+her turn pressed her hands, saying: "But you know nothing!  You suspect
+nothing!  It is that which maddens me, when I see you tranquil, calm,
+happy, as if the minutes were not valuable, every one, to-day, to you as
+well as to me.  For if one is my brother, the other is your husband; and
+you love him.  You must love him, to have pardoned him for what you have
+pardoned him."
+
+She had spoken in a sort of delirium, brought about by her extreme
+nervous excitement, and she had uttered, she, usually so dissembling, her
+very deepest thought.  She did not think she was giving Madame Gorka any
+information by that allusion, so direct, to the liaison of Boleslas with
+Madame Steno.  She was persuaded, as was entire Rome, that Maud knew of
+her husband's infidelities, and that she tolerated them by one of those
+heroic sacrifices which maternity justifies.  How many women have
+immolated thus their wifely pride to maintain the domestic relation which
+the father shall at least not desert officially!  All Rome was mistaken,
+and Lydia Maitland was to have an unexpected proof.  Not a suspicion that
+such an intrigue could unite her husband with the mother of her best
+friend had ever entered the thoughts of Boleslas's wife.  But to account
+for that, it is necessary to admit, as well, and to comprehend the depth
+of innocence of which, notwithstanding her twenty-six years, the
+beautiful and healthy Englishwoman, with her eyes so clear, so frank, was
+possessed.
+
+She was one of those persons who command the respect of the boldest of
+men, and before whom the most dissolute women exercised care.  She might
+have seen the freedom of Madame Steno without being disillusioned.  She
+had only a liking for acquaintances and positive conversation.  She was
+very intellectual, but without any desire to study character.
+
+Dorsenne said of her, with more justness than he thought: "Madame
+Boleslas Gorka is married to a man who has never been presented to her,"
+meaning by that, that first of all she had no idea of her husband's
+character, and then of the treason of which she was the victim.  However,
+the novelist was not altogether right.  Boleslas's infidelity was of too
+long standing for the woman passionately, religiously loyal, who was his
+wife, not to have suffered by it.  But there was an abyss between such
+sufferings and the intuition of a determined fact such as that which
+Lydia had just mentioned, and such a suspicion was so far from Maud's
+thoughts that her companion's words only aroused in her astonishment at
+the mysterious danger of which Lydia's troubles was a proof more eloquent
+still than her words.
+
+"Your brother?  My husband?"  she said.  "I do not understand you."
+
+"Naturally," replied Lydia, "he has hidden all from you, as Florent hid
+all from me.  Well!  They are going to fight a duel, and to-morrow
+morning....  Do not tremble, in your turn," she continued, twining her
+arms around Maud Gorka.  "We shall be two to prevent the terrible affair,
+and we shall prevent it."
+
+"A duel?  To-morrow morning?" repeated Maud, in affright.  "Boleslas
+fights to-morrow with your brother?  No, it is impossible.  Who told you
+so?  How do you know it?"
+
+"I read the proof of it with my eyes," replied Lydia.  "I read Florent's
+will.  I read the letter which he prepared for Maitland and for me in
+case of accident...."
+
+"Should I be in the state in which you see me if it were not true?"
+
+"Oh, I believe you!"  cried Maud, pressing her hands to her eyelids, as
+if to shut out a horrible sight.  "But where can they be seen?  Boleslas
+has been here scarcely any of the time for two days.  What is there
+between them?  What have they said to one another?  One does not risk
+one's life for nothing when he has, like Boleslas, a wife and a son.
+Answer me, I conjure you.  Tell me all.  I desire to know all.  What is
+there at the bottom of this duel?"
+
+"What could there be but a woman?"  interrupted Lydia, who put into the
+two last words more savage scorn than if she had publicly spit in
+Caterina Steno's face.  But that fresh access of anger fell before the
+surprise caused her by Madame Gorka's reply.
+
+"What woman?  I understand you still less than I did just now."
+
+"When we are at home I will speak,"....  replied Lydia, after having
+looked at Maud with a surprised glance, which was in itself the most
+terrible reply.  The two women were silent.  It was Maud who now required
+the sympathy of friendship, so greatly had the words uttered by Lydia
+startled her.  The companion whose arm rested upon hers in that carriage,
+and who had inspired her with such pity fifteen minutes before, now
+rendered her fearful.  She seemed to be seated by the side of another
+person.  In the creature whose thin nostrils were dilated with passion,
+whose mouth was distorted with bitterness, whose eyes sparkled with
+anger, she no longer recognized little Madame Maitland, so taciturn, so
+reserved that she was looked upon as insignificant.  What had that voice,
+usually so musical, told her; that voice so suddenly become harsh, and
+which had already revealed to her the great danger suspended over
+Boleslas?  To what woman had that voice alluded, and what meant that
+sudden reticence?
+
+Lydia was fully aware of the grief into which she would plunge Maud
+without the slightest premeditation.  For a moment she thought it almost
+a crime to say more to a woman thus deluded.  But at the same time she
+saw in the revelation two certain results.  In undeceiving Madame Gorka
+she made a mortal enemy for Madame Steno, and, on the other hand, never
+would the woman so deeply in love with her husband allow him to fight for
+a former mistress.  So, when they both entered the small salon of the
+Moorish mansion, Lydia's resolution was taken.  She was determined to
+conceal nothing of what she knew from unhappy Maud, who asked her, with a
+beating heart, and in a voice choked by emotion:
+
+"Now, will you explain to me what you want to say?"
+
+"Question me," replied the other; "I will answer you.  I have gone too
+far to draw back."
+
+"You claimed that a woman was the cause of the duel between your brother
+and my husband?"
+
+"I am sure of it," replied Lydia.
+
+"What is that woman's name?"
+
+"Madame Steno."
+
+"Madame Steno?"  repeated Maud.  "Catherine Steno is the cause of that
+duel?  How?"
+
+"Because she is my husband's mistress," replied Lydia, brutally; "because
+she has been your husband's, because Gorka came here, mad with jealousy,
+to provoke Lincoln, and because he met my brother, who prevented him from
+entering....  They quarrelled, I know not in what manner.  But I know the
+cause of the duel....  Am I right, yes or no, in telling you they are to
+fight about that woman?"
+
+"My husband's mistress?"  cried Maud.  "You say Madame Steno has been my
+husband's mistress?  It is not true.  You lie!  You lie!  You lie!  I do
+not believe it."
+
+"You do not believe me?"  said Lydia, shrugging her shoulders.  "As if I
+had the least interest in deceiving you; as if one would lie when the
+life of the only being one loves in the world is in the balance!  For I
+have only my brother, and perhaps to-morrow I shall no longer have
+him....  But you shall believe me.  I desire that we both hate that
+woman, that we both be avenged upon her, as we both do not wish the duel
+to take place--the duel of which, I repeat, she is the cause, the sole
+cause....  You do not believe me?  Do you know what caused your husband
+to return?  You did not expect him; confess!  It was I--I, do you hear--
+who wrote him what Steno and Lincoln were doing; day after day I wrote
+about their love, their meetings, their bliss.  Ah, I was sure it would
+not be in vain, and he returned.  Is that a proof?"
+
+"You did not do that?"  cried Madame Gorka, recoiling with horror.  "It
+was infamous."
+
+"Yes, I did it," replied Lydia, with savage pride, "and why not?  It was
+my right when she took my husband from me.  You have only to return and
+to look in the place where Gorka keeps his letters.  You will certainly
+find those I wrote, and others, I assure you, from that woman.  For she
+has a mania for letter-writing....  Do you believe me now, or will you
+repeat that I have lied?"
+
+"Never," returned Maud, with sorrowful indignation upon her lovely, loyal
+face, "no, never will I descend to such baseness."
+
+"Well, I will descend for you," said Lydia.  "What you do not dare to do,
+I will dare, and you will ask me to aid you in being avenged.  Come,"
+and, seizing the hand of her stupefied companion, she drew her into
+Lincoln's studio, at that moment unoccupied.  She approached one of those
+Spanish desks, called baygenos, and she touched two small panels, which
+disclosed, on opening, a secret drawer, in which were a package of
+letters, which she seized.  Maud Gorka watched her with the same
+terrified horror with which she would have seen some one killed and
+robbed.  That honorable soul revolted at the scene in which her mere
+presence made of her an accomplice.  But at the same time she was a prey,
+as had been her husband several days before, to that maddening appetite
+to know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of doubt, a physical
+need, as imperious as hunger and thirst, and she listened to Florent's
+sister, who continued:
+
+"Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair written in her own
+hand?  Yes," she continued, with cruel irony, "she loves correspondence,
+our fortunate rival.  Justice must be rendered her that she may make no
+more avowals.  She writes as she feels.  It seems that the successor was
+jealous of his predecessor....  See, is this a proof this time?".... And,
+after having glanced at the first letters as a person familiar with them,
+she handed one of those papers to Maud, who had not the courage to avert
+her eyes.  What she saw written upon that sheet drew from her a cry of
+anguish.  She had, however, only read ten lines, which proved how much
+mistaken psychological Dorsenne was in thinking that Maitland was
+ignorant of the former relations between his mistress and Gorka.
+Countess Steno's grandeur, that which made a courageous woman almost a
+heroine in her passions, was an absolute sincerity and disgust for the
+usual pettiness of flirtations.  She would have disdained to deny to a
+new lover the knowledge of her past, and the semiavowals, so common to
+women, would have seemed to her a cowardice still worse.  She had not
+essayed to hide from Maitland what connection she had broken off for him,
+and it was upon one of those phrases, in which she spoke of it openly,
+that Madame Gorka's eyes fell:
+
+"You will be pleased with me," she wrote, "and I shall no longer see in
+your dear blue eyes which I kiss, as I love them, that gleam of mistrust
+which troubles me.  I have stopped the correspondence with Gorka.  If you
+require it, I will even break with Maud, notwithstanding the reason you
+know of and which will render it difficult for me.  But how can you be
+jealous yet?....  Is not my frankness with regard to that liaison the
+surest guarantee that it is ended?  Come, do not be jealous.  Listen to
+what I know so well, that I felt I loved, and that my life began only on
+the day when you took me in your arms.  The woman you have awakened in
+me, no one has known--"
+
+"She writes well, does she not?"  said Lydia, with a gleam of savage
+triumph in her eyes.  "Do you believe me, now?....  Do you see that we
+have the same interest to-day, a common affront to avenge?  And we will
+avenge it....  Do you understand that you can not allow your husband to
+fight a duel with my brother?  You owe that to me who have given you this
+weapon by which you hold him....  Threaten him with a divorce.  Fortune
+is with you.  The law will give you your child.  I repeat, you hold him
+firmly.  You will prevent the duel, will you not?"
+
+"Ah!  What do you think it matters to me now if they fight or not?"  said
+Maud.  "From the moment he deceived me was I not widowed?  Do not
+approach me," she added, looking at Lydia with wild eyes, while a shudder
+of repulsion shook her entire frame....  "Do not speak to me....  I have
+as much horror of you as of him....  Let me go, let me leave here....
+Even to feel myself in the same room with you fills me with horror....
+Ah, what disgrace!"
+
+She retreated to the door, fixing upon her informant a gaze which the
+other sustained, notwithstanding the scorn in it, with the gloomy pride
+of defiance.  She went out repeating: "Ah, what disgrace!"  without Lydia
+having addressed her, so greatly had surprise at the unexpected result of
+all her attempts paralyzed her.  But the formidable creature lost no time
+in regret and repentance.  She paused a few moments to think.  Then,
+crushing in her nervous hand the letter she had shown Maud, at the risk
+of being discovered by her husband later, she said aloud:
+
+"Coward!  Lord, what a coward she is!  She loves.  She will pardon.  Will
+there, then, be no one to aid me?  No one to smite them in their insolent
+happiness."  After meditating awhile, her face still more contracted, she
+placed the letter in the drawer, which she closed again, and half an hour
+later she summoned a commissionaire, to whom she intrusted a letter, with
+the order to deliver it immediately, and that letter was addressed to the
+inspector of police of the district.  She informed him of the intended
+duel, giving him the names of the two adversaries and of the four
+seconds.  If she had not been afraid of her brother, she would even that
+time have signed her name.
+
+"I should have gone to work that way at first," said she to herself, when
+the door of the small salon closed behind the messenger to whom she had
+given her order personally.  "The police know how to prevent them from
+fighting, even if I do not succeed with Florent....  As for him?"....
+and she looked at a portrait of Maitland upon the desk at which she had
+just been writing.  "Were I to tell him what is taking place....  No, I
+will ask nothing of him....  I hate him too much."....  And she concluded
+with a fierce smile, which disclosed her teeth at the corners of her
+mouth:
+
+"It is all the same.  It is necessary that Maud Gorka work with me
+against her.  There is some one whom she will not pardon, and that is....
+Madame Steno."  And, in spite of her uneasiness, the wicked woman
+trembled with delight at the thought of her work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ON THE GROUND
+
+When Maud Gorka left the house on the Rue Leopardi she walked on at first
+rapidly, blindly, without seeing, without hearing anything, like a
+wounded animal which runs through the thicket to escape danger, to escape
+its wounds, to escape itself.  It was a little more than half-past three
+o'clock when the unhappy woman hastened from the studio, unable to bear
+near her the presence of Lydia Maitland, of that sinister worker of
+vengeance who had so cruelly revealed to her, with such indisputable
+proofs, the atrocious affair, the long, the infamous, the inexpiable
+treason.
+
+It was almost six o'clock before Maud Gorka really regained
+consciousness.  A very common occurrence aroused her from the
+somnambulism of suffering in which she had wandered for two hours.
+The storm which had threatened since noon at length broke.  Maud, who had
+scarcely heeded the first large drops, was forced to seek shelter when
+the clouds suddenly burst, and she took refuge at the right extremity of
+the colonnade of St. Peter's.  How had she gone that far?  She did not
+know herself precisely.  She remembered vaguely that she had wandered
+through a labyrinth of small streets, had crossed the Tiber--no doubt by
+the Garibaldi bridge--had passed through a large garden--doubtless the
+Janicule, since she had walked along a portion of the ramparts.  She had
+left the city by the Porte de Saint-Pancrace, to follow by that of
+Cavallegieri the sinuous line of the Urban walls.
+
+That corner of Rome, with a view of the pines of the Villa Pamfili on one
+side, and on the other the back part of the Vatican, serves as a
+promenade during the winter for the few cardinals who go in search of the
+afternoon sun, certain there of meeting only a few strangers.  In the
+month of May it is a desert, scorched by the sun, which glows upon the
+brick, discolored by two centuries of that implacable heat which caresses
+the scales of the green and gray lizards about to crawl between the bees
+of Pope Urbain VIII's escutcheon of the Barberini family.  Madame Gorka's
+instinct had at least served her in leading her upon a route on which she
+met no one.  Now the sense of reality returned.  She recognized the
+objects around her, and that framework, so familiar to her piety of
+fervent Catholicism, the enormous square, the obelisk of Sixte-Quint in
+the centre, the fountains, the circular portico crowned with bishops and
+martyrs, the palace of the Vatican at the corner, and yonder the facade
+of the large papal cathedral, with the Saviour and the apostles erect
+upon the august pediment.
+
+On any other occasion in life the pious young woman would have seen in
+the chance which led her thither, almost unconsciously, an influence from
+above, an invitation to enter the church, there to ask the strength to
+suffer of the God who said: "Let him who wishes follow me, let him
+renounce all, let him take up his cross and follow me!"  But she was
+passing through that first bitter paroxysm of grief in which it is
+impossible to pray, so greatly does the revolt of nature cry out within
+us.  Later, we may recognize the hand of Providence in the trial imposed
+upon us.  We see at first only the terrible injustice of fate, and we
+tremble in the deepest recesses of our souls with rebellion at the blow
+from which we bleed.  That which rendered the rebellion more invincible
+and more fierce in Maud, was the suddenness of the mortal blow.
+
+Daily some pure, honest woman, like her, acquires the proof of the
+treason of a husband whom she has not ceased to love.  Ordinarily, the
+indisputable proof is preceded by a long period of suspicion.  The
+faithless one neglects his hearth.  A change takes place in his daily
+habits.  Various hints reveal to the outraged wife the trace of a rival,
+which woman's jealousy distinguishes with a scent as certain as that of a
+dog which finds a stranger in the house.  And, finally, although there is
+in the transition from doubt to certainty a laceration of the heart, it
+is at least the laceration of a heart prepared.  That preparation, that
+adaptation, so to speak, of her soul to the truth, Maud had been deprived
+of.  The care taken by Madame Steno to strengthen the friendship between
+her and Alba had suppressed the slightest signs.  Boleslas had no need to
+change his domestic life in order to see his mistress at his convenience
+and in an intimacy entertained, provoked, by his wife herself.  The wife,
+too, had been totally, absolutely deceived.  She had assisted in her
+husband's adultery with one of those illusions so complete that it seemed
+improbable to the indifferent and to strangers.  The awakening from such
+illusions is the most terrible.  That man whom society considered a
+complaisant husband, that woman who seemed so indulgent a wife, suddenly
+find that they have committed a murder or a suicide, to the great
+astonishment of the world which, even then, hesitates to recognize in
+that access of folly the proof, the blow, more formidable, more
+instantaneous in its ravages, than those of love-sudden disillusion.
+When the disaster is not interrupted by acts of violence, it causes an
+irreparable destruction of the youthfulness of the soul, it is the idea
+instilled in us forever that all can betray, since we have been betrayed
+in that manner.  It is for years, for life, sometimes, that powerlessness
+to be affected, to hope, to believe, which caused Maud Gorka to remain,
+on that afternoon, leaning against the pedestal of a column, watching the
+rain fall, instead of ascending to the Basilica, where the confessional
+offers pardon for all sins and the remedy for all sorrows.  Alas!  It was
+consolation simply to kneel there, and the poor woman was only in the
+first stage of Calvary.
+
+She watched the rain fall, and she found a savage comfort in the
+formidable character of the storm, which seemed like a cataclysm of
+nature, to such degree did the flash of the lightning and the roar of the
+thunder mingle with the echoes of the vast palace beneath the lash of the
+wind.  Forms began to take shape in her mind, after the whirlwind of
+blind suffering in which she felt herself borne away after the first
+glance cast upon that fatal letter.  Each word rose before her eyes, so
+feverish that she closed them with pain.  The last two years of her life,
+those which had bound her to Countess Steno, returned to her thoughts,
+illuminated by a brilliance which drew from her constantly these words,
+uttered with a moan: How could he?  She saw Venice and their sojourn in
+the villa to which Boleslas had conducted her after the death of their
+little girl, in order that there, in the restful atmosphere of the
+lagoon, she might overcome the keen paroxysm of pain.
+
+How very kind and delicate Madame Steno had been at that time; at least
+how kind she had seemed, and how delicate likewise, comprehending her
+grief and sympathizing with it....  Their superficial relations had
+gradually ripened into friendship.  Then, no doubt, the treason had
+begun.  The purloiner of love had introduced herself under cover of the
+pity in which Maud had believed.  Seeing the Countess so generous, she
+had treated as calumny the slander of the world relative to a person
+capable of such touching kindness of heart.  And it was at that moment
+that the false woman took Boleslas from her!  A thousand details recurred
+to her which at the time she had not understood; the sails of the two
+lovers in the gondola, which she had not even thought of suspecting; a
+visit which Boleslas had made to Piove and from which he only returned
+the following day, giving as a pretext a missed train; words uttered
+aside on the balcony of the Palais Steno at night, while she talked with
+Alba.  Yes, it was at Venice that their adultery began, before her who
+had divined nothing, her whose heart was filled with inconsolable regret
+for her lost darling!  Ah, how could he?  she moaned again, and the
+visions multiplied.
+
+In her mind were then opened all the windows which Gorka's perfidity and
+the Countess's as well, had sealed with such care.  She saw again the
+months which followed their return to Rome, and that mode of life so
+convenient for both.  How often had she walked out with Alba, thus
+freeing the mother and the husband from the only surveillance annoying to
+them.  What did the lovers do during those hours?  How many times on
+returning to the Palazzetto Doria had she found Catherine Steno in the
+library, seated on the divan beside Boleslas, and she had not mistrusted
+that the woman had come, during her absence, to embrace that man, to talk
+to him of love, to give herself to him, without doubt, with the charm of
+villainy and of danger!  She remembered the episode of their meeting at
+Bayreuth the previous summer, when she went to England alone with her
+son, and when her husband undertook to conduct Alba and the Countess from
+Rome to Bavaria.  They had all met at Nuremberg.  The apartments of the
+hotel in which the meeting took place became again very vivid in Maud's
+memory, with Madame Steno's bedroom adjoining that of Boleslas's.
