"Peppino is not worthy even to kiss the ground on which you tread, that

is my opinion, and if he does not spend his entire life in trying to be

worthy of you, it will be a crime."

As for the Prince himself, the impulses which dictated to his fiancee

words of apology when he was in the wrong, were not unintelligible to

him, as they would have been to Hafner. He thought that the latter had

lectured his daughter, and he congratulated himself on having cut short

at once that little comedy of exaggerated religious feeling.

"Never mind that," said he, with condescension, "it is I who have failed

in form. For at heart you have always found me respectful of that which

my fathers respected. But times have changed, and certain fanaticisms

are no longer admissible. That is what I have wished to say to you in

such a manner that you could take no offence."

And he gallantly kissed Fanny's tiny hand, not divining that he had

redoubled the melancholy of that too-generous child. The discord

continued to be excessive between the world of ideas in which she moved

and that in which the ruined Prince existed. As the mystics say with so

much depth, they were not of the same heaven.

Of all the chimeras which had lasted hours, God alone remained. It

sufficed the noble creature to say: "My father is so happy, I will not

mar his joy."

"I will do my duty toward my husband. I will be so good a wife that I

will transform him. He has religion. He has heart. It will be my role

to make of him a true Christian. And then I shall have my children and

the poor." Such were the thoughts which filled the mind of the envied

betrothed. For her the journals began to describe the dresses already

prepared, for her a staff of tailors, dressmakers, needlewomen and

jewellers were working; she would have on her contract the same signature

as a princess of the blood, who would be a princess herself and related

to one of the most glorious aristocracies in the world. Such were the

thoughts she would no doubt have through life, as she walked in the

garden of the Palais Castagna, that historical garden in which is still

to be seen a row of pear-trees, in the place where Sixte-Quint, near

death, gathered some fruit. He tasted it, and he said to Cardinal

Castagna—playing on their two names, his being Peretti—"The pears are

spoiled. The Romans have had enough. They will soon eat chestnuts."

That family anecdote enchanted Justus Hafner. It seemed to him full of

the most delightful humor. He repeated it to his colleagues at the club,

to his tradesmen, to it mattered not whom. He did not even mistrust

Dorsenne's irony.

"I met Hafner this morning on the Corso," said the latter to Alba at one

of the soirees at the end of the month, "and I had my third edition of

the pleasantry on the pears and chestnuts. And then, as we took a few

steps in the same direction, he pointed out to me the Palais Bonaparte,

saying, 'We are also related to them.'…. Which means that a grand-

nephew of the Emperor married a cousin of Peppino…. I swear he thinks

he is related to Napoleon!…. He is not even proud of it. The

Bonapartes are nowhere when it is a question of nobility!…. I await

the time when he will blush."

"And I the time when he will be punished as he deserves," interrupted

Alba Steno, in a mournful voice. "He is insolently triumphant. But no.

….He will succeed…. If it be true that his fortune is one immense

theft, think of those he has ruined. In what can they believe in the

face of his infamous happiness?"

"If they are philosophers," replied Dorsenne, laughing still more gayly,

"this spectacle will cause them to meditate on the words uttered by one

of my friends: 'One can not doubt the hand of God, for it created the

world.' Do you remember a certain prayer-book of Montluc's?"

"The one which your friend Montfanon bought to vex the poor little

thing?"

"Precisely. The old-leaguer has returned it to Ribalta; the latter told

me so yesterday; no doubt in a spirit of mortification. I say no doubt

for I have not seen the poor, dear man since the duel, which his

impatience toward Ardea and Hafner rendered in evitable. He retired,

I know not for how many days, to the convent of Mount Olivet, near

Sienna, where he has a friend, one Abbe de Negro, of whom he always

speaks as of a saint. I learned, through Rebalta, that he has returned,

but is invisible. I tried to force an entrance. In short, the volume

is again in the shop of the curiosity-seeker in the Rue Borgognona, if

Mademoiselle Hafner still wants it!"

"What good fortune!" exclaimed Fanny, with a sparkle of delight in her

eyes. "I did not know what present to offer my dear Cardinal. Shall we

make the purchase at once?"

