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Cosmopolis — Complete

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Title: Cosmopolis — Complete

Author: Paul Bourget


        
Release date: October 30, 2004 [eBook #3967]
                Most recently updated: January 9, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COSMOPOLIS — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





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




BOOK 1.




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!”




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 p

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