+
+The vision of their caresses, enjoyed in the liberty of the night, while
+innocent Alba slept near by, and when she rolled away in a carriage with
+little Luc, drew from her this cry once more: "Ah, how could he!"....
+And immediately that vision awoke in her the remembrance of her husband's
+recent return.  She saw him traversing Europe on the receipt of an
+anonymous letter, to reach that woman's side twenty-four hours sooner.
+What a proof of passion was the frenzy which had not allowed him any
+longer to bear doubt and absence!....  Did he love the mistress who did
+not even love him, since she had deceived him with Maitland?  And he was
+going to fight a duel on her account!....  Jealousy, at that moment,
+wrung the wife's heart with a pang still stronger than that of
+indignation.  She, the strong Englishwoman, so large, so robust, almost
+masculine in form, mentally compared herself with the supple Italian with
+her form so round, with her gestures so graceful, her hands so delicate,
+her feet so dainty; compared herself with the creature of desire, whose
+every movement implied a secret wave of passion, and she ceased her cry--
+"Ah, how could he?"--at once.  She had a clear knowledge of the power of
+her rival.
+
+It is indeed a supreme agony for an honorable woman, who loves, to feel
+herself thus degraded by the mere thought of the intoxication her husband
+has tasted in arms more beautiful, more caressing, more entwining than
+hers.  It was, too, a signal for the return of will to the tortured but
+proud soul.  Disgust possessed her, so violent, so complete, for the
+atmosphere of falsehood and of sensuality in which Boleslas had lived two
+years, that she drew herself up, becoming again strong and implacable.
+Braving the storm, she turned in the direction of her home, with this
+resolution as firmly rooted in her mind as if she had deliberated for
+months and months.
+
+"I will not remain with that man another day.  Tomorrow I will leave for
+England with my son."
+
+How many, in a similar situation, have uttered such vows, to abjure them
+when they find themselves face to face with the man who has betrayed
+them, and whom they love.  Maud was not of that order.  Certainly she
+loved dearly the seductive Boleslas, wedded against her parents' will the
+perfidious one for whom she had sacrificed all, living far from her
+native land and her family for years, because it pleased him, breathing,
+living, only for him and for their boy.  But there was within her--as her
+long, square chin, her short nose and the strength of her brow revealed--
+the force of inflexibility--which is met with in characters of an
+absolute uprightness.  Love, with her, could be stifled by disgust, or,
+rather, she considered it degrading to continue to love one whom she
+scorned, and, at that moment, it was supreme scorn which reigned in her
+heart.  She had, in the highest degree, the great virtue which is found
+wherever there is nobility, and of which the English have made the basis
+of their moral education--the religion, the fanaticism of loyalty.  She
+had always grieved on discovering the wavering nature of Boleslas.  But
+if she had observed in him, with sorrow, any exaggerations of language,
+any artificial sentiment, a dangerous suppleness of mind, she had
+pardoned him those defects with the magnanimity of love, attributing them
+to a defective training.  Gorka at a very early age had witnessed a
+stirring family drama--his mother and his father lived apart, while
+neither the one nor the other had the exclusive guidance of the child.
+How could she find indulgence for the shameful hypocrisy of two years'
+standing, for the villainy of that treachery practised at the domestic
+hearth, for the continued, voluntary disloyalty of every day, every hour?
+Though Maud experienced, in the midst of her despair, the sort of
+calmness which proves a firm and just resolution, when she reentered the
+Palazzetto Doria--what a drama had been enacted in her heart since her
+going out!--and it was in a voice almost as calm as usual that she asked:
+"Is the Count at home?"
+
+What did she experience when the servant, after answering her in the
+affirmative, added: "Madame and Mademoiselle Steno, too, are awaiting
+Madame in the salon."  At the thought that the woman who had stolen from
+her her husband was there, the betrayed wife felt her blood boil, to use
+a common but expressive phrase.  It was very natural that Alba's mother
+should call upon her, as was her custom.  It was still more natural for
+her to come there that day.  For very probably a report of the duel the
+following day had reached her.  Her presence, however, and at that
+moment, aroused in Maud a feeling of indignation so impassioned that her
+first impulse was to enter, to drive out Boleslas's mistress as one would
+drive out a servant surprised thieving.  Suddenly the thought of Alba
+presented itself to her mind, of that sweet and pure Alba, of that soul
+as pure as her name, of her whose dearest friend she was.  Since the
+dread revelation she had thought several times of the young girl.  But
+her deep sorrow having absorbed all the power of her soul, she had not
+been able to feel such friendship for the delicate and pretty child.
+At the thought of ejecting her rival, as she had the right to do, that
+sentiment stirred within her.  A strange pity flooded her soul, which
+caused her to pause in the centre of the large hall, ornamented with
+statues and columns, which she was in the act of crossing.  She called
+the servant just as he was about to put his hand on the knob of the door.
+The analogy between her situation and that of Alba struck her very
+forcibly.  She experienced the sensation which Alba had so often
+experienced in connection with Fanny, sympathy with a sorrow so like her
+own.  She could not give her hand to Madame Steno after what she had
+discovered, nor could she speak to her otherwise than to order her from
+her house.  And to utter before Alba one single phrase, to make one
+single gesture which would arouse her suspicions, would be too
+implacable, too iniquitous a vengeance!  She turned toward the door which
+led to her own room, bidding the servant ask his master to come thither.
+She had devised a means of satisfying her just indignation without
+wounding her dear friend, who was not responsible for the fact that the
+two culprits had taken shelter behind her innocence.
+
+Having entered the small, pretty boudoir which led into her bedroom, she
+seated herself at her desk, on which was a photograph of Madame Steno, in
+a group consisting of Boleslas, Alba, and herself.  The photograph smiled
+with a smile of superb insolence, which suddenly reawakened in the
+outraged woman her frenzy of rancor, interrupted or rather suspended for
+several moments by pity.  She took the frame in her hands, she cast it
+upon the ground, trampling the glass beneath her feet, then she began to
+write, on the first blank sheet, one of those notes which passion alone
+dares to pen, which does not draw back at every word:
+
+"I know all.  For two years you have been my husband's mistress.  Do not
+deny it.  I have read the confession written by your own hand.  I do not
+wish to see nor to speak to you again.  Never again set foot in my house.
+On account of your daughter I have not driven you out to-day.  A second
+time I shall not hesitate."
+
+She was just about to sign Maud Gorka, when the sound of the door opening
+and shutting caused her to turn.  Boleslas was before her.  Upon his face
+was an ambiguous expression, which exasperated the unhappy wife still
+more.  Having returned more than an hour before, he had learned that Maud
+had accompanied to the Rue Leopardi Madame Maitland, who was ill, and he
+awaited her return with impatience, agitated by the thought that
+Florent's sister was no doubt ill owing to the duel of the morrow, and in
+that case, Maud, too, would know all.  There are conversations and, above
+all, adieux which a man who is about to fight a duel always likes to
+avoid.  Although he forced a smile, he no longer doubted.  His wife's
+evident agitation could not be explained by any other cause.  Could he
+divine that she had learned not only of the duel, but, too, of an
+intrigue that day ended and of which she had known nothing for two years?
+As she was silent, and as that silence embarrassed him, he tried, in
+order to keep him in countenance, to take her hand and kiss it, as was
+his custom.  She repelled him with a look which he had never seen upon
+her face and said to him, handing him the sheet of paper lying before
+her:
+
+"Do you wish to read this note before I send it to Madame Steno, who is
+in the salon with her daughter?"
+
+Boleslas took the letter.  He read the terrible lines, and he became
+livid.  His agitation was so great that he returned the paper to his wife
+without replying, without attempting to prevent, as was his duty, the
+insult offered to his former mistress, whom he still loved to the point
+of risking his life for her.  That man, so brave and so yielding at once,
+was overwhelmed by one of those surprises which put to flight all the
+powers of the mind, and he watched Maud slip the note into an envelope,
+write the address and ring.  He heard her say to the servant:
+
+"You will take this note to Countess Steno and you will excuse me to the
+ladies....  I feel too indisposed to receive any one.  If they insist,
+you will reply that I have forbidden you to admit any one.  You
+understand--any one."
+
+The man took the note.  He left the room and he had no doubt fulfilled
+his errand while the husband and wife stood there, face to face, neither
+of them breaking the formidable silence.  They felt that the hour was a
+solemn one.
+
+Never, since the day on which Cardinal Manning had united their destinies
+in the chapel of Ardrahan Castle, had they been engaged in a crisis so
+tragical.  Such moments lay bare the very depths of the character.
+Courageous and noble, Maud did not think of weighing her words.  She did
+not try to feed her jealousy, nor to accentuate the cruelty of the cause
+of the insult which she had the right to launch at the man toward whom
+that very morning she had been so confiding, so tender.  The baseness and
+the cruelty were to remain forever unknown to the woman who no longer
+hesitated as to the bold resolution she had made.  No.  That which she
+expected of the man whom she had loved so dearly, of whom she had
+entertained so exalted an opinion, whom she had just seen fall so low,
+was a cry of truth, an avowal in which she would find the throb of a last
+remnant of honor.  If he were silent it was not because he was preparing
+a denial.  The tenor of Maud's letter left no doubt as to the nature of
+the proofs she had in her hand, which she had there no doubt.  How?
+He did not ask himself that question, governed as he was by a phenomenon
+in which was revealed to the full the singular complexity of his nature.
+The Slav's especial characteristic is a prodigious, instantaneous
+nervousness.  It seems that those beings with the uncertain hearts have a
+faculty of amplifying in themselves, to the point of absorbing the heart
+altogether, states of partial, passing, and yet sincere emotion.
+The intensity of their momentary excitement thus makes of them sincere
+comedians, who speak to you as if they felt certain sentiments of an
+exclusive order, to feel contradictory ones the day after, with the same
+ardor, with the same untruthfulness, unjustly say the victims of those
+natures, so much the more deceitful as they are more vibrating.
+
+He suffered, indeed, on discovering that Maud had been initiated into his
+criminal intrigue, but he suffered more for her than for himself.  It was
+sufficient for that suffering to occupy a few moments, a few hours.  It
+reinvested the personality of the impassioned and weak husband who loved
+his wife while betraying her.  There was, indeed, a shade of it in his
+adventure, but a very slight shade.  And yet, he did not think he was
+telling an untruth, when he finally broke the silence to say to her whom
+he had so long deceived:
+
+"You have avenged yourself with much severity, Maud, but you had the
+right....  I do not know who has informed you of an error which was very
+culpable, very wrong, very unfortunate, too....  I know that I have in
+Rome enemies bent upon my ruin, and I am sure they have left me no means
+of defending myself.  I have deceived you, and I have suffered."
+
+He paused after those words, uttered with a tremor of conviction which
+was not assumed.  He had forgotten that ten minutes before he had entered
+the room with the firm determination to hide his duel and its cause from
+the woman for whose pardon he would at that moment have sacrificed his
+life without hesitation.  He continued, in a voice softened by affection:
+"Whatever they have told you, whatever you have read, I swear to you, you
+do not know all."
+
+"I know enough," interrupted Maud, "since I know that you have been the
+lover of that woman, of the mother of my intimate friend, at my side,
+under my very eyes....  If you had suffered by that deception, as you
+say, you would not have waited to avow all to me until I held in my hands
+the undeniable proof of your infamy....  You have cast aside the mask,
+or, rather, I have wrested it from you....  I desire no more....  As for
+the details of the shameful story, spare me them.  It was not to hear
+them that I reentered a house every corner of which reminds me that I
+believed in you implicitly, and that you have betrayed me, not one day,
+but every day; that you betrayed me the day before yesterday, yesterday,
+this morning, an hour ago....  I repeat, that is sufficient."
+
+"But it is not sufficient for me!"  exclaimed Boleslas.  "Yes, all you
+have just said is true, and I deserve to have you tell it to me.  But
+that which you could not read in those letters shown to you, that which I
+have kept for two years in the depths of my heart, and which must now be
+told--is that, through all these fatal impulses, I have never ceased to
+love you....  Ah, do not recoil from me, do not look at me thus....
+I feel it once more in the agony I have suffered since you are speaking
+to me; there is something within me that has never ceased being yours.
+That woman has been my aberration.  She has had my madness, my senses,
+my passion, all the evil instincts of my being....  You have remained my
+idol, my affection, my religion....  If I lied to you it was because I
+knew that the day on which you would find out my fault I should see you
+before me, despairing and implacable as you now are, as I can not bear to
+have you be.  Ah, judge me, condemn me, curse me; but know, but feel,
+that in spite of all I have loved you, I still love you."
+
+Again he spoke with an enthusiasm which was not feigned.  Though he had
+deceived her, he recognized only too well the value of the loyal creature
+before him, whom he feared he should lose.  If he could not move her at
+the moment when he was about to fight a duel, when could he move her?
+So he approached her with the same gesture of suppliant and impassioned
+adoration which he employed in the early days of their marriage, and
+before his treason, when he had told her of his love.  No doubt that
+remembrance thrust itself upon Maud and disgusted her, for it was with
+veritable horror that she again recoiled, replying:
+
+"Be silent!  That lie is the worst of all.  It pains me.  I blush for
+you, in seeing that you have not even the courage to acknowledge your
+fault.  God is my witness, I should have respected you more, had you
+said: 'I have ceased loving you.  I have taken a mistress.  It was
+convenient for me to lie to you.  I have lied.  I have sacrificed all to
+my passion, my honor, my duties, my vows and you.'....  Ah, speak to me
+like that, that I may have with you the sentiment of truth....  But that
+you dare to repeat to me words of tenderness after what you have done to
+me, inspires me with repulsion.  It is too bitter."
+
+"Yes," said Boleslas, "you think thus.  True and simple as you are, how
+could you have learned to understand what a weak will is--a will which
+wishes and which does not, which rises and which falls?....  And yet,
+if I had not loved you, what interest would I have in lying to you?
+Have I anything to conceal now?  Ah, if you knew in what a position I am,
+on the eve of what day, I beseech you to believe that at least the best
+part of my being has never ceased to be yours!"
+
+It was the strongest effort he could make to bring back the heart of his
+wife so deeply wounded--the allusion to his duel.  For since she had not
+mentioned it to him, it was no doubt because she was still ignorant of
+it.  He was once more startled by the reply she made, and which proved to
+him to what a degree indignation had paralyzed even her love.  He
+resumed:
+
+"Do you know it?"
+
+"I know that you fight a duel to-morrow," said she, "and for your
+mistress, I know, too."
+
+"It is not true," he exclaimed; "it is not for her."
+
+"What?"  asked Maud, energetically.  "Was it not on her account that you
+went to the Rue Leopardi to provoke your rival?  For she is not even true
+to you, and it is justice.  Was it not on her account that you wished to
+enter the house, in spite of that rival's brother-in-law, and that a
+dispute arose between you, followed by this challenge?  Was it not on her
+account, and to revenge yourself, that you returned from Poland, because
+you had received anonymous letters which told you all?  And to know all
+has not disgusted you forever with that creature?....  But if she had
+deigned to lie to you, she would have you still at her feet, and you dare
+to tell me that you love me when you have not even cared to spare me the
+affront of learning all that villainy--all that baseness, all that
+disgrace--through some one else?"
+
+"Who was it?"  he asked.  "Name that Judas to me, at least?"
+
+"Do not speak thus," interrupted Maud, bitterly; "you have lost the
+right....  And then do not seek too far....  I have seen Madame Maitland
+to-day."
+
+"Madame Maitland?"  repeated Boleslas.  "Did Madame Maitland denounce me
+to you?  Did Madame Maitland write those anonymous letters?"
+
+"She desired to be avenged," replied Maud, adding: "She has the right,
+since your mistress robbed her of her husband."
+
+"Well, I, too, will be avenged!"  exclaimed the young man.  "I will kill
+that husband for her, after I have killed her brother.  I will kill them
+both, one after the other."....  His mobile countenance, which had just
+expressed the most impassioned of supplications, now expressed only
+hatred and rage, and the same change took place in his immoderate
+sensibility.  "Of what use is it to try to settle matters?"  he
+continued.  "I see only too well all is ended between us.  Your pride and
+your rancor are stronger than your love.  If it had been otherwise, you
+would have begged me not to fight, and you would only have reproached me,
+as you have the right to do, I do not deny....  But from the moment that
+you no longer love me, woe to him whom I find in my path!  Woe to Madame
+Maitland and to those she loves!"
+
+"This time at least you are sincere," replied Maud, with renewed
+bitterness.  "Do you think I have not suffered sufficient humiliation?
+Would you like me to supplicate you not to fight for that creature?
+And do you not feel the supreme outrage which that encounter is to me?
+Moreover," she continued with tragical solemnity, "I did not summon you
+to have with you a conversation as sad as it is useless, but to tell you
+my resolution....  I hope that you will not oblige me to resort for its
+execution to the means which the law puts in my power?"
+
+"I don't deserve to be spoken to thus," said Boleslas, haughtily.
+
+"I will remain here to-night," resumed Maud, without heeding that reply,
+"for the last time.  To-morrow evening I shall leave for England."
+
+"You are free," said he, with a bow.
+
+"And I shall take my son with me," she added.
+
+"Our son!"  he replied, with the composure of a man overcome by an access
+of tenderness and who controls himself.  "That?  No. I forbid it."
+
+"You forbid it?"  said she.  "Very well, we will appeal it.  I knew that
+you would force me," she continued, haughtily, in her turn, "to have
+recourse to the law....  But I shall not recoil before anything.
+In betraying me as you have done, you have also betrayed our child.
+I will not leave him to you.  You are not worthy of him."
+
+"Listen, Maud," said Boleslas, sadly, after a pause, "remember that it is
+perhaps the last time we shall meet....  To-morrow, if I am killed, you
+shall do as you like....  If I live, I promise to consent to any
+arrangement that will be just....  What I ask of you is--and I have the
+right, notwithstanding my faults--in the name of our early years of
+wedded life, in the name of that son himself, to leave me in a different
+way, to have a feeling, I don't say of pardon, but of pity."
+
+"Did you have it for me," she replied, "when you were following your
+passion by way of my heart?  No!"....  And she walked before him in order
+to reach the door, fixing upon him eyes so haughty that he involuntarily
+lowered his.  "You have no longer a wife and I have no longer a
+husband....  I am no Madame Maitland; I do not avenge myself by means of
+anonymous letters nor by denunciation....  But to pardon you?.... Never,
+do you hear, never!"
+
+With those words she left the room, with those words into which she put
+all the indomitable energy of her character....  Boleslas did not essay
+to detain her.  When, an hour after that horrible conversation, his valet
+came to inform him that dinner was served, the wretched man was still in
+the same place, his elbow on the mantelpiece and his forehead in his
+hand.  He knew Maud too well to hope that she would change her
+determination, and there was in him, in spite of his faults, his folly
+and his complications, too much of the real gentleman to employ means of
+violence and to detain her forcibly, when he had erred so gravely.  So
+she went thus.  If, just before, he had exaggerated the expression of his
+feelings in saying, in thinking rather, that he had never ceased loving
+her, it was true that amid all his errors he had maintained for her an
+affection composed particularly of gratitude, remorse, esteem and, it
+must be said, of selfishness.
+
+He loved for the devotion of which he was absolutely sure, and then, like
+many husbands who deceive an irreproachable wife, he was proud of her,
+while unfaithful to her.  She seemed to him at once the dignity and the
+charity of his life.  She had remained in his eyes the one to whom he
+could always return, the assured friend of moments of trial, the haven
+after the tempest, the moral peace when he was weary of the troubles of
+passion.  What life would he lead when she was gone?  For she would go!
+Her resolution was irrevocable.  All dropped from his side at once.
+The mistress, to whom he had sacrificed the noblest and most loving
+heart, he had lost under circumstances as abject as their two years of
+passion had been dishonorable.  His wife was about to leave him,
+and would he succeed in keeping his son?  He had returned to be avenged,
+and he had not even succeeded in meeting his rival.  That being so
+impressionable had experienced, in the face of so many repeated blows,
+a disappointment so absolute that he gladly looked forward to the
+prospect of exposing himself to death on the following day, while at the
+same time a bitter flood of rancor possessed him at the thought of all
+the persons concerned in his adventure.  He would have liked to crush
+Madame Steno and Maitland, Lydia and Florent--Dorsenne, too--for having
+given him the false word of honor, which had strengthened still more his
+thirst for vengeance by calming it for a few hours.
+
+His confusion of thoughts was only greater when he was seated alone with
+his son at dinner.  That morning he had seen before him his wife's
+smiling face.  The absence of her whom at that moment he valued above all
+else was so sad to him that he ventured one last attempt, and after the
+meal he sent little Luc to see if his mother would receive him.  The
+child returned with a reply in the negative.  "Mamma is resting....  She
+does not wish to be disturbed."  So the matter was irremissible.  She
+would not see her husband until the morrow--if he lived.  For vainly did
+Boleslas convince himself that afternoon that he had lost none of his
+skill in practising before his admiring seconds; a duel is always a
+lottery.  He might be killed, and if the possibility of an eternal
+separation had not moved the injured woman, what prayer would move her?