"Montluc's prayer-book?" repeated old Ribalta, when the two young ladies

had alighted from the carriage before his small book-shop, more dusty,

more littered than ever with pamphlets, in which he still was, with his

face more wrinkled, more wan and more proud, peering from beneath his

broad-brimmed hat, which he did not raise. "How do you know it is here?

Who has told you? Are there spies everywhere?"

"It was Monsieur Dorsenne, one of Monsieur de Montfanon's friends," said

Fanny, in her gentle voice.

"Sara sara," replied the merchant with his habitual insolence, and,

opening the drawer of the chest in which he kept the most incongruous

treasures, he drew from it the precious volume, which he held toward

them, without giving it up. Then he began a speech, which reproduced the

details given by Montfanon himself. "Ah, it is very authentic. There is

an indistinct but undeniable signature. I have compared it with that

which is preserved in the archives of Sienna. It is Montluc's writing,

and there is his escutcheon with the turtles…. Here, too, are the

half-moons of the Piccolomini…. This book has a history…."

"The Marshal gave it, after the famous siege, to one of the members of

that illustrious family. And it was for one of the descendants that I

was commissioned to buy it…. They will not give it up for less than

two thousand francs."

"What a cheat!" said Alba to her companion, in English. "Dorsenne told

me that Monsieur de Monfanon bought it for four hundred."

"Are you sure?" asked Fanny, who, on receiving a reply in the

affirmative, addressed the bookseller, with the same gentleness, but with

reproach in her accent: "Two thousand francs, Monsieur Ribalta? But it

is not a just price, since you sold it to Monsieur de Montfanon for one-

fifth of that sum."

"Then I am a liar and a thief," roughly replied the old man; "a thief and

a liar," he repeated. "Four hundred francs! You wish to have this book

for four hundred francs? I wish Monsieur de Montfanon was here to tell

you how much I asked him for it."

The old bookseller smiled cruelly as he replaced the prayerbook in the

drawer, the key of which he turned, and turning toward the two young

girls, whose delicate beauty, heightened by their fine toilettes,

contrasted so delightfully with the sordid surroundings, he enveloped

them with a glance so malicious that they shuddered and instinctively

drew nearer one another. Then the bookseller resumed, in a voice hoarser

and deeper than ever: "If you wish to spend four hundred francs I have a

volume which is worth it, and which I propose to take to the Palais

Savorelli one of these days…. Ha, ha! It must be one of the very

last, for the Baron has bought them all." In uttering, those enigmatical

words, he opened the cup board which formed the lower part of the chest,

and took from one of the shelves a book wrapped in a newspaper. He then

unfolded the journal, and, holding the volume in his enormous hand with

his dirty nails, he disclosed the title to the two young girls: 'Hafner

and His Band; Some Reflections on the Scandalous Acquittal. By a

Shareholder.' It was a pamphlet, at that date forgotten, but which

created much excitement at one time in the financial circles of Paris,

of London and of Berlin, having been printed at once in three languages

—in French, in German and in English—on the day after the suit of the

'Credit Austro Dalmate.' The dealer's chestnut-colored eyes twinkled

with a truly ferocious joy as he held out the volume and repeated:

"It is worth four hundred francs."

"Do not read that book, Fanny," said Alba quickly, after having read the

title of the work, and again speaking in English; "it is one of those

books with which one should not even pollute one's thoughts."

"You may keep the book, sir," she continued, "since you have made

yourself the accomplice of those who have written it, by speculating on

the fear you hoped it would inspire. Mademoiselle Hafner has known of it

long, and neither she nor her father will give a centime."

"Very well! So much the better, so much the better," said Ribalta,

wrapping up his volume again; "tell your father I will keep it at his

service."

"Ah, the miserable man!" said Alba, when Fanny and she had left the shop

and reentered the carriage. "To dare to show you that!"

"You saw," replied Fanny, "I was so surprised I could not utter a word.

That the man should offer me that infamous work is very impertinent. My

father?…. You do not know his scrupulousness in business. It is the

honor of his profession. There is not a sovereign in Europe who has not

given him a testimonial."

That impassioned protestation was so touching, the generous child's

illusion was so sincere, that Alba pressed her hand with a deeper

tenderness. When Alba found herself that evening with her friend

Dorsenne, who again dined at Madame Steno's, she took him aside to relate

to him the tragical scene, and to ask him: "Have you seen that pamphlet?"

"To-day," said the writer. "Montfanon, whom I have found at length, has

just bought one of the two copies which Ribalta received lately. The old

leaguer believes everything, you know, when a Hafner is in the

question…. I am more skeptical in the bad as well as in the good. It

was only the account given by the trial which produced any impression on

me, for that is truth."

"But he was acquitted."

"Yes," replied Dorsenne, "though it is none the less true that he ruined

hundreds and hundreds of persons."

"Then, by the account given you of the case, it is clear to you that he

is dishonest," interrupted Alba,

"As clear as that you are here, Contessina," replied Dorsenne, "if to

steal means to plunder one's neighbors and to escape justice. But that

would be nothing. The sinister corner in this affair is the suicide of

one Schroeder, a brave citizen of Vienna, who knew our Baron intimately,

and who invested, on the advice of his excellent friend, his entire

fortune, three hundred thousand florins, in the scheme. He lost them,

and, in despair, killed himself, his wife, and their three children."

"My God!" cried Alba, clasping her hands. "And Fanny might have read

that letter in the book."

"Yes," continued Julien, "and all the rest with proof in support of it.

But rest assured, she shall not have the volume. I will go to that

anarchist of a Ribalta to-morrow and I will buy the last copy, if Hafner

has not already bought it."

Notwithstanding his constant affectation of irony, and, notwithstanding,

his assumption of intellectual egotism, Julien was obliging. He never

hesitated to render any one a service. He had not told his little friend

an untruth when he promised her to buy the dangerous work, and the

following morning he turned toward the Rue Borgognona, furnished with the

twenty louis demanded by the bookseller. Imagine his feelings when the

latter said to him:

"It is too late, Monsieur Dorsenne. The young lady was here last night.

She pretended not to prefer one volume to the other. It was to bargain,

no doubt. Ha, ha! But she had to pay the price. I would have asked the

father more. One owes some consideration to a young girl."

"Wretch!" exclaimed the novelist. "And you can jest after having

committed that Judas-like act! To inform a child of her father's

misdeeds, when she is ignorant of them!…. Never, do you hear, never

any more will Monsieur de Montfanon and I set foot in your shop, nor

Monseigneur Guerillot, nor any of the persons of my acquaintance. I will

tell the whole world of your infamy. I will write it, and it shall

appear in all the journals of Rome. I will ruin you, I will force you to

close this dusty old shop."

During the entire day, Dorsenne vainly tried to shake off the weight of

melancholy which that visit to the brigand of the Rue Borgognona had left

upon his heart.

On crossing, at nine o'clock, the threshold of the Villa Steno to give an

account of his mission to the Contessina, he was singularly moved. There

was no one there but the Maitlands, two tourists and two English

diplomatists, on their way to posts in the East.

"I was awaiting you," said Alba to her friend, as soon as she could speak

with him in a corner of the salon. "I need your advice. Last night a

tragical incident took place at the Hafner's."

"Probably," replied Dorsenne. "Fanny has bought Ribalta's book."

"She has bought the book!" said Alba, changing color and trembling.

"Ah, the unhappy girl; the other thing was not sufficient!"

"What other thing?" questioned Julien.

"You remember," said the young girl, "that I told you of that Noe Ancona,

the agent who served Hafner as a tool in selling up Ardea, and in thus

forcing the marriage. Well, it seems this personage did not think

himself sufficiently well-paid for his complicity. He demanded of the

Baron a large sum, with which to found some large swindling scheme, which

the latter refused point-blank. The other threatened to relate their

little dealing to Ardea, and he did so."

"And Peppino was angry?" asked Dorsenne, shaking his head. "That is not

like him."

"Indignant or not," continued Alba, "last night he went to the Palais

Savorelli to make a terrible scene with his future father-in-law."