+He saw her in his thoughts--her who at that moment, with blinds drawn,
+all lights subdued, endured in the semi-darkness that suffering which
+curses but does not pardon.  Ah, but that sight was painful to him!
+And, in order that she might at least know how he felt, he took their son
+in his arms, and, pressing him to his breast, said: "If you see your
+mother before I do, you will tell her that we spent a very lonesome
+evening without her, will you not?"
+
+"Why, what ails you?"  exclaimed the child.  "You have wet my cheeks with
+tears--you are sweeping!"
+
+"You will tell her that, too, promise me," replied the father, "so that
+she will take good care of herself, seeing how we love her."
+
+"But," said the little boy, "she was not ill when we walked together
+after breakfast.  She was so gay."
+
+"I think, too, it will be nothing serious," replied Gorka.  He was
+obliged to dismiss his son and to go out.  He felt so horribly sad that
+he was physically afraid to remain alone in the house.  But whither
+should he go?  Mechanically he repaired to the club, although it was too
+early to meet many of the members there.  He came upon Pietrapertosa and
+Cibo, who had dined there, and who, seated on one of the divans, were
+conferring in whispers with the gravity of two ambassadors discussing the
+Bulgarian or Egyptian question.
+
+"You have a very nervous air," they said to Boleslas, "you who were in
+such good form this afternoon."
+
+"Yes," said Cibo, "you should have dined with us as we asked you to."
+
+"When one is to fight a duel," continued Pietrapertosa, sententiously,
+"one should see neither one's wife nor one's mistress.  Madame Gorka
+suspects nothing, I hope?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing," replied Boleslas; "you are right.  I should have
+done better not to have left you.  But, here I am.  We will exorcise
+dismal thoughts by playing cards and supping!"
+
+"By playing cards and supping!"  exclaimed Pietrapertosa.  "And your hand?
+Think of your hand....  You will tremble, and you will miss your man."
+
+"Alright dinner," said Cibo, "to bed at ten o'clock, up at six-thirty,
+and two eggs with a glass of old port is the recipe Machault gives."
+
+"And which I shall not follow," said Boleslas, adding: "I give you my
+word that if I had no other cause for care than this duel, you would not
+see me in this condition."  He uttered that phrase in a tragical voice,
+the sincerity of which the two Italians felt.  They looked at each other
+without speaking.  They were too shrewd and too well aware of the
+simplest scandals of Rome not to have divined the veritable cause of the
+encounter between Florent and Boleslas.  On the other hand, they knew the
+latter too well not to mistrust somewhat his attitudes.  However, there
+was such simple emotion in his accent that they spontaneously pitied him,
+and, without another word, they no longer opposed the caprices of their
+strange client, whom they did not leave until two o'clock in the morning
+--and fortune favored them.  For they found themselves at the end of a
+game, recklessly played, each the richer by two or three hundred louis
+apiece.  That meant a few days more in Paris on the next visit.  They,
+too, truly regretted their friend's luck, saying, on separating:
+
+"I very much fear for him," said Cibo.  "Such luck at gaming, the night
+before a duel--bad sign, very bad sign."
+
+"So much the more so that some one was there," replied Pietrapertosa,
+making with his fingers the sign which conjures the jettutura.  For
+nothing in the world would he have named the personages against whose
+evil eye he provided in that manner.  But Cibo understood him, and,
+drawing from his trousers pocket his watch, which he fastened a
+l'anglaise by a safety chain to his belt, he pointed out among the charms
+a golden horn:
+
+"I have not let it go this evening," said he.  "The worst is, that Gorka
+will not sleep, and then, his hand!"
+
+Only the first of those two prognostics was to be verified.  Returning
+home at that late hour, Boleslas did not even retire.  He employed the
+remainder of the night in writing a long letter to his wife, one to his
+son, to be given to him on his eighteenth birthday, all in case of an
+accident.  Then he examined his papers and he came upon the package of
+letters he had received from Madame Steno.  Merely to reread a few of
+them, and to glance at the portraits of that faithless mistress again,
+heightened his anger to such a degree that he enclosed the whole in a
+large envelope, which he addressed to Lincoln Maitland.  He had no sooner
+sealed it than he shrugged his shoulders, saying: "Of what use?"  He
+raised the piece of material which stopped up the chimney, and, placing
+the envelope on the fire-dogs, he set it on fire.  He shook with the
+tongs the remains of that which had been the most ardent, the most
+complete passion of his life, and he relighted the flames under the
+pieces of paper still intact.  The unreasonable employment of a night
+which might be his last had scarcely paled his face.  But his friends,
+who knew him well, started on seeing him with that impassively sinister
+countenance when he alighted from his phaeton, at about eight o'clock,
+at the inn selected for the meeting.  He had ordered the carriage the day
+before to allay his wife's suspicions by the pretense of taking one of
+his usual morning drives.  In his mental confusion he had forgotten to
+give a counter order, and that accident caused him to escape the two
+policemen charged by the questorship to watch the Palazzetto Doria, on
+Lydia Maitland's denunciation.  The hired victoria, which those agents
+took, soon lost track of the swift English horses, driven as a man of his
+character and of his mental condition could drive.
+
+The precaution of Chapron's sister was, therefore, baffled in that
+direction, and she succeeded no better with regard to her brother, who,
+to avoid all explanation with Lincoln, had gone, under the pretext of a
+visit to the country, to dine and sleep at the hotel.  It was there that
+Montfanon and Dorsenne met him to conduct him to the rendezvous in the
+classical landau.  Hardly had they reached the eminence of the circus of
+Maxence, on the Appian Way, when they were passed by Boleslas's phaeton.
+
+"You can rest very easy," said Montfanon to Florent.  "How can one aim
+correctly when one tires one's arm in that way?"
+
+That had been the only allusion to the duel made between the three men
+during the journey, which had taken about an hour.  Florent talked as he
+usually did, asking all sorts of questions which attested his care for
+minute information--the most of which might be utilized by his brother-
+in-law-and the Marquis had replied by evoking, with his habitual
+erudition, several of the souvenirs which peopled that vast country,
+strewn with tombs, aqueducts, ruined villas, with the line of the Monts
+Albains enclosing them beyond.
+
+Dorsenne was silent.  It was the first affair at which he had assisted,
+and his nervous anxiety was extreme.
+
+Tragical presentiments oppressed him, and at the same time he apprehended
+momentarily that, Montfanon's religious scruples reawakening, he would
+not only have to seek another second, but would have to defer a solution
+so near.  However, the struggle which was taking place in the heart of
+the "old leaguer" between the gentleman and the Christian, was displayed
+during the drive only by an almost imperceptible gesture.  As the
+carriage passed the entrance to the catacomb of St. Calixtus, the former
+soldier of the Pope turned away his head.  Then he resumed the
+conversation with redoubled energy, to pause in his turn, however, when
+the landau took, a little beyond the Tomb of Caecilia, a transverse road
+in the direction of the Ardeatine Way.  It was there that 'l'Osteria del
+tempo perso' was built, upon the ground belonging to Cibo, on which the
+duel was to take place.
+
+Before l'Osteria, whose signboard was surmounted by the arms of Pope
+Innocent VIII, three carriages were already waiting--Gorka's phaeton, a
+landau which had brought Cibo, Pietrapertosa and the doctor, and a simple
+botte, in which a porter had come.  That unusual number of vehicles
+seemed likely to attract the attention of riflemen out for a stroll, but
+Cibo answered for the discretion of the innkeeper, who indeed cherished
+for his master the devotion of vassal to lord, still common in Italy.
+The three newcomers had no need to make the slightest explanation.
+Hardly had they alighted from the carriage, when the maid conducted them
+through the hall, where at that moment two huntsmen were breakfasting,
+their guns between their knees, and who, like true Romans, scarcely
+deigned to glance at the strangers, who passed from the common hall into
+a small court, from that court, through a shed, into a large field
+enclosed by boards, with here and there a few pine-trees.
+
+That rather odd duelling-ground had formerly served Cibo as a paddock.
+He had essayed to increase his slender income by buying at a bargain some
+jaded horses, which he intended fattening by means of rest and good
+fodder, and then selling to cabmen, averaging a small profit.  The
+speculation having miscarried, the place was neglected and unused, save
+under circumstances similar to those of this particular morning.
+
+"We have arrived last," said Montfanon, looking at his watch; "we are,
+however, five minutes ahead of time.  Remember," he added in a low voice,
+turning to Florent, "to keep the body well in the background," these
+words being followed by other directions.
+
+"Thanks," replied Florent, who looked at the Marquis and Dorsenne with a
+glance which he ordinarily had only for Lincoln, "and you know that,
+whatever may come, I thank you for all from the depths of my heart."
+
+The young man put so much grace in that adieu, his courage was so simple,
+his sacrifice for his brother-in-law so magnanimous and natural--in fact,
+for two days both seconds had so fully appreciated the charm of that
+disposition, absolutely free from thoughts of self--that they pressed his
+hand with the emotion of true friends.  They were themselves, moreover,
+interested, and at once began the series of preparations without which
+the role of assistant would be physically insupportable to persons
+endowed with a little sensibility.  In experienced hands like those of
+Montfanon, Cibo and Pietrapertosa, such preliminaries are speedily
+arranged.  The code is as exact as the step of a ballet.  Twenty minutes
+after the entrance of the last arrivals, the two adversaries were face to
+face.  The signal was given.  The two shots were fired simultaneously,
+and Florent sank upon the grass which covered the enclosure.  He had a
+bullet in his thigh.
+
+Dorsenne has often related since, as a singular trait of literary mania,
+that at the moment the wounded man fell he, himself, notwithstanding the
+anxiety which possessed him, had watched Montfanon, to study him.  He
+adds that never had he seen a face express such sorrowful piety as that
+of the man who, scorning all human respect, made the sign of the cross.
+It was the devotee of the catacombs, who had left the altar of the
+martyrs to accomplish a work of charity, then carried away by anger so
+far as to place himself under the necessity of participating in a duel,
+who was, no doubt, asking pardon of God.  What remorse was stirring
+within the heart of the fervent, almost mystical Christian, so strangely
+mixed up in an adventure of that kind?  He had at least this comfort,
+that after the first examination, and when they had borne Florent into a
+room prepared hastily by the care of Cibo, the doctor declared himself
+satisfied.  The ball could even be removed at once, and as neither the
+bone nor the muscles had been injured it was a matter of a few weeks at
+the most.
+
+"All that now remains for us," concluded Cibo, who had brought back the
+news, "is to draw up our official report."
+
+At that instant, and as the witnesses were preparing to reenter the house
+for the last formality, an incident occurred, very unexpected, which was
+to transform the encounter, up to that time so simple, into one of those
+memorable duels which are talked over at clubs and in armories.  If
+Pietrapertosa and Cibo had ceased since morning to believe in the
+jettatura of the "some one" whom neither had named, it must be
+acknowledged that they were very unjust, for the good fortune of having
+gained something wherewith to swell their Parisian purses was surely
+naught by the side of this--to have to discuss with the Cavals, the
+Machaults and other professionals the case, almost unprecedented, in
+which they were participants.
+
+Boleslas Gorka, who, when once his adversary had fallen, paced to and fro
+without seeming to care as to the gravity of the wound, suddenly
+approached the group formed by the four men, and in a tone of voice which
+did not predict the terrible aggression in which he was about to indulge,
+he said:
+
+"One moment, gentlemen.  I desire to say a few words in your presence to
+Monsieur Dorsenne."
+
+"I am at your service, Gorka," replied Julien, who did not suspect the
+hostile intention of his old friend.  He did not divine the form which
+that hostility was about to take, but he had always upon his mind his
+word of honor falsely given, and he was prepared to answer for it.
+
+"It will not take much time, sir," continued Boleslas, still with the
+same insolently formal politeness, "you know we have an account to
+settle....  But as I have some cause not to believe in the validity of
+your honor, I should like to remove all cause of evasion."  And before
+any one could interfere in the unheard-of proceedings he had raised his
+glove and struck Dorsenne in the face.  As Gorka spoke, the writer turned
+pale.  He had not the time to reply to the audacious insult offered him
+by a similar one, for the three witnesses of the scene cast themselves
+between him and his aggressor.  He, however, pushed them aside with a
+resolute air.
+
+"Remember, sirs," said he, "that by preventing me from inflicting on
+Monsieur Gorka the punishment he deserves, you force me to obtain another
+reparation.  And I demand it immediately....  I will not leave this
+place," he continued, "without having obtained it."
+
+"Nor I, without having given it to you," replied Boleslas.  "It is all I
+ask."
+
+"No, Dorsenne," cried Montfanon, who had been the first to seize the
+raised arm of the writer, "you shall not fight thus.  First, you have no
+right.  It requires at least twenty-four hours between the provocation
+and the encounter....  And you, sirs, must not agree to serve as seconds
+for Monsieur Gorka, after he has failed in a manner so grave in all the
+rules of the ground....  If you lend yourselves to it, it is barbarous,
+it is madness, whatsoever you like.  It is no longer a duel."
+
+"I repeat, Montfanon," replied Dorsenne, "that I will not leave here and
+that I will not allow Monsieur Gorka to leave until I have obtained the
+reparation to which I feel I have the right."
+
+"And I repeat that I am at Monsieur Dorsenne's service," replied
+Boleslas.
+
+"Very well, sirs," said Montfanon.  "There only remains for us to leave
+you to arrange it one with the other as you wish, and for us to
+withdraw....  Is not that your opinion?"  he continued, addressing Cibo
+and Pietrapertosa, who did not reply immediately.
+
+"Certainly," finally said one; "the case is difficult."
+
+"There are, however, precedents," insinuated the other.
+
+"Yes," resumed Cibo, "if it were only the two successive duels of Henry
+de Pene."
+
+"Which furnish authority," concluded Pietrapertosa.
+
+"Authority has nothing to do with it," again exclaimed Montfanon.  "I
+know, for my part, that I am not here to assist at a butchery, and that I
+will not assist at it....  I am going, sirs, and I expect you will do the
+same, for I do not suppose you would select coachmen to play the part of
+seconds....  Adieu, Dorsenne....  You do not doubt my friendship for
+you....  I think I am giving you a veritable proof of it by not
+permitting you to fight under such conditions."
+
+When the old nobleman reentered the inn, he waited ten minutes, persuaded
+that his departure would determine that of Cibo and of Pietrapertosa,
+and that the new affair, following so strangely upon the other, would be
+deferred until the next day.  He had not told an untruth.  It was his
+strong friendship for Julien which had made him apprehend a duel
+organized in that way, under the influence of a righteous indignation.
+Gorka's unjustifiable violence would certainly not permit a second
+encounter to be avoided.  But as the insult had been outrageous, it was
+the more essential that the conditions should be fixed calmly and after
+grave consideration.  To divert his impatience, Montfanon bade the
+innkeeper point out to him whither they had carried Florent, and he
+ascended to the tiny room, where the doctor was dressing the wounded
+man's leg.
+
+"You see,"  said the latter, with a smile, "I shall have to limp a little
+for a month....  And Dorsenne?"
+
+"He is all right, I hope," replied Montfanon, adding, with ill-humor:
+"Dorsenne is a fool; that is what Dorsenne is.  And Gorka is a wild
+beast; that is what Gorka is."  And he related the episode which had just
+taken place to the two men, who were so surprised that the doctor,
+bandage in hand, paused in his work.  "And they wish to fight there at
+once, like redskins.  Why not scalp one another?....  And that Cibo and
+that Pietrapertosa would have consented to the duel if I had not opposed
+it!  Fortunately they lack two seconds, and it is not easy to find in
+this district two men who can sign an official report, for it is the mode
+nowadays to have those paltry scraps of paper.  One of my friends and
+myself had two such witnesses at twenty francs apiece.  But that was in
+Paris in 'sixty-two."  And he entered upon the recital of the old-time
+duel, to calm his anxiety, which burst forth again in these words: "It
+seems they do not decide to separate so quickly.  It is not, however,
+possible that they will fight....  Can we see them from here?"  He
+approached the window, which indeed looked upon the enclosure.  The sight
+which met his eyes caused the excellent man to stammer....  "The
+miserable men!....  It is monstrous....  They are mad....  They have
+found seconds....  Whom have they taken?....  Those two huntsmen!....
+Ali, my God!  My God!"....  He could say no more.  The doctor had
+hastened to the window to see what was passing, regardless of the fact
+that Florent dragged himself thither as well.  Did they remain there a
+few seconds, fifteen minutes or longer?  They could never tell, so
+greatly were they terrified.
+
+As Montfanon had anticipated, the conditions of the duel were terrible.
+For Pietrapertosa, who seemed to direct the combat, after having measured
+a space sufficiently long, of about fifty feet, was in the act of tracing
+in the centre two lines scarcely ten or twelve metres apart.
+
+"They have chosen the duel a 'marche interrompue'," groaned the veteran
+duellist, whose knowledge of the ground did not deceive him.  Dorsenne
+and Gorka, once placed, face to face, commenced indeed to advance, now
+raising, now lowering their weapons with the terrible slowness of two
+adversaries resolved not to miss their mark.
+
+A shot was fired.  It was by Boleslas.  Dorsenne was unharmed.  Several
+steps had still to be taken in order to reach the limit.  He took them,
+and he paused to aim at his opponent with so evident an intention of
+killing him that they could distinctly hear Cibo cry:
+
+"Fire!  For God's sake, fire!"
+
+Julien pressed the trigger, as if in obedience to that order, incorrect,
+but too natural to be even noticed.  The weapon was discharged, and the
+three spectators at the window of the bedroom uttered three simultaneous
+exclamations on seeing Gorka's arm fall and his hand drop the pistol.
+
+"It is nothing," cried the doctor, "but a broken arm."
+
+"The good Lord has been better to us than we deserve," said the Marquis.
+
+"Now, at least, the madman will be quieted....  Brave Dorsenne!"  cried
+Florent, who thought of his brother-in-law and who added gayly, leaning
+on Montfanon and the doctor in order to reach the couch: "Finish quickly,
+doctor, they will need you below immediately."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+One of those trustful men who did not judge when they loved
+That suffering which curses but does not pardon
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Cosmopolis, v3
+by Paul Bourget
+
+
+
+
+
+
+COSMOPOLIS
+
+By PAUL BOURGET
+
+
+
+BOOK 4.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+LUCID ALBA
+
+The doctor had diagnosed the case correctly.  Dorsenne's ball had struck
+Gorka below the wrist.  Two centimetres more to the right or to the left,
+and undoubtedly Boleslas would have been killed.  He escaped with a
+fracture of the forearm, which would confine him for a few days to his
+room, and which would force him to submit for several weeks to the
+annoyance of a sling.  When he was taken home and his personal physician,
+hastily summoned, made him a bandage and prescribed for the first few
+days bed and rest, he experienced a new access of rage, which exceeded
+the paroxysms of the day before and of that morning.  All parts of his
+soul, the noblest as well as the meanest, bled at once and caused him to
+suffer with another agony than that occasioned by his wounded arm.  Was
+he satisfied in the desire, almost morbid, to figure in the eyes of those
+who knew him as an extraordinary personage?  He had hastened from Poland
+through Europe as an avenger of his betrayed love, and he had begun by
+missing his rival.  Instead of provoking him immediately in the salon of
+Villa Steno, he had waited, and another had had time to substitute
+himself for the one he had wished to chastise.  The other, whose death
+would at least have given a tragical issue to the adventure, Boleslas had
+scarcely touched.  He had hoped in striking Dorsenne to execute at least
+one traitor whom he considered as having trifled with the most sacred of
+confidences.  He had simply succeeded in giving that false friend
+occasion to humiliate him bitterly, leaving out of the question that he
+had rendered it impossible to fight again for many days.  None of the
+persons who had wronged him would be punished for some time, neither his
+coarse and cowardly rival, nor his perfidious mistress, nor monstrous
+Lydia Maitland, whose infamy he had just discovered.  They were all happy
+and triumphant, on that lovely, radiant May day, while he tossed on a bed
+of pain, and it was proven too clearly to him that very afternoon by his
+two seconds, the only visitors whom he had not denied admission, and who
+came to see him about five o'clock.  They came from the races of Tor di
+Quinto, which had taken place that day.
+
+All is well," began Cibo, "I will guarantee that no one has talked....
+I have told you before, I am sure of my innkeeper, and we have paid the
+witnesses and the coachman.
+
+"Were Madame Steno and her daughter at the races?"  interrupted Boleslas.
+
+"Yes," replied the Roman, whom the abruptness of the question surprised
+too much for him to evade it with his habitual diplomacy.
+
+"With whom?"  asked the wounded man.
+
+"Alone, that time," replied Cibo, with an eagerness in which Boleslas
+distinguished an intention to deceive him.
+
+"And Madame Maitland?"
+
+"She was there, too, with her husband," said Pietrapertosa, heedless of
+Cibo's warning glances, "and all Rome besides," adding: "Do you know the
+engagement of Ardea and little Hafner is public?  They were all three
+there, the betrothed and the father, and so happy!  I vow, it was fine.
+Cardinal Guerillot baptized pretty Fanny."
+
+"And Dorsenne?"  again questioned the invalid.
+
+"He was there," said Cibo.  "You will be vexed when I tell you of the
+reply he dared to make us.  We asked him how he had managed--nervous as
+he is--to aim at you as he aimed, without trembling.  For he did not
+tremble.  And guess what he replied?  That he thought of a recipe of
+Stendhal's--to recite from memory four Latin verses, before firing.  'And
+might one know what you chose?' I asked of him.  Thereupon he repeated:
+'Tityre, tu patulae recubens.!"
+
+"It is a case which recalls the word of Casal," interrupted
+Pietrapertosa, "when that snob of a Figon recommended to us at the club
+his varnish manufactured from a recipe of a valet of the Prince of Wales.
+If the young man is not settled by us, I shall be sorry for him."
+
+Although the two 'confreres' had repeated that mediocre pleasantry a
+hundred times, they laughed at the top of their sonorous voices and
+succeeded in entirely unnerving the injured man.  He gave as a pretext
+his need of rest to dismiss the fine fellows, of whose sympathy he was
+assured, whom he had just found loyal and devoted, but who caused him
+pain in conjuring up, in answer to his question, the images of all his
+enemies.  When one is suffering from a certain sort of pain, remarks like
+those naively exchanged between the two Roman imitators of Casal are
+intolerable to the hearer.  One desires to be alone to feed upon, at
+least in peace, the bitter food, the exasperating and inefficacious
+rancor against people and against fate, with which Gorka at that moment
+felt his heart to be so full.  The presence of his former mistress at the
+races, and on that afternoon, wounded him more cruelly than the rest.  He
+did not doubt that she knew through Maitland, himself, certainly informed
+by Chapron, of the two duels and of his injury.  It was on her account
+that he had fought, and that very day she appeared in public, smiling,
+coquetting, as if two years of passion had not united their lives, as if
+he were to her merely a social acquaintance, a guest at her dinners and
+her soirees.  He knew her habits so well, and how eagerly, when she
+loved, she drank in the presence of him she loved.  No doubt she had an
+appointment on the race-course with Maitland, as she had formerly had
+with him, and the painter had gone thither when he should have cared for
+his courageous, his noble brother-in-law, whom he had allowed to fight
+for him!  What a worthy lover the selfish and brutal American was of that
+vile creature!  The image of the happy couple tortured Boleslas with the
+bitterest jealousy intermingled with disgust, and, by contrast, he
+thought of his own wife, the proud and tender Maud whom he had lost.
+
+He pictured to himself other illnesses when he had seen that beautiful
+nurse by his bedside.  He saw again the true glance with which that wife,
+so shamefully betrayed, looked at him, the movements of her loyal hands,
+which yielded to no one the care of waiting upon him.  To-day she had
+allowed him to go to a duel without seeing him.  He had returned.  She
+had not even inquired as to his wound.  The doctor had dressed it without
+her presence, and all that he knew of her was what he learned from their
+child.  For he sent for Luc.  He explained to him his broken arm, as had
+been agreed upon with his friends, by a fall on the staircase, and little
+Luc replied:
+
+"When will you join us, then?  Mamma says we leave for England this
+evening or in the morning.  All the trunks are almost ready."
+
+That evening or to-morrow?  So Maud was going to execute her threat.  She
+was going away forever, and without an explanation.  He could not even
+plead his cause once more to the woman who certainly would not respond to
+another appeal, since she had found, in her outraged pride, the strength
+to be severe, when he was in danger of death.  In the face of that
+evidence of the desertion of all connected with him, Boleslas suffered
+one of those accesses of discouragement, deep, absolute, irremediable, in
+which one longs to sleep forever.  He asked himself: "Were I to try one
+more step?"  and he replied: "She will not!"  when his valet entered with
+word that the Countess desired to speak with him.  His agitation was so
+extreme that, for a second, he fancied it was with regard to Madame
+Steno, and he was almost afraid to see his wife enter.
+
+Without any doubt, the emotions undergone during the past few days had
+been very great.  He had, however, experienced none more violent, even
+beneath the pistol raised by Dorsenne, than that of seeing advance to his
+bed the embodiment of his remorse.  Maud's face, in which ordinarily
+glowed the beauty of a blood quickened by the English habits of fresh air
+and daily exercise, showed undeniable traces of tears, of sadness, and of
+insomnia.  The pallor of the cheeks, the dark circles beneath the eyes,
+the dryness of the lips and their bitter expression, the feverish
+glitter, above all, in the eyes, related more eloquently than words the
+terrible agony of which she was the victim.  The past twenty-four hours
+had acted upon her like certain long illnesses, in which it seems that
+the very essence of the organism is altered.  She was another person.
+The rapid metamorphosis, so tragical and so striking, caused Boleslas to
+forget his own anguish.  He experienced nothing but one great regret when
+the woman, so visibly bowed down by grief, was seated, and when he saw in
+her eyes the look of implacable coldness, even through the fever, before
+which he had recoiled the day before.  But she was there, and her
+unhoped-for presence was to the young man, even under the circumstances,
+an infinite consolation.  He, therefore, said, with an almost childish
+grace, which he could assume when he desired to please:
+
+"You recognized the fact that it would be too cruel of you to go away
+without seeing me again.  I should not have dared to ask it of you, and
+yet it was the only pleasure I could have....  I thank you for having
+given it to me."
+
+"Do not thank me," replied Maud, shaking her head, "it is not on your
+account that I am here.  It is from duty....  Let me speak," she
+continued, stopping by a gesture her husband's reply, "you can answer me
+afterward....  Had it only been a question of you and of me, I repeat,
+I should not have seen you again....  But, as I told you yesterday, we
+have a son."
+
+"Ah!"  exclaimed Boleslas, sadly.  "It is to make me still more wretched
+that you have come....  You should remember, however, that I am in no
+condition to discuss with you so cruel a question....  I thought I had
+already said that I would not disregard your rights on condition that you
+did not disregard mine."
+
+"It is not of my rights that I wish to speak, nor of yours," interrupted
+Maud, "but of his, the only ones of importance.  When I left you
+yesterday, I was suffering too severely to feel anything but my pain.
+It was then that, in my mental agony, I recalled words repeated to me by
+my father: 'When one suffers, he should look his grief in the face, and
+it will always teach him something.'  I was ashamed of my weakness, and I
+looked my grief in the face.  It taught me, first, to accept it as a just
+punishment for having married against the advice and wishes of my
+father."
+
+"Ah, do not abjure our past!"  cried the young man; "the past which has
+remained so dear to me through all."
+
+"No, I do not abjure it," replied Maud, "for it was on recurring to it--
+it was on returning to my early impressions--that I could find not an
+excuse, but an explanation of your conduct.  I remembered what you
+related to me of the misfortunes of your childhood and of your youth, and
+how you had grown up between your father and your mother, passing six
+months with one, six months with the other--not caring for, not being
+able to judge either of them--forced to hide from one your feelings for
+the other.  I saw for the first time that your parents' separation had
+the effect of saddening your heart at that epoch.  It is that which
+perverted your character....  And I read in advance Luc's history in
+yours....  Listen, Boleslas!  I speak to you as I would speak before God!
+My first feeling when that thought presented itself to my mind was not to
+resume life with you; such a life would be henceforth too bitter.  No, it
+was to say to myself, I will have my son to myself.  He shall feel my
+influence alone.  I saw you set out this morning--set out to insult me
+once more, to sacrifice me once more!  If you had been truly repentant
+would you have offered me that last affront?  And when you returned--when
+they informed me that you had a broken arm--I wished to tell the little
+one myself that you were ill....  I saw how much he loved you,
+I discovered what a place you already occupied in his heart, and I
+comprehended that, even if the law gave him to me, as I know it would,
+his childhood would be like yours, his youth like your youth."
+
+"Then," she went on, with an accent in which emotion struggled through
+her pride, "I did not feel justified in destroying the respect so deep,
+the love so true, he bears you, and I have come to say to you: You have
+wronged me greatly.  You have killed within me something that will never
+come to life again.  I feel that for years I shall carry a weight on my
+mind and on my heart at the thought that you could have betrayed me as
+you have.  But I feel that for our boy this separation on which I had
+resolved is too perilous.  I feel that I shall find in the certainty of
+avoiding a moral danger for him the strength to continue a common
+existence, and I will continue it.  But human nature is human nature,
+and that strength I can have only on one condition."
+
+"And that is?"  asked Boleslas.  Maud's speech, for it was a speech
+carefully reflected upon, every phrase of which had been weighed by that
+scrupulous conscience, contrasted strongly in its lucid reasoning with
+the state of nervous excitement in which he had lived for several days.
+He had been more pained by it than he would have been by passionate
+reproaches.  At the same time he had been moved by the reference to his
+son's love for him, and he felt that if he did not become reconciled with
+Maud at that moment his future domestic life would be ended.  There was a
+little of each sentiment in the few words he added to the anxiety of his
+question.  "Although you have spoken to me very severely, and although
+you might have said the same thing in other terms, although, above all,
+it is very painful to me to have you condemn my entire character on one
+single error, I love you, I love my son, and I agree in advance to your
+conditions.  I esteem your character too much to doubt that they will be
+reconcilable with my dignity.  As for the duel of this morning," he
+added, "you know very well that it was too late to withdraw without
+dishonor."
+
+"I should like your promise, first of all," replied Madame Gorka, who did
+not answer his last remark, "that during the time in which you are
+obliged to keep your room no one shall be admitted....  I could not bear
+that creature in my house, nor any one who would speak to me or to you of
+her."
+
+"I promise," said the young man, who felt a flood of warmth enter his
+soul at the first proof that the jealousy of the loving woman still
+existed beneath the indignation of the wife.  And he added, with a smile,
+"That will not be a great sacrifice.  And then?"
+
+"Then?....  That the doctor will permit us to go to England.  We will
+leave orders for the management of things during our absence.  We will go
+this winter wherever you like, but not to this house; never again to this
+city."
+
+"That is a promise, too," said Boleslas, "and that will be no great
+sacrifice either; and then?"
+
+"And then," said she in a low voice, as if ashamed of herself.  "You must
+never write to her, you must never try to find out what has become of
+her."
+
+"I give you my word," replied Boleslas, taking her hand, and adding: "And
+then?"
+
+"There is no then," said she, withdrawing her hand, but gently.  And she
+began to realize herself her promise of pardon, for she rearranged the
+pillows under the wounded man's head, while he resumed:
+
+"Yes, my noble Maud, there is a then.  It is that I shall prove to you
+how much truth there was in my words of yesterday, in my assurance that
+I love you in spite of my faults.  It is the mother who returns to me
+today.  But I want my wife, my dear wife, and I shall win her back."
+
+She made no reply.  She experienced, on hearing him pronounce those last
+words with a transfigured face, an emotion which did not vanish.  She had
+acquired, beneath the shock of her great sorrow, an intuition too deep of
+her husband's nature, and that facility, which formerly charmed her by
+rendering her anxious, now inspired her with horror.  That man with the
+mobile and complaisant conscience had already forgiven himself.  It
+sufficed him to conceive the plan of a reparation of years, and to
+respect himself for it--as if that was really sufficient--for the
+difficult task.  At least during the eight days which lapsed between that
+conversation and their departure he strictly observed the promise he had
+given his wife.  In vain did Cibo, Pietrapertosa, Hafner, Ardea try to
+see him.  When the train which bore them away steamed out he asked his
+wife, with a pride that time justified by deeds:
+
+"Are you satisfied with me?"
+
+"I am satisfied that we have left Rome," said she, evasively, and it was
+true in two senses of the word:
+
+First of all, because she did not delude herself with regard to the
+return of the moral energy of which Boleslas was so proud.  She knew that
+his variable will was at the mercy of the first sensation.  Then, what
+she had not confessed to her husband, the sorrow of a broken friendship
+was joined in her to the sorrows of a betrayed wife.  The sudden
+discovery of the infamy of Alba's mother had not destroyed her strong
+affection for the young girl, and during the entire week, busy with her
+preparations for a final departure, she had not ceased to wonder
+anxiously: "What will she think of my silence?....  What has her mother
+told her?....  What has she divined?"
+
+She had loved the "poor little soul," as she called the Contessina in her
+pretty English term.  She had devoted to her the friendship peculiar to
+young women for young girls--a sentiment--very strong and yet very
+delicate, which resembles, in its tenderness, the devotion of an elder
+sister for a younger.  There is in it a little naive protection and also
+a little romantic and gracious melancholy.  The elder friend is severe
+and critical.  She tries to assuage, while envying them, the excessive
+enthusiasms of the younger.  She receives, she provokes her confidence
+with the touching gravity of a counsellor.  The younger friend is curious
+and admiring.  She shows herself in all the truth of that graceful
+awakening of thoughts and emotions which precede her own period before
+marriage.  And when there is, as was the case with Alba Steno, a certain
+discord of soul between that younger friend and her mother, the affection
+for the sister chosen becomes so deep that it can not be broken without
+wounds on both sides.  It was for that reason that, on leaving Rome,
+faithful and noble Maud experienced at once a sense of relief and of
+pain--of relief, because she was no longer exposed to the danger of an
+explanation with Alba; of pain, because it was so bitter a thought for
+her that she could never justify her heart to her friend, could never aid
+her in emerging from the difficulties of her life, could, finally, never
+love her openly as she had loved her secretly.  She said to herself as
+she saw the city disappear in the night with its curves and its lights:
+
+"If she thinks badly of me, may she divine nothing!  Who will now prevent
+her from yielding herself up to her sentiment for that dangerous and
+perfidious Dorsenne?  Who will console her when she is sad?  Who will
+defend her against her mother?  I was perhaps wrong in writing to the
+woman, as I did, the letter, which might have been delivered to her in
+her daughter's presence....  Ah, poor little soul!....  May God watch
+over her!"
+
+She turned, then, toward her son, whose hair she stroked, as if to
+exorcise, by the evidence of present duty, the nostalgia which possessed
+her at the thought of an affection sacrificed forever.  Hers was a nature
+too active, too habituated to the British virtue of self-control to
+submit to the languor of vain emotions.
+
+The two persons of whom her friendship, now impotent, had thought, were,
+for various reasons, the two fatal instruments of the fate of the "poor
+little soul," and the vague remorse which Maud herself felt with regard
+to the terrible note sent to Madame Steno in the presence of the young
+girl, was only too true.  When the servant had given that letter to the
+Countess, saying that Madame Gorka excused herself on account of
+indisposition, Alba Steno's first impulse had been to enter her friend's
+room.
+
+"I will go to embrace her and to see if she has need of anything," she
+said.
+
+"Madame has forbidden any one to enter her room," replied the footman,
+with embarrassment, and, at the same moment, Madame Steno, who had just
+opened the note, said, in a voice which struck the young girl by its
+change:
+
+"Let us go; I do not feel well, either."
+
+The woman, so haughty, so accustomed to bend all to her will, was indeed
+trembling in a very pitiful manner beneath the insult of those phrases
+which drove her, Caterina Steno, away with such ignominy.  She paled to
+the roots of her fair hair, her face was distorted, and for the first and
+last time Alba saw her form tremble.  It was only for a few moments.
+At the foot of the staircase energy gained the mastery in that courageous
+character, created for the shock of strong emotions and for instantaneous
+action.  But rapid as had been that passage, it had sufficed to
+disconcert the young girl.  For not a moment did she doubt that the note
+was the cause of that extraordinary metamorphosis in the Countess's
+aspect and attitude.  The fact that Maud would not receive her, her
+friend, in her room was not less strange.  What was happening?  What did
+the letter contain?  What were they hiding from her?  If she had, the day
+before, felt the "needle in the heart" only on divining a scene of
+violent explanation between her mother and Boleslas Gorka, how would she
+have been agonized to ascertain the state into which the few lines of
+Boleslas's wife had cast that mother!  The anonymous denunciation
+recurred to her, and with it all the suspicion she had in vain rejected.
+The mother was unaware that for months there was taking place in her
+daughter a moral drama of which that scene formed a decisive episode,
+she was too shrewd not to understand that her emotion had been very
+imprudent, and that she must explain it.  Moreover, the rupture with Maud
+was irreparable, and it was necessary that Alba should be included in it.
+
+The mother, at once so guilty and so loving, so blind and so considerate,
+had no sooner foreseen the necessity than her decision was made, and a
+false explanation invented:
+
+"Guess what Maud has just written me?"  said she, brusquely, to her
+daughter, when they were seated side by side in their carriage.  God,
+what balm the simple phrase introduced into Alba's heart!  Her mother was
+about to show her the note!  Her joy was short-lived!  The note remained
+where the Countess had slipped it, after having nervously folded it, in
+the opening in her glove.  And she continued: "She accuses me of being
+the cause of a duel between her husband and Florent Chapron, and she
+quarrels with me by letter, without seeing me, without speaking to me!"
+
+"Boleslas Gorka has fought a duel with Florent Chapron?"  repeated the
+young girl.
+
+"Yes," replied her mother.  "I knew that through Hafner.  I did not speak
+of it to you in order not to worry you with regard to Maud, and I have
+only awaited her so long to cheer her up in case I should have found her
+uneasy, and this is how she rewards me for my friendship!  It seems that
+Gorka took offence at some remark of Chapron's about Poles, one of those
+innocent remarks made daily on any nation--the Italians, the French, the
+English, the Germans, the Jews--and which mean nothing....  I repeated
+the remark in jest to Gorka!....  I leave you to judge....  Is it my
+fault if, instead of laughing at it, he insulted poor Florent, and if the
+absurd encounter resulted from it?  And Maud, who writes me that she will
+never pardon me, that I am a false friend, that I did it expressly to
+exasperate her husband....  Ah, let her watch her husband, let her lock
+him up, if he is mad!  And I, who have received them as I have, I, who
+have made their position for them in Rome, I, who had no other thought
+than for her just now!....  You hear," she added, pressing her daughter's
+hand with a fervor which was at least sincere, if her words were
+untruthful, "I forbid you seeing her again or writing to her.  If she
+does not offer me an apology for her insulting note, I no longer wish to
+know her.  One is foolish to be so kind!"
+
+For the first time, while listening to that speech, Alba was convinced
+that her mother was deceiving her.  Since suspicion had entered her heart
+with regard to her mother, the object until then of such admiration and
+affection, she had passed through many stages of mistrust.  To talk with
+the Countess was always to dissipate them.  That was because Madame
+Steno, apart from her amorous immorality, was of a frank and truthful
+nature.
+
+It was indeed a customary and known weakness of Florent's to repeat those
+witticisms which abound in national epigrams, as mediocre as they are
+iniquitous.  Alba could recall at least twenty circumstances when the
+excellent man had uttered such jests at which a sensitive person might
+take offence.  She would not have thought it utterly impossible that a
+duel between Gorka and Chapron might have been provoked by an incident of
+that order.  But Chapron was the brother-in-law of Maitland, of the new
+friend with whom Madame Steno had become infatuated during the absence of
+the Polish Count, and what a brother-in-law!  He of whom Dorsenne said:
+"He would set Rome on fire to cook an egg for his sister's husband."
+When Madame Steno announced that duel to her daughter, an invincible and
+immediate deduction possessed the poor child--Florent was fighting for
+his brother-in-law.  And on account of whom, if not of Madame Steno?  The
+thought would not, however, have possessed her a second in the face of
+the very plausible explanation made by the Countess, if Alba had not had
+in her heart a certain proof that her mother was not telling the truth.
+The young girl loved Maud as much as she was loved by her.  She knew the
+sensibility of her faithful and, delicate friend, as that friend knew
+hers.  For Maud to write her mother a letter which produced an immediate
+rupture, there must have been some grave reason.
+
+Another material proof was soon joined to that moral proof.  Granted the
+character and the habits of the Countess, since she had not shown Maud's
+letter to her daughter there and then, it was because the letter was not
+fit to be shown.  But she heard on the following day only the description
+of the duel, related by Maitland to Madame Steno, the savage aggression
+of Gorka against Dorsenne, the composure of the latter and the issue,
+relatively harmless, of the two duels.