"And to obtain an increase of dowry," said Julian.

"He was not by any means tactful, then," replied Alba, "for even in the

presence of Fanny, who entered in the midst of their conversation, he did

not pause. Perhaps he had drunk a little more than he could stand, which

has of late become common with him. But, you see, the poor child was

initiated into the abominable bargain with regard to her future, to her

happiness, and if she has read the book, too! It is too dreadful!"

"What a violent scene!" exclaimed Dorsenne. "So the engagement has been

broken off?"

"Not officially. Fanny is ill in bed from the excitement. Ardea came

this morning to see my mother, who has also seen Hafner. She has

reconciled them by proving to them, which she thinks true, that they have

a common interest in avoiding all scandal, and arranging matters. But it

rests with the poor little one. Mamma wished me to go, this afternoon,

to beseech her to reconsider her resolution. For she has told her father

she never wishes to hear the Prince's voice again. I have refused.

Mamma insists. Am I not right?"

"Who knows?" replied Julien. "What would be her life alone with her

father, now that her illusions with regard to him have been swept away?"

The touching scene had indeed taken place, and less than twenty-four

hours after the novelist had thus expressed to himself the regret of not

assisting at it. Only he was mistaken as to the tenor of the dialogue,

in a manner which proved that the subtlety of intelligence will never

divine the simplicity of the heart. The most dolorous of all moral

tragedies knit and unknit the most often in silence. It was in the

afternoon, toward six o'clock, that a servant came to announce

Mademoiselle Hafner's visit to the Contessina, busy at that moment

reading for the tenth time the 'Eglogue Mondaine,' that delicate story by

Dorsenne. When Fanny entered the room, Alba could see what a trial her

charming god-daughter of the past week had sustained, by the surprising

and rapid alteration in that expressive and noble visage. She took her

hand at first without speaking to her, as if she was entirely ignorant of

the cause of her friend's real indisposition. She then said:

"How pleased I am to see you! Are you better?"

"I have never been ill," replied Fanny, who did not know how to tell an

untruth. "I have had pain, that is all." Looking at Alba, as if to beg

her to ask no question, she added:

"I have come to bid you adieu."

"You are going away?" asked the Contessina. "Yes," said Fanny, "I am

going to spend the summer at one of our estates in Styria. "And, in a

low voice: "Has your mother told you that my engagement is broken?"

"Yes," replied Alba, and both were again silent. After several moments

Fanny was the first to ask: "And how shall you spend your summer?"—"We

shall go to Piove, as usual," was Alba's answer. "Perhaps Dorsenne will

be there, and the Maitlands will surely be." A third pause ensued. They

gazed at one another, and, without uttering another word, they distinctly

read one another's hearts. The martyrdom they suffered was so similar,

they both knew it to be so like, that they felt the same pity possess

them at the same moment. Forced to condemn with the most irrevocable

condemnation, the one her father, the other, her mother, each felt

attracted toward the friend, like her, unhappy, and, falling into one

another's arms, they both sobbed.

CHAPTER XI

THE LAKE DI PORTO

Her friend's tears had relieved sad Alba's heart while she held that

friend in her arms, quivering with sorrow and pity; but when she was

gone, and Madame Steno's daughter was alone, face to face with her

thoughts, a greater distress seized her. The pity which her companion in

misery had shown for her—was it not one more proof that she was right in

mistrusting her mother? Alas! The miserable child did not know that

while she was plunged in despair, there was in Rome and in her immediate

vicinity a creature bent upon realizing a mad vow. And that creature was

the same who had not recoiled before the infamy of an anonymous letter,

pretty and sinister Lydia Maitland—that delicate, that silent young

woman with the large brown eyes, always smiling, always impenetrable in

the midst of that dull complexion which no emotion, it seemed, had ever

tinged. The failure of her first attempt had exasperated her hatred

against her husband and against the Countess to the verge of fury, but a

concentrated fury, which was waiting for another occasion to strike, for

weeks, patiently, obscurely. She had thought to wreak her vengeance by

the return of Gorka, and in what had it ended? In freeing Lincoln from a

dangerous rival and in imperilling the life of the only being for whom

she cared!