+
+"You see," said her mother to her, "I was right in saying that Gorka is
+mad!....  It seems he has had a fit of insanity since the duel, and that
+they prevent him from seeing any one....  Can you now comprehend how Maud
+could blame me for what is hereditary in the Gorka family?"
+
+Such was indeed the story which the Venetian and her friends, Hafner,
+Ardea, and others, circulated throughout Rome in order to diminish the
+scandal.  The accusation of madness is very common to women who have
+goaded to excess man's passion, and who then wish to avoid all blame for
+the deeds or words of that man.  In this case, Boleslas's fury and his
+two incomprehensible duels, fifteen minutes apart, justified the story.
+When it became known in the city that the Palazzetto Doria was strictly
+closed, that Maud Gorka received no one, and finally that she was taking
+away her husband in the manner which resembled a flight, no doubt
+remained of the young man's wrecked reason.
+
+
+Two persons profited very handsomely by the gossiping, the origin of
+which was a mystery.  One was the innkeeper of the 'Tempo Perso', whose
+simple 'bettola' became, during those few days, a veritable place of
+pilgrimage, and who sold a quantity of wine and numbers of fresh eggs.
+The other was Dorsenne's publisher, of whom the Roman booksellers ordered
+several hundred volumes.
+
+"If I had had that duel in Paris," said the novelist to Mademoiselle
+Steno, relating to her the unforeseen result, "I should perhaps have at
+length known the intoxication of the thirtieth edition."
+
+It was a few days after the departure of the Gorkas that he jested thus,
+at a large dinner of twenty-four covers, given at Villa Steno in honor of
+Peppino Ardea and Fanny Hafner.  Reestablished in the Countess's favor
+since his duel, he had again become a frequenter of her house, so much
+the more assiduous as the increasing melancholy of Alba interested him
+greatly.  The enigma of the young girl's character redoubled that
+interest at each visit in such a degree that, notwithstanding the heat,
+already beginning, of the dangerous Roman summer, he constantly deferred
+his return to Paris until the morrow.  What had she guessed in
+consequence of the encounter, the details of which she had asked of him
+with an emotion scarcely hidden in her eyes of a blue as clear, as
+transparent, as impenetrable at the same time, as the water of certain
+Alpine lakes at the foot of the glaciers.  He thought he was doing right
+in corroborating the story of Boleslas Gorka's madness, which he knew
+better than any one else to be false.  But was it not the surest means of
+exempting Madame Steno from connection with the affair?  Why had he seen
+Alba's beautiful eyes veiled with a sadness inexplicable, as if he had
+just given her another blow?  He did not know that since the day on which
+the word insanity had been uttered before her relative to Maud's husband,
+the Contessina was the victim of a reasoning as simple as irrefutable.
+
+"If Boleslas be mad, as they say," said Alba, "why does Maud, whom I know
+to be so just and who loves me so dearly, attribute to my mother the
+responsibility of this duel, to the point of breaking with me thus, and
+of leaving without a line of explanation?....  No....  There is something
+else."....  The nature of the "something else" the young girl
+comprehended, on recalling her mother's face during the perusal of Maud's
+letter.  During the ten days following that scene, she saw constantly
+before her that face, and the fear imprinted upon those features
+ordinarily so calm, so haughty!  Ah, poor little soul, indeed, who could
+not succeed in banishing this fixed idea "My mother is not a good woman."
+
+Idea!  So much the more terrible, as Alba had no longer the ignorance of
+a young girl, if she had the innocence.  Accustomed to the conversations,
+at times very bold, of the Countess's salon, enlightened by the reading
+of novels chanced upon, the words lover and mistress had for her a
+signification of physical intimacy such that it was an almost intolerable
+torture for her to associate them with the relations of her mother, first
+toward Gorka, then toward Maitland.  That torture she had undergone
+during the entire dinner, at the conclusion of which Dorsenne essayed to
+chat gayly with her.  She sat beside the painter, and the man's very
+breath, his gestures, the sound of his voice, his manner of eating and of
+drinking, the knowledge of his very proximity, had caused her such keen
+suffering that it was impossible for her to take anything but large
+glasses of iced water.  Several times during that dinner, prolonged amid
+the sparkle of magnificent silver and Venetian crystal, amid the perfume
+of flowers and the gleam of jewels, she had seen Maitland's eyes fixed
+upon the Countess with an expression which almost caused her to cry out,
+so clearly did her instinct divine its impassioned sensuality, and once
+she thought she saw her mother respond to it.
+
+She felt with appalling clearness that which before she had uncertainly
+experienced, the immodest character of that mother's beauty.  With the
+pearls in her fair hair, with neck and arms bare in a corsage the
+delicate green tint of which showed to advantage the incomparable
+splendor of her skin, with her dewy lips, with her voluptuous eyes shaded
+by their long lashes, the dogaresse looked in the centre of that table
+like an empress and like a courtesan.  She resembled the Caterina
+Cornaro, the gallant queen of the island of Cypress, painted by Titian,
+and whose name she worthily bore.  For years Alba had been so proud of
+the ray of seduction cast forth by the Countess, so proud of those
+statuesque arms, of the superb carriage, of the face which defied the
+passage of time, of the bloom of opulent life the glorious creature
+displayed.  During that dinner she was almost ashamed of it.
+
+She had been pained to see Madame Maitland seated a few paces farther on,
+with brow and lips contracted as if by thoughts of bitterness.  She
+wondered: Does Lydia suspect them, too?  But was it possible that her
+mother, whom she knew to be so generous, so magnanimous, so kind, could
+have that smile of sovereign tranquillity with such secrets in her heart?
+Was it possible that she could have betrayed Maud for months and months
+with the same light of joy in her eyes?
+
+"Come," said Julien, stopping himself suddenly in the midst of a speech,
+in which he had related two or three literary anecdotes.  "Instead of
+listening to your friend Dorsenne, little Countess, you are following
+several blue devils flying through the room."
+
+"They would fly, in any case," replied Alba, who, pointing to Fanny
+Hafner and Prince d'Ardea seated on a couch, continued: "Has what I told
+you a few weeks since been realized?  You do not know all the irony of
+it.  You have not assisted, as I did the day before yesterday, at the
+poor girl's baptism."
+
+"It is true," replied Julien, "you were godmother.  I dreamed of Leo
+Thirteenth as godfather, with a princess of the house of Bourbon as
+godmother.  Hafner's triumph would have been complete!"
+
+"He had to content himself with his ambassador and your servant," replied
+Alba with a faint smile, which was speedily converted into an expression
+of bitterness.  "Are you satisfied with your pupil?"  she added.  "I am
+progressing....  I laugh--when I wish to weep....  But you yourself would
+not have laughed had you seen the fervor of charming Fanny.  She was the
+picture of blissful faith.  Do not scoff at her."
+
+"And where did the ceremony take place?"  asked Dorsenne, obeying the
+almost suppliant injunction.
+
+"In the chapel of the Dames du Cenacle."
+
+"I know the place," replied the novelist, "one of the most beautiful
+corners of Rome!  It is in the old Palais Piancini, a large mansion
+almost opposite the 'Calcographie Royale', where they sell those
+fantastic etchings of the great Piranese, those dungeons and those ruins
+of so intense a poesy!  It is the Gaya of stone.  There is a garden on
+the terrace.  And to ascend to the chapel one follows a winding
+staircase, an incline without steps, and one meets nuns in violet gowns,
+with faces so delicate in the white framework of their bonnets.  In
+short, an ideal retreat for one of my heroines.  My old friend Montfanon
+took me there.  As we ascended to that tower, six weeks ago, we heard the
+shrill voices of ten little girls, singing: 'Questo cuor tu la vedrai'.
+It was a procession of catechists, going in the opposite direction, with
+tapers which flickered dimly in the remnant of daylight....  It was
+exquisite....  But, now permit me to laugh at the thought of Montfanon's
+choler when I relate to him this baptism.  If I knew where to find the
+old leaguer!  But he has been hiding since our duel.  He is in some
+retreat doing penance.  As I have already told you, the world for him has
+not stirred since Francois de Guise.  He only admits the alms of the
+Protestants and the Jews.  When Monseigneur Guerillot tells him of
+Fanny's religious aspirations, he raves immoderately.  Were she to cast
+herself to the lions, like Saint Blandine, he would still cry out
+'sacrilege.'"
+
+"He did not see her the day before yesterday," said Alba, "nor the
+expression upon her face when she recited the Credo.  I do not believe in
+mysticism, you know, and I have moments of doubt.  There are times when
+I can no longer believe in anything, life seems to me so wretched and
+sad....  But I shall never forget that expression.  She saw God!....
+Several women were present with very touching faces, and there were many
+devotees....  The Cardinal is very venerable....  All were by Fanny's
+side, like saints around the Madonna in the early paintings which you
+have taught me to like, and when the baptism had been gone through, guess
+what she said to me: 'Come, let us pray for my dear father, and for his
+conversion.'  Is not such blindness melancholy."
+
+"The fact is," said Dorsenne again, jocosely, "that in the father's
+dictionary the word has another meaning: Conversion, feminine
+substantive, means to him income....  But let us reason a little,
+Countess.  Why do you think it sad that the daughter should see her
+father's character in her own light?....  You should, on the contrary,
+rejoice at it....  And why do you find it melancholy that this adorable
+saint should be the daughter of a thief?....  How I wish that you were
+really my pupil, and that it would not be too absurd to give you here,
+in this corner of the hall, a lesson in intellectuality!.... I would say
+to you, when you see one of those anomalies which renders you indignant,
+think of the causes.  It is so easy.  Although Protestant, Fanny is of
+Jewish origin--that is to say, the descendant of a persecuted race--which
+in consequence has developed by the side of the inherent defects of a
+proscribed people the corresponding virtues, the devotion, the abnegation
+of the woman who feels that she is the grace of a threatened hearth, the
+sweet flower which perfumes the sombre prison."
+
+"It is all beautiful and true," replied Alba, very seriously.  She had
+hung upon Dorsenne's lips while he spoke, with the instinctive taste for
+ideas of that order which proved her veritable origin.  "But you do not
+mention the sorrow.  This is what one can not do--look upon as a
+tapestry, as a picture, as an object; the creature who has not asked to
+live and who suffers.  You, who have feeling, what is your theory when
+you weep?"
+
+"I can very clearly foresee the day on which Fanny will feel her
+misfortune," continued the young girl.  "I do not know when she will
+begin to judge her father, but that she already begins to judge Ardea,
+alas, I am only too sure....  Watch her at this moment, I pray you."
+
+Dorsenne indeed looked at the couple.  Fanny was listening to the Prince,
+but with a trace of suffering upon her beautiful face, so pure in outline
+that the nobleness in it was ideal.
+
+He was laughing at some anecdote which he thought excellent, and which
+clashed with the sense of delicacy of the person to whom he was
+addressing himself.  They were no longer the couple who, in the early
+days of their betrothal, had given to Julien the sentiment of a complete
+illusion on the part of the young girl for her future husband.
+
+"You are right, Contessina," said he, "the decrystallization has
+commenced.  It is a little too soon."
+
+"Yes, it is too soon," replied Alba.  "And yet it is too late.  Would you
+believe that there are times when I ask myself if it would not be my duty
+to tell her the truth about her marriage, such as I know it, with the
+story of the weak man, the forced sale, and of the bargaining of Ardea?"
+
+"You will not do it," said Dorsenne.  "Moreover, why?  This one or
+another, the man who marries her will only want her money, rest assured.
+It is necessary that the millions be paid for here below, it is one of
+their ransoms....  But I shall cause you to be scolded by your mother,
+for I am monopolizing you, and I have still two calls to pay this
+evening."
+
+"Well, postpone them," said Alba.  "I beseech you, do not go."
+
+"I must," replied Julien.  "It is the last Wednesday of old Duchess
+Pietrapertosa, and after her grandson's recent kindness--"
+
+"She is so ugly," said Alba, "will you sacrifice me to her?"
+
+"Then there is my compatriot, who goes away tomorrow and of whom I must
+take leave this evening, Madame de Sauve, with whom you met me at the
+museum ....  You will not say she is ugly, will you?"
+
+"No," responded Alba, dreamily, "she is very pretty.".... She had another
+prayer upon her lips, which she did not formulate.  Then, with a
+beseeching glance: "Return, at least.  Promise me that you will return
+after your two visits.  They will be over in an hour and a half.  It will
+not be midnight.  You know some do not ever come before one and sometimes
+two o'clock.  You will return?"
+
+"If possible, yes.  But at any rate, we shall meet to-morrow, at the
+studio, to see the portrait."
+
+"Then, adieu," said the young girl, in a low voice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+COMMON MISERY
+
+The Contessina's disposition was too different from her mother's for the
+mother to comprehend that heart, the more contracted in proportion as it
+was touched, while emotion was synonymous with expansion in the opulent
+and impulsive Venetian.  That evening she had not even observed Alba's
+dreaminess, Dorsenne once gone, and it required that Hafner should call
+her attention to it.  To the scheming Baron, if the novelist was
+attentive to the young girl it was certainly with the object of capturing
+a considerable dowry.  Julien's income of twenty-five thousand francs
+meant independence.  The two hundred and fifty thousand francs which Alba
+would have at her mother's death was a very large fortune.  So Hafner
+thought he would deserve the name of "old friend," by taking Madame Steno
+aside and saying to her:
+
+"Do you not think Alba has been a little strange for several days!"
+
+"She has always been so," replied the Countess.  "Young people are like
+that nowadays; there is no more youth."
+
+"Do you not think," continued the Baron, "that perhaps there is another
+cause for that sadness--some interest in some one, for example?"
+
+"Alba?"  exclaimed the mother.  "For whom?"
+
+"For Dorsenne," returned Hafner, lowering his voice; "he just left five
+minutes ago, and you see she is no longer interested in anything nor in
+any one."
+
+"Ah, I should be very much pleased," said Madame Steno, laughing.  "He is
+a handsome fellow; he has talent, fortune.  He is the grand-nephew of a
+hero, which is equivalent to nobility, in my opinion.  But Alba has no
+thought of it, I assure you.  She would have told me; she tells me
+everything.  We are two friends, almost two comrades, and she knows I
+shall leave her perfectly free to choose....  No, my old friend,
+I understand my daughter.  Neither Dorsenne nor any one else interests
+her, unfortunately.  I sometimes fear she will go into a decline, like
+her cousin Andryana Navagero, whom she resembles....  But I must cheer
+her up.  It will not take long."
+
+"A Dorsenne for a son-in-law!"  said Hafner to himself, as he watched the
+Countess walk toward Alba through the scattered groups of her guests, and
+he shook his head, turning his eyes with satisfaction upon his future
+son-in-law.  "That is what comes of not watching one's children closely.
+One fancies one understands them until some folly opens one's eyes!....
+And, it is too late!....  Well, I have warned her, and it is no affair of
+mine!"
+
+In spite of Fanny's observed and increasing vexation Ardea amused himself
+by relating to her anecdotes, more or less true, of the goings-on in the
+Vatican.  He thus attempted to abate a Catholic enthusiasm at which he
+was already offended.  His sense of the ridiculous and that of his social
+interest made him perceive how absurd it would be to go into clerical
+society after having taken for a wife a millionaire converted the day
+before.  To be just, it must be added that the Countess's dry champagne
+was not altogether irresponsible for the persistency with which he teased
+his betrothed.  It was not the first time he had indulged in the semi-
+intoxication which had been one of the sins of his youth, a sin less rare
+in the southern climates than the modesty of the North imagines.
+
+"You come opportunely, Contessina," said he, when Mademoiselle Steno had
+seated herself upon the couch beside them.  "Your friend is scandalized
+by a little story I have just told her....  The one of the noble guard
+who used the telephone of the Vatican this winter to appoint rendezvous
+with Guilia Rezzonico without awakening the jealousy of Ugolino....  But
+it is nothing.  I have almost quarrelled with Fanny for having revealed
+to her that the Holy Father repeated his benediction in Chapel Sixtine,
+with a singing master, like a prima donna...."
+
+"I have already told you that I do not like those jests," said Fanny,
+with visible irritation, which her patience, however, governed.  "If you
+desire to continue them, I will leave you to converse with Alba."
+
+"Since you see that you annoy her," said the latter to the Prince,
+"change the subject."
+
+"Ah, Contessina," replied Peppino, shaking his head, "you support her
+already.  What will it be later?  Well, I apologize for my innocent
+epigrams on His Holiness in his dressing-gown.  And," he continued,
+laughing, "it is a pity, for I have still two or three entertaining
+stories, notably one about a coffer filled with gold pieces, which a
+faithful bequeathed to the Pope.  And that poor, dear man was about to
+count them when the coffer slipped from his hand, and there was the
+entire treasure on the floor, and the Pope and a cardinal on all fours
+were scrambling for the napoleons, when a servant entered....  Tableau!
+....I assure you that good Pius IX would be the first to laugh with us at
+all the Vatican jokes.  He is not so much 'alla mano'.  But he is a holy
+man just the same.  Do not think I do not render him justice.  Only, the
+holy man is a man, and a good old man.  That is what you do not wish to
+see."
+
+"Where are you going?"  said Alba to Fanny, who had risen as she had
+threatened to do.
+
+"To talk with my father, to whom I have several words to say."
+
+"I warned you to change the subject," said Alba, when she and the Prince
+were alone.  Ardea, somewhat abashed, shrugged his shoulders and laughed:
+
+"You will confess that the situation is quite piquant, little
+Countess....  You will see she will forbid me to go to the Quirinal....
+Only one thing will be lacking, and it is that Papa Hafner should
+discover religious scruples which would prevent him from greeting the
+King....  But Fanny must be appeased!"
+
+"My God!"  said Alba to herself, seeing the young man rise in his turn.
+"I believe he is intoxicated.  What a pity!"
+
+As have almost all revolutions of that order, the work of Christianity,
+accomplished for years, in Fanny had for its principle an example.
+
+The death of a friend, the sublime death of a true believer, ended by
+determining her faith.  She saw the dying woman receive the sacrament,
+and the ineffable joy of the benediction upon the face of the sufferer of
+twenty lighted up by ecstasy.  She heard her say, with a smile of
+conviction:
+
+"I go to ask you of Our Lord, Jesus Christ."
+
+How could she have resisted such a cry and such a sight?
+
+The very day after that death she asked of her father permission to be
+baptized, which request drew from the Baron a reply too significant not
+to be repeated here:
+
+"Undoubtedly," had replied the surprising man, who instead of a heart,
+had a Bourse list on which all was tariffed, even God, "undoubtedly I am
+touched, very deeply touched, and very happy to see that religious
+matters preoccupy you to such a degree.  To the people it is a necessary
+curb, and to us it accords with a certain rank, a certain society, a
+certain deportment.  I think that a person called like you to live in
+Austria and in Italy should be a Catholic.  However, it is necessary to
+remember that you might marry some one of another faith.  Do not object.
+I am your father.  I can foresee all.  I know you will marry only
+according to the dictates of your heart.  Wait then until it has spoken,
+to settle the question....  If you love a Catholic, you will then have
+occasion to pay a compliment to your betrothed by adopting his faith, of
+which he will be very sensible....  From now until then, I shall not
+prevent you from following ceremonies which please you.  Those of the
+Roman liturgy are, assuredly, among the best; I myself attended Saint
+Peter's at the time of the pontifical government....  The taste, the
+magnificence, the music, all moved me....  But to take a definite,
+irreparable step, I repeat, you must wait.  Your actual condition of a
+Protestant has the grand sentiment of being more neutral, less defined."
+
+What words to listen to by a heart already touched by the attraction of
+'grace and by the nostalgia of eternal life!  But the heart was that of a
+young girl very pure and very tender.  To judge her father was to her
+impossible, and the Baron's firmness had convinced her that she must obey
+his wishes and pray that he be enlightened.  She therefore waited,
+hoping, sustained and directed meanwhile by Cardinal Guerillot, who later
+on was to baptize her and to obtain for her the favor of approaching the
+holy table for the first time at the Pope's mass.  That prelate, one of
+the noblest figures of which the French bishopric has had cause to be
+proud, since Monseigneur Pie, was one of those grand Christians for whom
+the hand of God is as visible in the direction of human beings as it is
+invisible to doubtful souls.  When Fanny, already devoted to her
+charities, confided in him the serious troubles of her mind and the
+discord which had arisen between her and her father on the so essential
+point of her baptism, the Cardinal replied:
+
+"Have faith in God.  He will give you a sign when your time has come."
+And he uttered those words with an accent whose conviction had filled the
+young girl with a certainty which had never left her.
+
+In spite of his seventy years, and of the experiences of the confession,
+in spite of the disenchanting struggle with the freemasonry of his French
+diocese, which had caused his exile to Rome, the venerable man looked at
+Fanny's marriage from a supernatural standpoint.  Many priests are thus
+capable of a naivete which, on careful analysis, is often in the right.
+But at the moment the antithesis between the authentic reality and that
+which they believe, constitutes an irony almost absurd.  When he had
+baptized Fanny, the old Bishop of Clermont was possessed by a joy so deep
+that he said to her, to express to her the more delicately the tender
+respect of his friendship:
+
+"I can now say as did Saint Monica after the baptism of Saint Augustine:
+'Cur hic sim, nescio; jam consumpta spe hujus saeculi'.  I do not know
+why I remain here below.  All my hope of the age is consummated.  And
+like her I can add--the only thing which made me desire to remain awhile
+was to see you a Catholic before dying.  The traveller, who has tarried,
+has now nothing to do but to go.  He has gathered the last and the
+prettiest flower."....
+
+Noble and faithful apostle, who was indeed to go so shortly after,
+meriting what they said of him, that which the African bishop said of his
+mother: "That religious soul was at length absolved from her body."....
+He did not anticipate that he would pay dearly for that realization of
+his last wish!  He did not foresee that she whom he ingenuously termed
+his most beautiful flower was to become to him the principal cause of
+bitter sorrow.  Poor, grand Cardinal!  It was the final trial of his
+life, the supremely bitter drop in his chalice, to assist at the
+disenchantment which followed so closely upon the blissful intoxication
+of his gentle neophyte's first initiation.  To whom, if not to him,
+should she have gone to ask counsel, in all the tormenting doubts which
+she at once began to have in her feelings with regard to her fiance?
+
+It was, therefore, that on the day following the evening on which
+imprudent Ardea had jested so persistently upon a subject sacred to her
+that she rang at the door of the apartment which Monseigneur Guerillot
+occupied in the large mansion on Rue des Quatre-Fontaines.  There was no
+question of incriminating the spirit of those pleasantries, nor of
+relating her humiliating observations on the Prince's intoxication.  No.
+She wished to ease her mind, on which rested a shade of sorrow.  At the
+time of her betrothal, she had fancied she loved Ardea, for the emotion
+of her religious life at length freed had inspired her with gratitude for
+him who was, however, only the pretext of that exemption.  She trembled
+to-day, not only at not loving him any more, but at hating him, and above
+all she felt herself a prey to that repugnance for the useless cares of
+the world, to that lassitude of transitory hopes, to that nostalgia of
+repose in God, undeniable signs of true vocations.
+
+At the thought that she might, if she survived her father and she
+remained free, retire to the 'Dames du Cenacle,' she felt at her
+approaching marriage an inward repugnance, which augmented still more the
+proof of her future husband's deplorable character.  Had she the right to
+form such bonds with such feelings?  Would it be honorable to break,
+without further developments, the betrothal which had been between her
+and her father the condition of her baptism?  She was already there,
+after so few days!  And her wound was deeper after the night on which the
+Prince had, uttered his careless jests.
+
+"It is permitted you to withdraw," replied Monsieur Guerillot, "but you
+are not permitted to lack charity in your judgment."
+
+There was within Fanny too much sincerity, her faith was too simple and
+too deep for her not to follow out that advice to the letter, and she
+conformed to it in deeds as well as in intentions.  For, before taking a
+walk in the afternoon with Alba, she took the greatest care to remove all
+traces which the little scene of the day before could have left in her
+friend's mind.  Her efforts went very far.  She would ask pardon of her
+fiance....  Pardon!  For what?  For having been wounded by him, wounded
+to the depths of her sensibility?  She felt that the charity of judgment
+recommended by the pious Cardinal was a difficult virtue.  It exercises a
+discipline of the entire heart, sometimes irreconcilable with the
+clearness of the intelligence.  Alba looked at her friend with a glance
+full of an astonishment, almost sorrowful, and she embraced her, saying:
+
+"Peppino is not worthy even to kiss the ground on which you tread, that
+is my opinion, and if he does not spend his entire life in trying to be
+worthy of you, it will be a crime."
+
+As for the Prince himself, the impulses which dictated to his fiancee
+words of apology when he was in the wrong, were not unintelligible to
+him, as they would have been to Hafner.  He thought that the latter had
+lectured his daughter, and he congratulated himself on having cut short
+at once that little comedy of exaggerated religious feeling.
+
+"Never mind that," said he, with condescension, "it is I who have failed
+in form.  For at heart you have always found me respectful of that which
+my fathers respected.  But times have changed, and certain fanaticisms
+are no longer admissible.  That is what I have wished to say to you in
+such a manner that you could take no offence."
+
+And he gallantly kissed Fanny's tiny hand, not divining that he had
+redoubled the melancholy of that too-generous child.  The discord
+continued to be excessive between the world of ideas in which she moved
+and that in which the ruined Prince existed.  As the mystics say with so
+much depth, they were not of the same heaven.
+
+Of all the chimeras which had lasted hours, God alone remained.  It
+sufficed the noble creature to say: "My father is so happy, I will not
+mar his joy."
+
+"I will do my duty toward my husband.  I will be so good a wife that I
+will transform him.  He has religion.  He has heart.  It will be my role
+to make of him a true Christian.  And then I shall have my children and
+the poor."  Such were the thoughts which filled the mind of the envied
+betrothed.  For her the journals began to describe the dresses already
+prepared, for her a staff of tailors, dressmakers, needlewomen and
+jewellers were working; she would have on her contract the same signature
+as a princess of the blood, who would be a princess herself and related
+to one of the most glorious aristocracies in the world.  Such were the
+thoughts she would no doubt have through life, as she walked in the
+garden of the Palais Castagna, that historical garden in which is still
+to be seen a row of pear-trees, in the place where Sixte-Quint, near
+death, gathered some fruit.  He tasted it, and he said to Cardinal
+Castagna--playing on their two names, his being Peretti--"The pears are
+spoiled.  The Romans have had enough.  They will soon eat chestnuts."
+That family anecdote enchanted Justus Hafner.  It seemed to him full of
+the most delightful humor.  He repeated it to his colleagues at the club,
+to his tradesmen, to it mattered not whom.  He did not even mistrust
+Dorsenne's irony.
+
+"I met Hafner this morning on the Corso," said the latter to Alba at one
+of the soirees at the end of the month, "and I had my third edition of
+the pleasantry on the pears and chestnuts.  And then, as we took a few
+steps in the same direction, he pointed out to me the Palais Bonaparte,
+saying, 'We are also related to them.'....  Which means that a grand-
+nephew of the Emperor married a cousin of Peppino....  I swear he thinks
+he is related to Napoleon!....  He is not even proud of it.  The
+Bonapartes are nowhere when it is a question of nobility!....  I await
+the time when he will blush."
+
+"And I the time when he will be punished as he deserves," interrupted
+Alba Steno, in a mournful voice.  "He is insolently triumphant.  But no.
+....He will succeed....  If it be true that his fortune is one immense
+theft, think of those he has ruined.  In what can they believe in the
+face of his infamous happiness?"
+
+"If they are philosophers," replied Dorsenne, laughing still more gayly,
+"this spectacle will cause them to meditate on the words uttered by one
+of my friends: 'One can not doubt the hand of God, for it created the
+world.'  Do you remember a certain prayer-book of Montluc's?"
+
+"The one which your friend Montfanon bought to vex the poor little
+thing?"
+
+"Precisely.  The old-leaguer has returned it to Ribalta; the latter told
+me so yesterday; no doubt in a spirit of mortification.  I say no doubt
+for I have not seen the poor, dear man since the duel, which his
+impatience toward Ardea and Hafner rendered in evitable.  He retired,
+I know not for how many days, to the convent of Mount Olivet, near
+Sienna, where he has a friend, one Abbe de Negro, of whom he always
+speaks as of a saint.  I learned, through Rebalta, that he has returned,
+but is invisible.  I tried to force an entrance.  In short, the volume
+is again in the shop of the curiosity-seeker in the Rue Borgognona, if
+Mademoiselle Hafner still wants it!"
+
+"What good fortune!"  exclaimed Fanny, with a sparkle of delight in her
+eyes.  "I did not know what present to offer my dear Cardinal.  Shall we
+make the purchase at once?"
+
+"Montluc's prayer-book?"  repeated old Ribalta, when the two young ladies
+had alighted from the carriage before his small book-shop, more dusty,
+more littered than ever with pamphlets, in which he still was, with his
+face more wrinkled, more wan and more proud, peering from beneath his
+broad-brimmed hat, which he did not raise.  "How do you know it is here?
+Who has told you?  Are there spies everywhere?"
+
+"It was Monsieur Dorsenne, one of Monsieur de Montfanon's friends," said
+Fanny, in her gentle voice.
+
+"Sara sara," replied the merchant with his habitual insolence, and,
+opening the drawer of the chest in which he kept the most incongruous
+treasures, he drew from it the precious volume, which he held toward
+them, without giving it up.  Then he began a speech, which reproduced the
+details given by Montfanon himself.  "Ah, it is very authentic.  There is
+an indistinct but undeniable signature.  I have compared it with that
+which is preserved in the archives of Sienna.  It is Montluc's writing,
+and there is his escutcheon with the turtles....  Here, too, are the
+half-moons of the Piccolomini....  This book has a history...."
+
+"The Marshal gave it, after the famous siege, to one of the members of
+that illustrious family.  And it was for one of the descendants that I
+was commissioned to buy it....  They will not give it up for less than
+two thousand francs."
+
+"What a cheat!"  said Alba to her companion, in English.  "Dorsenne told
+me that Monsieur de Monfanon bought it for four hundred."
+
+"Are you sure?"  asked Fanny, who, on receiving a reply in the
+affirmative, addressed the bookseller, with the same gentleness, but with
+reproach in her accent: "Two thousand francs, Monsieur Ribalta?  But it
+is not a just price, since you sold it to Monsieur de Montfanon for one-
+fifth of that sum."
+
+"Then I am a liar and a thief," roughly replied the old man; "a thief and
+a liar," he repeated.  "Four hundred francs!  You wish to have this book
+for four hundred francs?  I wish Monsieur de Montfanon was here to tell
+you how much I asked him for it."
+
+The old bookseller smiled cruelly as he replaced the prayerbook in the
+drawer, the key of which he turned, and turning toward the two young
+girls, whose delicate beauty, heightened by their fine toilettes,
+contrasted so delightfully with the sordid surroundings, he enveloped
+them with a glance so malicious that they shuddered and instinctively
+drew nearer one another.  Then the bookseller resumed, in a voice hoarser
+and deeper than ever: "If you wish to spend four hundred francs I have a
+volume which is worth it, and which I propose to take to the Palais
+Savorelli one of these days....  Ha, ha!  It must be one of the very
+last, for the Baron has bought them all."  In uttering, those enigmatical
+words, he opened the cup board which formed the lower part of the chest,
+and took from one of the shelves a book wrapped in a newspaper.  He then
+unfolded the journal, and, holding the volume in his enormous hand with
+his dirty nails, he disclosed the title to the two young girls: 'Hafner
+and His Band; Some Reflections on the Scandalous Acquittal.  By a
+Shareholder.'  It was a pamphlet, at that date forgotten, but which
+created much excitement at one time in the financial circles of Paris,
+of London and of Berlin, having been printed at once in three languages
+--in French, in German and in English--on the day after the suit of the
+'Credit Austro Dalmate.'  The dealer's chestnut-colored eyes twinkled
+with a truly ferocious joy as he held out the volume and repeated:
+
+"It is worth four hundred francs."
+
+"Do not read that book, Fanny," said Alba quickly, after having read the
+title of the work, and again speaking in English; "it is one of those
+books with which one should not even pollute one's thoughts."
+
+"You may keep the book, sir," she continued, "since you have made
+yourself the accomplice of those who have written it, by speculating on
+the fear you hoped it would inspire.  Mademoiselle Hafner has known of it
+long, and neither she nor her father will give a centime."
+
+"Very well!  So much the better, so much the better," said Ribalta,
+wrapping up his volume again; "tell your father I will keep it at his
+service."
+
+"Ah, the miserable man!"  said Alba, when Fanny and she had left the shop
+and reentered the carriage.  "To dare to show you that!"
+
+"You saw," replied Fanny, "I was so surprised I could not utter a word.
+That the man should offer me that infamous work is very impertinent.  My
+father?....  You do not know his scrupulousness in business.  It is the
+honor of his profession.  There is not a sovereign in Europe who has not
+given him a testimonial."
+
+That impassioned protestation was so touching, the generous child's
+illusion was so sincere, that Alba pressed her hand with a deeper
+tenderness.  When Alba found herself that evening with her friend
+Dorsenne, who again dined at Madame Steno's, she took him aside to relate
+to him the tragical scene, and to ask him: "Have you seen that pamphlet?"
+
+"To-day," said the writer.  "Montfanon, whom I have found at length, has
+just bought one of the two copies which Ribalta received lately.  The old
+leaguer believes everything, you know, when a Hafner is in the
+question....  I am more skeptical in the bad as well as in the good.  It
+was only the account given by the trial which produced any impression on
+me, for that is truth."
+
+"But he was acquitted."
+
+"Yes," replied Dorsenne, "though it is none the less true that he ruined
+hundreds and hundreds of persons."
+
+"Then, by the account given you of the case, it is clear to you that he
+is dishonest," interrupted Alba,
+
+"As clear as that you are here, Contessina," replied Dorsenne, "if to
+steal means to plunder one's neighbors and to escape justice.  But that
+would be nothing.  The sinister corner in this affair is the suicide of
+one Schroeder, a brave citizen of Vienna, who knew our Baron intimately,
+and who invested, on the advice of his excellent friend, his entire
+fortune, three hundred thousand florins, in the scheme.  He lost them,
+and, in despair, killed himself, his wife, and their three children."
+
+"My God!"  cried Alba, clasping her hands.  "And Fanny might have read
+that letter in the book."
+
+"Yes," continued Julien, "and all the rest with proof in support of it.
+But rest assured, she shall not have the volume.  I will go to that
+anarchist of a Ribalta to-morrow and I will buy the last copy, if Hafner
+has not already bought it."
+
+Notwithstanding his constant affectation of irony, and, notwithstanding,
+his assumption of intellectual egotism, Julien was obliging.  He never
+hesitated to render any one a service.  He had not told his little friend
+an untruth when he promised her to buy the dangerous work, and the
+following morning he turned toward the Rue Borgognona, furnished with the
+twenty louis demanded by the bookseller.  Imagine his feelings when the
+latter said to him:
+
+"It is too late, Monsieur Dorsenne.  The young lady was here last night.
+She pretended not to prefer one volume to the other.  It was to bargain,
+no doubt.  Ha, ha!  But she had to pay the price.  I would have asked the
+father more.  One owes some consideration to a young girl."
+
+"Wretch!"  exclaimed the novelist.  "And you can jest after having
+committed that Judas-like act!  To inform a child of her father's
+misdeeds, when she is ignorant of them!....  Never, do you hear, never
+any more will Monsieur de Montfanon and I set foot in your shop, nor
+Monseigneur Guerillot, nor any of the persons of my acquaintance.  I will
+tell the whole world of your infamy.  I will write it, and it shall
+appear in all the journals of Rome.  I will ruin you, I will force you to
+close this dusty old shop."
+
+During the entire day, Dorsenne vainly tried to shake off the weight of
+melancholy which that visit to the brigand of the Rue Borgognona had left
+upon his heart.
+
+On crossing, at nine o'clock, the threshold of the Villa Steno to give an
+account of his mission to the Contessina, he was singularly moved.  There
+was no one there but the Maitlands, two tourists and two English
+diplomatists, on their way to posts in the East.
+
+"I was awaiting you," said Alba to her friend, as soon as she could speak
+with him in a corner of the salon.  "I need your advice.  Last night a
+tragical incident took place at the Hafner's."
+
+"Probably," replied Dorsenne.  "Fanny has bought Ribalta's book."
+
+"She has bought the book!"  said Alba, changing color and trembling.
+"Ah, the unhappy girl; the other thing was not sufficient!"
+
+"What other thing?"  questioned Julien.
+
+"You remember," said the young girl, "that I told you of that Noe Ancona,
+the agent who served Hafner as a tool in selling up Ardea, and in thus
+forcing the marriage.  Well, it seems this personage did not think
+himself sufficiently well-paid for his complicity.  He demanded of the
+Baron a large sum, with which to found some large swindling scheme, which
+the latter refused point-blank.  The other threatened to relate their
+little dealing to Ardea, and he did so."
+
+"And Peppino was angry?"  asked Dorsenne, shaking his head.  "That is not
+like him."
+
+"Indignant or not," continued Alba, "last night he went to the Palais
+Savorelli to make a terrible scene with his future father-in-law."
+
+"And to obtain an increase of dowry," said Julian.
+
+"He was not by any means tactful, then," replied Alba, "for even in the
+presence of Fanny, who entered in the midst of their conversation, he did
+not pause.  Perhaps he had drunk a little more than he could stand, which
+has of late become common with him.  But, you see, the poor child was
+initiated into the abominable bargain with regard to her future, to her
+happiness, and if she has read the book, too!  It is too dreadful!"
+
+"What a violent scene!"  exclaimed Dorsenne.  "So the engagement has been
+broken off?"
+
+"Not officially.  Fanny is ill in bed from the excitement.  Ardea came
+this morning to see my mother, who has also seen Hafner.  She has
+reconciled them by proving to them, which she thinks true, that they have
+a common interest in avoiding all scandal, and arranging matters.  But it
+rests with the poor little one.  Mamma wished me to go, this afternoon,
+to beseech her to reconsider her resolution.  For she has told her father
+she never wishes to hear the Prince's voice again.  I have refused.
+Mamma insists.  Am I not right?"
+
+"Who knows?"  replied Julien.  "What would be her life alone with her
+father, now that her illusions with regard to him have been swept away?"
+
+The touching scene had indeed taken place, and less than twenty-four
+hours after the novelist had thus expressed to himself the regret of not
+assisting at it.  Only he was mistaken as to the tenor of the dialogue,
+in a manner which proved that the subtlety of intelligence will never
+divine the simplicity of the heart.  The most dolorous of all moral
+tragedies knit and unknit the most often in silence.  It was in the
+afternoon, toward six o'clock, that a servant came to announce
+Mademoiselle Hafner's visit to the Contessina, busy at that moment
+reading for the tenth time the 'Eglogue Mondaine,' that delicate story by
+Dorsenne.  When Fanny entered the room, Alba could see what a trial her
+charming god-daughter of the past week had sustained, by the surprising
+and rapid alteration in that expressive and noble visage.  She took her
+hand at first without speaking to her, as if she was entirely ignorant of
+the cause of her friend's real indisposition.  She then said:
+
+"How pleased I am to see you!  Are you better?"
+
+"I have never been ill," replied Fanny, who did not know how to tell an
+untruth.  "I have had pain, that is all."  Looking at Alba, as if to beg
+her to ask no question, she added:
+
+"I have come to bid you adieu."
+
+"You are going away?"  asked the Contessina.  "Yes," said Fanny, "I am
+going to spend the summer at one of our estates in Styria.  "And, in a
+low voice: "Has your mother told you that my engagement is broken?"
+"Yes," replied Alba, and both were again silent.  After several moments
+Fanny was the first to ask: "And how shall you spend your summer?"--"We
+shall go to Piove, as usual," was Alba's answer.  "Perhaps Dorsenne will
+be there, and the Maitlands will surely be."  A third pause ensued.  They
+gazed at one another, and, without uttering another word, they distinctly
+read one another's hearts.  The martyrdom they suffered was so similar,
+they both knew it to be so like, that they felt the same pity possess
+them at the same moment.  Forced to condemn with the most irrevocable
+condemnation, the one her father, the other, her mother, each felt
+attracted toward the friend, like her, unhappy, and, falling into one
+another's arms, they both sobbed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE LAKE DI PORTO
+
+Her friend's tears had relieved sad Alba's heart while she held that
+friend in her arms, quivering with sorrow and pity; but when she was
+gone, and Madame Steno's daughter was alone, face to face with her
+thoughts, a greater distress seized her.  The pity which her companion in
+misery had shown for her--was it not one more proof that she was right in
+mistrusting her mother?  Alas!  The miserable child did not know that
+while she was plunged in despair, there was in Rome and in her immediate
+vicinity a creature bent upon realizing a mad vow.  And that creature was
+the same who had not recoiled before the infamy of an anonymous letter,
+pretty and sinister Lydia Maitland--that delicate, that silent young
+woman with the large brown eyes, always smiling, always impenetrable in
+the midst of that dull complexion which no emotion, it seemed, had ever
+tinged.  The failure of her first attempt had exasperated her hatred
+against her husband and against the Countess to the verge of fury, but a
+concentrated fury, which was waiting for another occasion to strike, for
+weeks, patiently, obscurely.  She had thought to wreak her vengeance by
+the return of Gorka, and in what had it ended?  In freeing Lincoln from a
+dangerous rival and in imperilling the life of the only being for whom
+she cared!