The sojourn at the country-seat of her husband's mistress exasperated

Lydia's hidden anger. She suffered so that she cried aloud, like an

imprisoned animal beating against the bars, when she pictured to herself

the happiness which the two lovers would enjoy in the intimacy of the

villa, with the beauties of the Venetian scenery surrounding them. No

doubt the wife could provoke a scandal and obtain a divorce, thanks to

proofs as indisputable as those with which she had overwhelmed Maud. It

would be sufficient to carry to a lawyer the correspondence in the

Spanish escritoire. But of what use? She would not be avenged on her

husband, to whom a divorce would be a matter of indifference now that he

earned as much money as he required, and she would lose her brother. In

vain Lydia told herself that, warned as Alba had been by her letter, her

doubt of Madame Steno's misconduct would no longer be impossible. She

was convinced by innumerable trifling signs that the Contessina still

doubted, and then she concluded:

"It is there that the blow must be struck. But how?"

Yes. How? There was at the service of hatred in that delicate woman, in

appearance oblivious of worldliness, that masculine energy in decision

which is to be found in all families of truly military origin. The blood

of Colonel Chapron stirred within her and gave her the desire to act.

By dint of pondering upon those reasonings, Lydia ended by elaborating

one of those plans of a simplicity really infernal, in which she revealed

what must be called the genius of evil, for there was so much clearness

in the conception and of villainy in the execution. She assured herself

that it was unnecessary to seek any other stage than the studio for the

scene she meditated. She knew too well the fury of passion by which

Madame Steno was possessed to doubt that, as soon as she was alone with

Lincoln, she did not refuse him those kisses of which their

correspondence spoke. The snare to be laid was very simple. It required

that Alba and Lydia should be in some post of observation while the

lovers believed themselves alone, were it only for a moment. The

position of the places furnished the formidable woman with the means of

obtaining the place of espionage in all security. Situated on the second

floor, the studio occupied most of the depth of the house. The wall,

which separated it from the side of the apartments, ended in a partition

formed of colored glass, through which it was impossible to see. That

glass lighted a dark corridor adjoining the linen-room. Lydia employed

several hours of several nights in cutting with a diamond a hole, the

size of a fifty centime-piece, in one of those unpolished squares.

Her preparations had been completed several days when, notwithstanding

her absence of scruple in the satiating of her hatred, she still

hesitated to employ that mode of vengeance, so much atrocious cruelty was

there in causing a daughter to spy upon her mother. It was Alba herself

who kindled the last spark of humanity with which that dark conscience

was lighted up, and that by the most innocent of conversations. It was

the very evening of the afternoon on which she had exchanged that sad

adieu with Fanny Hafner. She was more unnerved than usual, and she was

conversing with Dorsenne in that corner of the long hall. They did not

heed the fact that Lydia drew near them, by a simple change of seat which

permitted her, while herself conversing with some guest, to lend an ear

to the words uttered by the Contessina.

It was Florent who was the subject of their conversation, and she said to

Dorsenne, who was praising him:

"What would you have? It is true I almost feel repulsion toward him.

He is to me like a being of another species. His friendship for his

brother-in-law? Yes. It is very beautiful, very touching; but it does

not touch me. It is a devotion which is not human. It is too

instinctive and too blind. Indeed, I know that I am wrong. There is

that prejudice of race which I can never entirely overcome."

Dorsenne touched her fingers at that moment, under the pretext of taking

from her her fan, in reality to warn her, and he said, in a very low

voice that time:

"Let us go a little farther on. Lydia Maitland is too near."

He fancied he surprised a start on the part of Florent's sister, at whom

he accidentally glanced, while his too-sensible interlocutor no longer

watched her! But as the pretty, clear laugh of Lydia rang out at the

same moment, imprudent Alba replied:

"Fortunately, she has heard nothing. And see how one can speak of

trouble without mistrusting it…. I have just been wicked," she

continued, "for it is not their fault, neither Florent's nor hers, if

there is a little negro blood in their veins, so much the more so as it

is connected by the blood of a hero, and they are both perfectly

educated, and what is better, perfectly good, and then I know very well

that if there is a grand thought in this age it is to have proclaimed

that truly all men are brothers."