+
+The sojourn at the country-seat of her husband's mistress exasperated
+Lydia's hidden anger.  She suffered so that she cried aloud, like an
+imprisoned animal beating against the bars, when she pictured to herself
+the happiness which the two lovers would enjoy in the intimacy of the
+villa, with the beauties of the Venetian scenery surrounding them.  No
+doubt the wife could provoke a scandal and obtain a divorce, thanks to
+proofs as indisputable as those with which she had overwhelmed Maud.  It
+would be sufficient to carry to a lawyer the correspondence in the
+Spanish escritoire.  But of what use?  She would not be avenged on her
+husband, to whom a divorce would be a matter of indifference now that he
+earned as much money as he required, and she would lose her brother.  In
+vain Lydia told herself that, warned as Alba had been by her letter, her
+doubt of Madame Steno's misconduct would no longer be impossible.  She
+was convinced by innumerable trifling signs that the Contessina still
+doubted, and then she concluded:
+
+"It is there that the blow must be struck.  But how?"
+
+Yes.  How?  There was at the service of hatred in that delicate woman, in
+appearance oblivious of worldliness, that masculine energy in decision
+which is to be found in all families of truly military origin.  The blood
+of Colonel Chapron stirred within her and gave her the desire to act.
+By dint of pondering upon those reasonings, Lydia ended by elaborating
+one of those plans of a simplicity really infernal, in which she revealed
+what must be called the genius of evil, for there was so much clearness
+in the conception and of villainy in the execution.  She assured herself
+that it was unnecessary to seek any other stage than the studio for the
+scene she meditated.  She knew too well the fury of passion by which
+Madame Steno was possessed to doubt that, as soon as she was alone with
+Lincoln, she did not refuse him those kisses of which their
+correspondence spoke.  The snare to be laid was very simple.  It required
+that Alba and Lydia should be in some post of observation while the
+lovers believed themselves alone, were it only for a moment.  The
+position of the places furnished the formidable woman with the means of
+obtaining the place of espionage in all security.  Situated on the second
+floor, the studio occupied most of the depth of the house.  The wall,
+which separated it from the side of the apartments, ended in a partition
+formed of colored glass, through which it was impossible to see.  That
+glass lighted a dark corridor adjoining the linen-room.  Lydia employed
+several hours of several nights in cutting with a diamond a hole, the
+size of a fifty centime-piece, in one of those unpolished squares.
+
+Her preparations had been completed several days when, notwithstanding
+her absence of scruple in the satiating of her hatred, she still
+hesitated to employ that mode of vengeance, so much atrocious cruelty was
+there in causing a daughter to spy upon her mother.  It was Alba herself
+who kindled the last spark of humanity with which that dark conscience
+was lighted up, and that by the most innocent of conversations.  It was
+the very evening of the afternoon on which she had exchanged that sad
+adieu with Fanny Hafner.  She was more unnerved than usual, and she was
+conversing with Dorsenne in that corner of the long hall.  They did not
+heed the fact that Lydia drew near them, by a simple change of seat which
+permitted her, while herself conversing with some guest, to lend an ear
+to the words uttered by the Contessina.
+
+It was Florent who was the subject of their conversation, and she said to
+Dorsenne, who was praising him:
+
+"What would you have?  It is true I almost feel repulsion toward him.
+He is to me like a being of another species.  His friendship for his
+brother-in-law?  Yes.  It is very beautiful, very touching; but it does
+not touch me.  It is a devotion which is not human.  It is too
+instinctive and too blind.  Indeed, I know that I am wrong.  There is
+that prejudice of race which I can never entirely overcome."
+
+Dorsenne touched her fingers at that moment, under the pretext of taking
+from her her fan, in reality to warn her, and he said, in a very low
+voice that time:
+
+"Let us go a little farther on.  Lydia Maitland is too near."
+
+He fancied he surprised a start on the part of Florent's sister, at whom
+he accidentally glanced, while his too-sensible interlocutor no longer
+watched her!  But as the pretty, clear laugh of Lydia rang out at the
+same moment, imprudent Alba replied:
+
+"Fortunately, she has heard nothing.  And see how one can speak of
+trouble without mistrusting it....  I have just been wicked," she
+continued, "for it is not their fault, neither Florent's nor hers, if
+there is a little negro blood in their veins, so much the more so as it
+is connected by the blood of a hero, and they are both perfectly
+educated, and what is better, perfectly good, and then I know very well
+that if there is a grand thought in this age it is to have proclaimed
+that truly all men are brothers."
+
+She had spoken in a lower voice, but too late.  Moreover, even if
+Florent's sister could have heard those words, they would not have
+sufficed to heal the wound which the first ones had made in the most
+sensitive part of her 'amour propre'!
+
+"And I hesitated," said she to herself, "I thought of sparing her!"
+
+The following morning, toward noon, she found herself at the atelier,
+seated beside Madame Steno, while Lincoln gave to the portrait the last
+touches, and while Alba posed in the large armchair, absent and pale as
+usual.  Florent Chapron, after having assisted at part of the sitting,
+left the room, leaning upon the crutch, which he still used.  His
+withdrawal seemed so propitious to Lydia that she resolved immediately
+not to allow such an opportunity to escape, and as if fatality interfered
+to render her work of infamy more easy, Madame Steno aided her by
+suddenly interrupting the work of the painter who, after hard working
+without speaking for half an hour, paused to wipe his forehead, on which
+were large drops of perspiration, so great was his excitement.
+
+"Come, my little Linco," said she, with the affectionate solicitude of an
+old mistress, "you must rest.  For two hours you have not ceased
+painting, and such minute details....  It tires me merely to watch you."
+
+"I am not at all tired," replied Maitland, who, however, laid down his
+palette and brush, and rolling a cigarette, lighted it, continuing, with
+a proud smile: "We have only that one superiority, we Americans, but we
+have it--it is a power to apply ourselves which the Old World no longer
+knows....  It is for that reason that there are professions in which we
+have no rivals."
+
+"But see!"  replied Lydia, "you have taken Alba for a Bostonian or a New
+Yorker, and you have made her pose so long that she is pale.  She must
+have a change.  Come with me, dear, I will show you the costume they have
+sent me from Paris, and which I shall wear this afternoon to the garden
+party at the English embassy."
+
+She forced Alba Steno to rise from the armchair as she uttered those
+words, then she entwined her arms about her waist to draw her away and
+kissed her.  Ah, if ever a caress merited being compared to the hideous
+flattery of Iscariot, it was that, and the young girl might have replied
+with the sublime words: "Friend, why hast thou betrayed me by a kiss?"
+Alas!  She believed in it, in the sincerity of that proof of affection,
+and she returned her false friend's kiss with a gratitude which did not
+soften that heart saturated with hatred, for five minutes had not passed
+ere Lydia had put into execution her hideous project.  Under the pretext
+of reaching the liner-room more quickly, she took a servant's staircase,
+which led to that lobby with the glass partition, in which was the
+opening through which to look into the atelier.
+
+"This is very strange," said she, pausing suddenly.  And, pointing out to
+her innocent companion the round spot, she said: "Probably some servant
+who has wished to eavesdrop.--But what for?  You, who are tall, look and
+see how it has been done and what it looks on.  If it is a hole cut
+purposely, I shall discover the culprit and he shall go."
+
+Alba obeyed the perfidious request absently, and applied her eye to the
+aperture.  The author of the anonymous letters had chosen her moment only
+too well.  As soon as the door of the studio was closed, the Countess
+rose to approach Lincoln.  She entwined around the young man's neck her
+arms, which gleamed through the transparent sleeves of her summer gown,
+and she kissed with greedy lips his eyes and mouth.  Lydia, who had
+retained one of the girl's hands in hers, felt that hand tremble
+convulsively.  A hunter who hears rustle the foliage of the thicket
+through which should pass the game he is awaiting, does not experience a
+joy more complete.  Her snare was successful.  She said to her unhappy
+victim:
+
+"What ails you?  How you tremble!"
+
+And she essayed to push her away in order to put herself in her place.
+Alba, whom the sight of her mother embracing Lincoln with those
+passionate kisses inspired at that moment with an inexplicable horror,
+had, however, enough presence of mind in the midst of her suffering to
+understand the danger of that mother whom she had surprised thus,
+clasping in the arms of a guilty mistress--whom?--the husband of the very
+woman speaking to her, who asked her why she trembled with fear, who
+would look through that same hole to see that same tableau!....  In order
+to prevent what she believed would be to Lydia a terrible revelation, the
+courageous child had one of those desperate thoughts such as immediate
+peril inspires.  With her free hand she struck the glass so violently
+that it was shivered into atoms, cutting her fingers and her wrist.
+
+Lydia exclaimed, angrily:
+
+"Miserable girl, you did that purposely!"
+
+The fierce creature as she uttered these words, rushed toward the large
+hole now made in the panel--too late!
+
+She only saw Lincoln erect in the centre of the studio, looking toward
+the broken window, while the Countess, standing a few paces from him,
+exclaimed:
+
+"My daughter!  What has happened to my daughter?  I recognized her
+voice."
+
+"Do not alarm yourself," replied Lydia, with atrocious sarcasm.  "Alba
+broke the pane to give you a warning."
+
+"But, is she hurt?"  asked the mother.
+
+"Very slightly," replied the implacable woman with the same accent of
+irony, and she turned again toward the Contessina with a glance of such
+rancor that, even in the state of confusion in which the latter was
+plunged by that which she had surprised, that glance paralyzed her with
+fear.  She felt the same shudder which had possessed her dear friend
+Maud, in that same studio, in the face of the sinister depths of that
+dark soul, suddenly exposed.  She had not time to precisely define her
+feelings, for already her mother was beside her, pressing her in her
+arms--in those very arms which Alba had just seen twined around the neck
+of a lover--while that same mouth showered kisses upon him.  The moral
+shock was so great that the young girl fainted.  She regained
+consciousness and almost at once.  She saw her mother as mad with anxiety
+as she had just seen her trembling with joy and love.  She again saw
+Lydia Maitland's eyes fixed upon them both with an expression too
+significant now.  And, as she had had the presence of mind to save that
+guilty mother, she found in her tenderness the strength to smile at her,
+to lie to her, to blind her forever as to the truth of that hideous scene
+which had just been enacted in that lobby.
+
+"I was frightened at the sight of my own blood," said she, "and I believe
+it is only a small cut....  See!  I can move my hand without pain."
+
+When the doctor, hastily summoned, had confirmed that no particles of
+glass had remained in the cuts, the Countess felt so reassured that her
+gayety returned.  Never had she been in a mood more charming than in the
+carriage which took them to the Villa Steno.
+
+To a person obliged by proof to condemn another without ceasing to love
+her, there is no greater sorrow than to perceive the absolute
+unconsciousness of that other person and her serenity in her fault.  Poor
+Alba, felt overwhelmed by a sadness greater, more depressing still, and
+which became materially insupportable, when, toward half-past two, her
+mother bade her farewell, although the fete at the English embassy did
+not begin until five o'clock.
+
+"I promised poor Hafner to go to see him to-day.  I know he is bowed down
+with grief.  I would like to try to arrange all....  I will send back the
+carriage if you wish to go out awhile.  I have telephoned Lydia to expect
+me at four o'clock....  She will take me."
+
+She had, on detailing the employment so natural of her afternoon, eyes
+too brilliant, a smile too happy.  She looked too youthful in her light
+toilette.  Her feet trembled with too nervous an impatience.  How could
+Alba not have felt that she was telling her an untruth?  The undeceived
+child had the intuition that the visit to Fanny's father was only a
+pretext.  It was not the first time that the Countess employed it to
+free herself from inconvenient surveillance, the act of sending back the
+carriage, which, in Rome as in Paris, is always the probable sign of
+clandestine meetings with women of their rank.  It was not the first time
+that Alba was possessed by suspicion on certain mysterious disappearances
+of her mother.  That mother did not mistrust that poor Alba--her Alba,
+the child so tenderly loved in spite of all--was suffering at that very
+moment and on her account the most terrible of temptations....  When the
+carriage had disappeared the fixed gaze of the young girl was turned upon
+the pavement, and then she felt arise in her a sudden, instinctive,
+almost irresistible idea to end the moral suffering by which she was
+devoured.  It was so simple!....  It was sufficient to end life.  One
+movement which she could make, one single movement--she could lean over
+the balustrade, against which her arm rested, in a certain manner--so,
+a little more forward, a little more--and that suffering would be
+terminated.  Yes, it would be so very simple.  She saw herself lying upon
+the pavement, her limbs broken, her head crushed, dead--dead--freed!  She
+leaned forward and was about to leap, when her eyes fell upon a person
+who was walking below, the sight of whom suddenly aroused her from the
+folly, the strange charm of which had just laid hold so powerfully upon
+her.  She drew back.  She rubbed her eyes with her hands, and she, who
+was accustomed to mystical enthusiasm, said aloud:
+
+"My God!  You send him to me!  I am saved."  And she summoned the footman
+to tell him that if M. Dorsenne asked for her, he should be shown into
+Madame Steno's small salon.  "I am not at home to any one else," she
+added.
+
+It was indeed Julien, whom she had seen approach the house at the very
+instant when she was only separated from the abyss by that last tremor of
+animal repugnance, which is found even in suicide of the most ardent
+kind.  Do not madmen themselves choose to die in one manner rather than
+in another?  She paused several moments in order to collect herself.
+
+"Yes," said she at length, to herself, "it is the only solution.  I will
+find out if he loves me truly.  And if he does not?"
+
+She again looked toward the window, in order to assure herself that, in
+case that conversation did not end as she desired, the tragical and
+simple means remained at her service by which to free herself from that
+infamous life which she surely could not bear.
+
+Julien began the conversation in his tone of sentimental raillery, so
+speedily to be transformed into one of drama!  He knew very well, on
+arriving at Villa Steno, that he was to have his last tete-a-tete with
+his pretty and interesting little friend.  For he had at length decided
+to go away, and, to be more sure of not failing, he had engaged his
+sleeping-berth for that night.  He had jested so much with love that he
+entered upon that conversation with a jest; when, having tried to take
+Alba's hand to press a kiss upon it, he saw that it was bandaged.
+
+"What has happened to you, little Countess?  Have my laurels or those of
+Florent Chapron prevented you from sleeping, that you are here with the
+classical wrist of a duellist?....  Seriously, how have you hurt
+yourself?"
+
+"I leaned against a window, which broke and the pieces of glass cut my
+fingers somewhat," replied the young girl with a faint smile, adding: "It
+is nothing."
+
+"What an imprudent child you are!"  said Dorsenne in his tone of friendly
+scolding.  "Do you know that you might have severed an artery and have
+caused a very serious, perhaps a fatal, hemorrhage?"
+
+"That would not have been such a great misfortune," replied Alba, shaking
+her pretty head with an expression so bitter about her mouth that the
+young man, too, ceased smiling.
+
+"Do not speak in that tone," said he, "or I shall think you did it
+purposely."
+
+"Purposely?"  repeated the young girl.  "Purposely?  Why should I have
+done it purposely?"
+
+And she blushed and laughed in the same nervous way she had laughed
+fifteen minutes before, when she looked down into the street.  Dorsenne
+felt that she was suffering, and his heart contracted.  The trouble
+against which he had struggled for several days with all the energy of an
+independent artist, and which for some time systematized his celibacy,
+again oppressed him.  He thought it time to put between "folly" and him
+the irreparability of his categorical resolution.  So he replied to his
+little friend with his habitual gentleness, but in a tone of firmness,
+which already announced his determination:
+
+"I have again vexed you, Contessina, and you are looking at me with the
+glance of our hours of dispute.  You will later regret having been unkind
+to-day."
+
+As he pronounced those enigmatical words, she saw that he had in his eyes
+and in his smile something different and indefinable.  It must have been
+that she loved him still more than she herself believed as for a second
+she forgot both her pain and her resolution, and she asked him, quickly:
+
+"You have some trouble?  You are suffering?  What is it?"
+
+"Nothing," replied Dorsenne.  "But time is flying, the minutes are going
+by, and not only the minutes.  There is an old and charming.  French ode,
+which you do not know and which begins:
+
+         'Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, Madame.
+          Las, le temps?  Non.  Mais nous nous en allons.'"
+
+"Which means, little Countess, in simple prose, that this is no doubt the
+last conversation we shall have together this season, and that it would
+be cruel to mar for me this last visit."
+
+"Do I understand you aright?"  said Alba.  She, too, knew too well
+Julien's way of speaking not to know that that mannerism, half-mocking,
+half-sentimental, always served him to prepare phrases more grave, and
+against the emotion of which her fear of appearing a dupe rose in
+advance.  She crossed her arms upon her breast, and after a pause she
+continued, in a grave voice: "You are going away?"
+
+"Yes," he replied, and from his coat-pocket he partly drew his ticket.
+"You see I have acted like the poltroons who cast themselves into the
+water.  My ticket is bought, and I shall no longer hold that little
+discourse which I have held for months, that, 'Sir executioner, one
+moment....  Du Barry'."
+
+"You are going away?"  repeated the young girl, who did not seem to have
+heeded the jest by which Julien had concealed his own confusion at the
+effect of his so abruptly announced departure.  "I shall not see you any
+more!....  And if I ask you not to go yet?  You have spoken to me of our
+friendship....  If I pray you, if I beseech you, in the name of that
+friendship, not to deprive me of it at this instant, when I have no one,
+when I am so alone, so horribly alone, will you answer no?  You have
+often told me that you were my friend, my true friend?  If it be true,
+you will not go.  I repeat, I am alone, and I am afraid."
+
+"Come, little Countess," replied Dorsenne, who began to be terrified by
+the young girl's sudden excitement, "it is not reasonable to agitate
+yourself thus, because yesterday you had a very sad conversation with
+Fanny Hafner!  First, it is altogether impossible for me to defer my
+departure.  You force me to give you coarse, almost commercial reasons.
+But my book is about to appear, and I must be there for the launching of
+the sale, of which I have already told you.  And then you are going away,
+too.  You will have all the diversions of the country, of your Venetian
+friends and charming Lydia Maitland!"
+
+"Do not mention that name," interrupted Alba, whose face became
+discomposed at the allusion to the sojourn at Piove.  "You do not know
+how you pain me, nor what that woman is, what a monster of cruelty and of
+perfidy!  Ask me no more.  I shall tell you nothing.  But," the
+Contessina that time clasping her hands, her poor, thin hands, which
+trembled with the anguish of the words she dared to utter, "do you not
+comprehend that if I speak to you as I do, it is because I have need of
+you in order to live?"  Then in a low voice, choked by emotion: "It is
+because I love you!"  All the modesty natural to a child of twenty
+mounted to her pale face in a flood of purple, when she had uttered that
+avowal.  "Yes, I love you!"  she repeated, in an accent as deep, but more
+firm.  "It is not, however, so common a thing to find real devotion, a
+being who only asks to serve you, to be useful to you, to live in your
+shadow.  And you will understand that to have the right of giving you my
+life, to bear your name, to be your wife, to follow you, I felt very
+vividly in your presence at the moment I was about to lose you.  You will
+pardon my lack of modesty for the first, for the last time.  I have
+suffered too much."
+
+She ceased.  Never had the absolute purity of the charming creature, born
+and bred in an atmosphere of corruption, and remaining in the same so
+intact, so noble, so frank, flashed out as at that moment.  All that
+virgin and unhappy soul was in her eyes which implored Julien, on her
+lips which trembled at having spoken thus, on her brow around which
+floated, like an aureole, the fair hair stirred by the breeze which
+entered the open window.  She had found the means of daring that
+prodigious step, the boldest a woman can permit herself, still more so a
+young girl, with so chaste a simplicity that at that moment Dorsenne
+would not have dared to touch even the hand of that child who confided
+herself to him so madly, so loyally.
+
+Dorsenne was undoubtedly greatly interested in her, with a curiosity,
+without enthusiasm, and against which a reaction had already set in.
+That touching speech, in which trembled a distress so tender and each
+word of which later on made him weep with regret, produced upon him at
+that moment an impression of fear rather than love or pity.  When at
+length he broke the cruel silence, the sound of his voice revealed to the
+unhappy girl the uselessness of that supreme appeal addressed by her to
+life.
+
+She had only kept, to exorcise the demon of suicide, her hope in the
+heart of that man, and that heart, toward which she turned in so
+immoderate a transport, drew back instead of responding.
+
+"Calm yourself, I beseech you," said he to her.  "You can understand that
+I am very much moved, very much surprised, at what I have heard!  I did
+not suspect it.  My God!  How troubled you are.  And yet," he continued
+with more firmness, "I should despise myself were I to lie to you.  You
+have been so loyal toward me....  To marry you?  Ah, it would be the most
+delightful dream of happiness if that dream were not prevented by
+honesty.  Poor child," and his voice sounded almost bitter, "you do not
+know me.  You do not know what a writer of my order is, and that to unite
+your destiny to mine would be for you martyrdom more severe than your
+moral solitude of to-day.  You see, I came to your home with so much joy,
+because I was free, because each time I could say to myself that I need
+not return again.  Such a confession is not romantic.  But it is thus.
+If that relation became a bond, an obligation, a fixed framework in which
+to move, a circle of habits in which to imprison me, I should only have
+one thought--flight.  An engagement for my entire life?  No, no, I could
+not bear it.  There are souls of passage as well as birds of passage, and
+I am one.  You will understand it tomorrow, now, and you will remember
+that I have spoken to you as a man of honor, who would be miserable if he
+thought he had augmented, involuntarily, the sorrows of your life when
+his only desire was to assuage them.  My God!  What is to be done?"  he
+cried, on seeing, as he spoke, tears gush from the young girl's eyes,
+which she did not wipe away.
+
+"Go away," she replied, "leave me.  I do not want you.  I am grateful to
+you for not having deceived me."
+
+"But your presence is too cruel.  I am ashamed of having spoken to you,
+now that I know you do not love me.  I have been mad, do not punish me by
+remaining longer.  After the conversation we have just had, my honor will
+not permit us to talk longer."
+
+"You are right," said Julien, after another pause.  He took his hat,
+which he had placed upon a table at the beginning of that visit, so
+rapidly and abruptly terminated by a confession of sentiments so strange.
+He said:
+
+"Then, farewell."  She inclined her fair head without replying.
+
+The door was closed.  Alba Steno was again alone.  Half an hour later,
+when the footman entered to ask for orders relative to the carriage sent
+back by the Countess, he found her standing motionless at the window from
+which she had watched Dorsenne depart.  There she had once more been
+seized by the temptation of suicide.  She had again felt with an
+irresistible force the magnetic attraction of death.  Life appeared to
+her once more as something too vile, too useless, too insupportable to be
+borne.  The carriage was at her disposal.  By way of the Portese gate and
+along the Tiber, with the Countess's horses, it would take an hour and a
+half to reach the Lake di Porto.  She had, too, this pretext, to avoid
+the curiosity of the servants: one of the Roman noblewomen of her
+acquaintance, Princess Torlonia, owned an isolated villa on the border of
+that lake....  She ascended hastily to don her hat.  And without writing
+a word of farewell to any one, without even casting a glance at the
+objects among which she had lived and suffered, she descended the
+staircase and gave the coachman the name of the villa, adding "Drive
+quickly; I am late now."
+
+The Lake di Porto is only, as its name indicates, the port of the ancient
+Tiber.  The road which leads from Transtevere runs along the river, which
+rolls through a plain strewn with ruins and indented with barren hills,
+its brackish water discolored from the sand and mud of the Apennines.
+
+Here groups of eucalyptus, there groups of pine parasols above some
+ruined walls, were all the vegetation which met Alba Steno's eye.  But
+the scene accorded so well with the moral devastation she bore within her
+that the barrenness around her in her last walk was pleasant to her.
+
+The feeling that she was nearing eternal peace, final sleep in which she
+should suffer no more, augmented when she alighted from the carriage,
+and, having passed the garden of Villa Torlonia, she found herself facing
+the small lake, so grandiose in its smallness by the wildness of its
+surroundings, and motionless, surprised in even that supreme moment by
+the magic of that hidden sight, she paused amid the reeds with their red
+tufts to look at that pond which was to become her tomb, and she
+murmured:
+
+"How beautiful it is!"
+
+There was in the humid atmosphere which gradually penetrated her a charm
+of mortal rest, to which she abandoned herself dreamily, almost with
+physical voluptuousness, drinking into her being the feverish fumes of
+that place--one of the most fatal at that season and at that hour of all
+that dangerous coast--until she shuddered in her light summer gown.  Her
+shoulders contracted, her teeth chattered, and that feeling of discomfort
+was to her as a signal for action.  She took another allee of rose-bushes
+in flower to reach a point on the bank barren of vegetation, where was
+outlined the form of a boat.  She soon detached it, and, managing the
+heavy oars with her delicate hands, she advanced toward the middle of the
+lake.
+
+When she was in the spot which she thought the deepest and the most
+suitable for her design, she ceased rowing.  Then, by a delicate care,
+which made her smile herself, so much did it betray instinctive and
+childish order at such a solemn moment, she put her hat, her umbrella and
+her gloves on one of the transversal boards of the boat.  She had made
+effort to move the heavy oars, so that she was perspiring.  A second
+shudder seized her as she was arranging the trifling objects, so keen,
+so chilly, so that time that she paused.  She lay there motionless, her
+eyes fixed upon the water, whose undulations lapped the boat.  At the
+last moment she felt reenter her heart, not love of life, but love for
+her mother.  All the details of the events which would follow her suicide
+were presented to her mind.
+
+She saw herself plunging into the deep water which would close over her
+head.  Her suffering would be ended, but Madame Steno?  She saw the
+coachman growing uneasy over her absence, ringing at the door of Villa
+Torlonia, the servants in search.  The loosened boat would relate enough.
+Would the Countess know that she had killed herself?  Would she know the
+cause of that desperate end?  The terrible face of Lydia Maitland
+appeared to the young girl.  She comprehended that the woman hated her
+enemy too much not to enlighten her with regard to the circumstances
+which had preceded that suicide.  The cry so simple and of a significance
+so terrible: "You did it purposely!"  returned to Alba's memory.  She saw
+her mother learning that her daughter had seen all.  She had loved her so
+much, that mother, she loved her so dearly still!
+
+Then, as a third violent chill shook her from head to foot, Alba began to
+think of another mode, and one as sure, of death without any one in the
+world being able to suspect that it was voluntary.  She recalled the fact
+that she was in one of the most dreaded corners of the Roman Campagna;
+that she had known persons carried off in a few days by the pernicious
+fevers contracted in similar places, at that hour and in that season,
+notably one of her friends, one of the Bonapartes living in Rome, who
+came thither to hunt when overheated.  If she were to try to catch that
+same disease?....  And she took up the oars.  When she felt her brow
+moist with the second effort, she opened her bodice and her chemise, she
+exposed her neck, her breast, her throat, and she lay down in the boat,
+allowing the damp air to envelop, to caress, to chill her, inviting the
+entrance into her blood of the fatal germs.  How long did she remain
+thus, half-unconscious, in the atmosphere more and more laden with miasma
+in proportion as the sun sank?  A cry made her rise and again take up the
+oars.  It was the coachman, who, not seeing her return, had descended
+from the box and was hailing the boat at all hazards.  When she stepped
+upon the bank and when he saw her so pale, the man, who had been in the
+Countess's service for years, could not help saying to her, with the
+familiarity of an Italian servant:
+
+"You have taken cold, Mademoiselle, and this place is so dangerous."
+
+"Indeed," she replied, "I have had a chill.  It will be nothing.  Let us
+return quickly.  Above all, do not say that I was in the boat.  You will
+cause me to be scolded."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+"And it was directly after that conversation that the poor child left for
+the lake, where she caught the pernicious fever?"  asked Montfanon.
+
+"Directly," replied Dorsenne, "and what troubles me the most is that I
+can not doubt but that she went there purposely.  I was so troubled by
+our conversation that I had not the strength to leave Rome the same
+evening, as I told her I should.  After much hesitation--you understand
+why, now that I have told you all--I returned to the Villa Steno at six
+o'clock.  To speak to her, but of what?  Did I know?  It was madness.
+For her avowal only allowed of two replies, either that which I made her
+or an offer of marriage.  Ah, I did not reason so much.  I was afraid....
+Of what?....  I do not know.  I reached the villa, where I found the
+Countess, gay and radiant, as was her custom, and tete-a-tete with her
+American.  'Only think, there is my child,' said she to me, 'who has
+refused to go to the English embassy, where she would enjoy herself, and
+who has gone out for a drive alone....  Will you await her?'"
+
+"At length she began to grow uneasy, and I, seeing that no one returned,
+took my leave, my heart oppressed by presentiments....  Alba's carriage
+stopped at the door just as I was going out.  She was pale, of a greenish
+pallor, which caused me to say on approaching her: 'Whence have you
+come?' as if I had the right.  Her lips, already discolored, trembled as
+they replied.  When I learned where she had spent that hour of sunset,
+and near what lake, the most deadly in the neighborhood, I said to her:
+'What imprudence!'  I shall all my life see the glance she gave me at the
+moment, as she replied: 'Say, rather, how wise, and pray that I may have
+taken the fever and that I die of it.'  You know the rest, and how her
+wish has been realized.  She indeed contracted the fever, and so severely
+that she died in less than six days.  I have no doubt, since her last
+words, that it was a suicide."
+
+"And the mother," asked Montfanon, "did she not comprehend finally?"
+
+"Absolutely nothing," replied Dorsenne.  "It is inconceivable, but it is
+thus.  Ah!  she is truly the worthy friend of that knave Hafner, whom his
+daughter's broken engagement has not grieved, in spite of his
+discomfiture.  I forgot to tell you that he had just sold Palais Castagna
+to a joint-stock company to convert it into a hotel.  I laugh," he
+continued with singular acrimony, "in order not to weep, for I am
+arriving at the most heartrending part.  Do you know where I saw poor
+Alba Steno's face for the last time?  It was three days ago, the day
+after her death, at this hour.  I called to inquire for the Countess!
+She was receiving!  'Do you wish to bid her adieu?' she asked me. 'Good
+Lincoln is just molding her face for me.'  And I entered the chamber of
+death.  Her eyes were closed, her cheeks were sunken, her pretty nose was
+pinched, and upon her brow and in the corners of her mouth was a mixture
+of bitterness and of repose which I can not describe to you.  I thought:
+'If you had liked, she would be alive, she would smile, she would love
+you!'  The American was beside the bed, while Florent Chapron, always
+faithful, was preparing the oil to put upon the face of the corpse, and
+sinister Lydia Maitland was watching the scene with eyes which made me
+shudder, reminding me of what I had divined at the time of my last
+conversation with Alba.  If she does not undertake to play the part of a
+Nemesis and to tell all to the Countess, I am mistaken in faces!  For the
+moment she was silent, and guess the only words the mother uttered when
+her lover, he on whose account her daughter had suffered so much,
+approached their common victim: 'Above all, do not injure her lovely
+lashes!'  What horrible irony, was it not?  Horrible!"
+
+The young man sank upon a bench as he uttered that cry of distress and of
+remorse, which Montfanon mechanically repeated, as if startled by the
+tragical confidence he had just received.
+
+Montfanon shook his gray head several times as if deliberating; then
+forced Dorsenne to rise, chiding him thus:
+
+"Come, Julien, we can not remain here all the afternoon dreaming and
+sighing like young women!  The child is dead.  We can not restore her to
+life, you in despairing, I in deploring.  We should do better to look in
+the face our responsibility in that sinister adventure, to repent of it
+and to expiate it."
+
+"Our responsibility?"  interrogated Julien.  "I see mine, although I can
+truly not see yours."
+
+"Yours and mine," replied Montfanon.  "I am no sophist, and I am not in
+the habit of shifting my conscience.  Yes or no," he insisted, with a
+return of his usual excitement, "did I leave the catacombs to arrange
+that unfortunate duel?  Yes or no, did I yield to the paroxysm of choler
+which possessed me on hearing of the engagement of Ardea and on finding
+that I was in the presence of that equivocal Hafner?  Yes or no, did that
+duel help to enlighten Madame Gorka as to her husband's doings, and, in
+consequence, Mademoiselle Steno as to her mother's?  Did you not relate
+to me the progress of her anguish since that scandal, there just now?....
+And if I have been startled, as I have been, by the news of that suicide,
+know it has been for this reason especially, because a voice has said to
+me: 'A few of the tears of that dead girl are laid to your account."'
+
+"But, my poor friend," interrupted Dorsenne, "whence such reasoning?
+According to that, we could not live any more.  There enters into our
+lives, by indirect means, a collection of actions which in no way
+concerns us, and in admitting that we have a debt of responsibility to
+pay, that debt commences and ends in that which we have wished directly,
+sincerely, clearly."
+
+"It would be very convenient," replied the Marquis, with still more
+vivacity, "but the proof that it is not true is that you yourself are
+filled with remorse at not having saved the soul so weak of that
+defenseless child.  Ah, I do not mince the truth to myself, and I shall
+not do so to you.  You remember the morning when you were so gay, and
+when you gave me the theory of your cosmopolitanism?  It amused you, as a
+perfect dilettante, so you said, to assist in one of those dramas of race
+which bring into play the personages from all points of the earth and of
+history, and you then traced to me a programme very true, my faith, and
+which events have almost brought about.  Madame Steno has indeed
+conducted herself toward her two lovers as a Venetian of the time of
+Aretin; Chapron, with all the blind devotion of a descendant of an
+oppressed race; his sister with the villainous ferocity of a rebel who at
+length shakes off the yoke, since you think she wrote those anonymous
+letters.  Hafner and Ardea have laid bare two detestable souls, the one
+of an infamous usurer, half German, half Dutch; the other of a degraded
+nobleman, in whom is revived some ancient 'condottiere'.  Gorka has been
+brave and mad, like entire Poland; his wife implacable and loyal, like
+all of England.  Maitland continues to be positive, insensible, and
+wilful in the midst of it all, as all America.  And poor Alba ended as
+did her father.  I do not speak to you of Baron Hafner's daughter," and
+he raised his hat.  Then, in an altered voice:
+
+"She is a saint, in whom I was deceived.  But she has Jewish blood in her
+veins, blood which was that of the people of God.  I should have
+remembered it and the beautiful saying of the Middle Ages: 'The Jewish
+women shall be saved because they have wept for our Lord in secret.'....
+You outlined for me in advance the scene of the drama in which we have
+been mixed up....  And do you remember what I said: 'Is there not among
+them a soul which you might aid in doing better?'  You laughed in my face
+at that moment.  You would have treated me, had you been less polite, as
+a Philistine and a cabotin.  You wished to be only a spectator, the
+gentleman in the balcony who wipes the glasses of his lorgnette in order
+to lose none of the comedy.  Well, you could not do so.  That role is not
+permitted a man.  He must act, and he acts always, even when he thinks he
+is looking on, even when he washes his hands as Pontius Pilate, that
+dilettante, too, who uttered the words of your masters and of yourself.
+What is truth?  Truth is that there is always and everywhere a duty to
+fulfil.  Mine was to prevent that criminal encounter.  Yours was not to
+pay attention to that young girl if you did not love her, and if you
+loved her, to marry her and to take her from her abominable surroundings.
+We have both failed, and at what a price!"
+
+"You are very severe," said the young man; "but if you were right would
+not Alba be dead?  Of what use is it for me to know what I should have
+done when it is too late?"
+
+"First, never to do so again," said the Marquis; "then to judge yourself
+and your life."
+
+"There is truth in what you say," replied Dorsenne, "but you are mistaken
+if you think that the most intellectual men of our age have not suffered,
+too, from that abuse of thought.  What is to be done?  Ah, it is the
+disease of a century too cultivated, and there is no cure."
+
+"There is one," interrupted Montfanon, "which you do not wish to see....
+You will not deny that Balzac was the boldest of our modern writers.  Is
+it necessary for me, an ignorant man, to recite to you the phrase which
+governs his work: 'Thought, principle of evil and of good can only be
+prepared, subdued, directed by religion.' See?"  he continued, suddenly
+taking his companion by the arm and forcing him to look into a
+transversal allee through the copse, "there he is, the doctor who holds
+the remedy for that malady of the soul as for all the others.  Do not
+show yourself.  They will have forgotten our presence.  But, look, look!
+....Ah, what a meeting!"
+
+The personage who appeared suddenly in that melancholy, deserted garden,
+and in a manner almost supernatural, so much did his presence form a
+living commentary to the discourse of the impassioned nobleman, was no
+other than the Holy Father himself, on the point of entering his carriage
+for his usual drive.  Dorsenne, who only knew Leo XIII from his
+portraits, saw an old man, bent, bowed, whose white cassock gleamed
+beneath the red mantle, and who leaned on one side upon a prelate of his
+court, on the other upon one of his officers.  In drawing back, as
+Montfanon had advised, in order not to bring a reprimand upon the
+keepers, he could study at his leisure the delicate face of the Sovereign
+Pontiff, who paused at a bed of roses to converse familiarly with a
+kneeling gardener.  He saw the infinitely indulgent smile of that
+spirituelle mouth.  He saw the light of those eyes which seemed to
+justify by their brightness the 'lumen in coelo' applied to the successor
+of Pie IX by a celebrated prophecy.  He saw the venerable hand, that
+white, transparent hand, which was raised to give the solemn benediction
+with so much majesty, turn toward a fine yellow rose, and the fingers
+bend the flower without plucking it, as if not to harm the frail creation
+of God.  The old Pope for a second inhaled its perfume and then resumed
+his walk toward the carriage, vaguely to be seen between the trunks of
+the green oaks.  The black horses set off at a trot, and Dorsenne,
+turning again toward Montfanon, perceived large tears upon the lashes of
+the former zouave, who, forgetting the rest of their conversation, said,
+with a sigh: "And that is the only pleasure allowed him, who is, however,
+the successor of the first apostle, to inhale his flowers and drive in a
+carriage as rapidly as his horses can go!  They have procured four
+paltry kilometers of road at the foot of the terrace where we were half
+an hour since.  And he goes on, he goes on, thus deluding himself with
+regard to the vast space which is forbidden him.  I have seen many
+tragical sights in my life.  I have been to the war, and I have spent one
+entire night wounded on a battlefield covered with snow, among the dead,
+grazed by the wheels of the artillery of the conquerors, who defiled
+singing.  Nothing has moved me like that drive of the old man, who has
+never uttered a complaint and who has for himself only that acre of land
+in which to move freely.  But these are grand words which the holy man
+wrote one day at the foot of his portrait for a missionary.  The words
+explain his life: 'Debitricem martyrii fidem'--Faith is bound to
+martyrdom."
+
+"'Debitricem martyrii fidem'," repeated Dorsenne, "that is beautiful,
+indeed.  And," he added, in a low voice, "you just now abused very rudely
+the dilettantes and the sceptic.  But do you think there would be one of
+them who would refuse martyrdom if he could have at the same time faith?"
+
+Never had Montfanon heard the young man utter a similar phrase and in
+such an accent.  The image returned to him, by way of contrast, of
+Dorsenne, alert and foppish, the dandy of literature, so gayly a scoffer
+and a sophist, to whom antique and venerable Rome was only a city of
+pleasure, a cosmopolis more paradoxical than Florence, Nice, Biarritz,
+St. Moritz, than such and such other cities of international winter and
+summer.  He felt that for the first time that soul was strained to its
+depths, the tragical death of poor Alba had become in the mind of the
+writer the point of remorse around which revolved the moral life of the
+superior and incomplete being, exiled from simple humanity by the most
+invincible pride of mind.  Montfanon comprehended that every additional
+word would pain the wounded heart.  He was afraid of having already
+lectured Dorsenne too severely.  He took within his arm the arm of the
+young man, and he pressed it silently, putting into that manly caress all
+the warm and discreet pity of an elder brother.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Mobile and complaisant conscience had already forgiven himself
+Not an excuse, but an explanation of your conduct
+Sufficed him to conceive the plan of a reparation
+There is always and everywhere a duty to fulfil
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Cosmopolis, v4
+by Paul Bourget
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE COSMOPOLIS:
+
+Conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity
+Despotism natural to puissant personalities
+Egyptian tobacco, mixed with opium and saltpetre
+Follow their thoughts instead of heeding objects
+Has as much sense as the handle of a basket
+Have never known in the morning what I would do in the evening
+I no longer love you
+Imagine what it would be never to have been born
+Mediocre sensibility
+Melancholy problem of the birth and death of love
+Mobile and complaisant conscience had already forgiven himself
+No flies enter a closed mouth
+Not an excuse, but an explanation of your conduct
+One of those trustful men who did not judge when they loved
+Only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood
+Pitiful checker-board of life
+Scarcely a shade of gentle condescension
+Sufficed him to conceive the plan of a reparation
+That suffering which curses but does not pardon
+That you can aid them in leading better lives?
+The forests have taught man liberty
+There is an intelligent man, who never questions his ideas
+There is always and everywhere a duty to fulfil
+Thinking it better not to lie on minor points
+Too prudent to risk or gain much
+Walked at the rapid pace characteristic of monomaniacs
+Words are nothing; it is the tone in which they are uttered
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Cosmopolis, entire
+by Paul Bourget
+
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