She had spoken in a lower voice, but too late. Moreover, even if

Florent's sister could have heard those words, they would not have

sufficed to heal the wound which the first ones had made in the most

sensitive part of her 'amour propre'!

"And I hesitated," said she to herself, "I thought of sparing her!"

The following morning, toward noon, she found herself at the atelier,

seated beside Madame Steno, while Lincoln gave to the portrait the last

touches, and while Alba posed in the large armchair, absent and pale as

usual. Florent Chapron, after having assisted at part of the sitting,

left the room, leaning upon the crutch, which he still used. His

withdrawal seemed so propitious to Lydia that she resolved immediately

not to allow such an opportunity to escape, and as if fatality interfered

to render her work of infamy more easy, Madame Steno aided her by

suddenly interrupting the work of the painter who, after hard working

without speaking for half an hour, paused to wipe his forehead, on which

were large drops of perspiration, so great was his excitement.

"Come, my little Linco," said she, with the affectionate solicitude of an

old mistress, "you must rest. For two hours you have not ceased

painting, and such minute details…. It tires me merely to watch you."

"I am not at all tired," replied Maitland, who, however, laid down his

palette and brush, and rolling a cigarette, lighted it, continuing, with

a proud smile: "We have only that one superiority, we Americans, but we

have it—it is a power to apply ourselves which the Old World no longer

knows…. It is for that reason that there are professions in which we

have no rivals."

"But see!" replied Lydia, "you have taken Alba for a Bostonian or a New

Yorker, and you have made her pose so long that she is pale. She must

have a change. Come with me, dear, I will show you the costume they have

sent me from Paris, and which I shall wear this afternoon to the garden

party at the English embassy."

She forced Alba Steno to rise from the armchair as she uttered those

words, then she entwined her arms about her waist to draw her away and

kissed her. Ah, if ever a caress merited being compared to the hideous

flattery of Iscariot, it was that, and the young girl might have replied

with the sublime words: "Friend, why hast thou betrayed me by a kiss?"

Alas! She believed in it, in the sincerity of that proof of affection,

and she returned her false friend's kiss with a gratitude which did not

soften that heart saturated with hatred, for five minutes had not passed

ere Lydia had put into execution her hideous project. Under the pretext

of reaching the liner-room more quickly, she took a servant's staircase,

which led to that lobby with the glass partition, in which was the

opening through which to look into the atelier.

"This is very strange," said she, pausing suddenly. And, pointing out to

her innocent companion the round spot, she said: "Probably some servant

who has wished to eavesdrop.—But what for? You, who are tall, look and

see how it has been done and what it looks on. If it is a hole cut

purposely, I shall discover the culprit and he shall go."

Alba obeyed the perfidious request absently, and applied her eye to the

aperture. The author of the anonymous letters had chosen her moment only

too well. As soon as the door of the studio was closed, the Countess

rose to approach Lincoln. She entwined around the young man's neck her

arms, which gleamed through the transparent sleeves of her summer gown,

and she kissed with greedy lips his eyes and mouth. Lydia, who had

retained one of the girl's hands in hers, felt that hand tremble

convulsively. A hunter who hears rustle the foliage of the thicket

through which should pass the game he is awaiting, does not experience a

joy more complete. Her snare was successful. She said to her unhappy

victim:

"What ails you? How you tremble!"

And she essayed to push her away in order to put herself in her place.

Alba, whom the sight of her mother embracing Lincoln with those

passionate kisses inspired at that moment with an inexplicable horror,

had, however, enough presence of mind in the midst of her suffering to

understand the danger of that mother whom she had surprised thus,

clasping in the arms of a guilty mistress—whom?—the husband of the very

woman speaking to her, who asked her why she trembled with fear, who

would look through that same hole to see that same tableau!…. In order

to prevent what she believed would be to Lydia a terrible revelation, the

courageous child had one of those desperate thoughts such as immediate

peril inspires. With her free hand she struck the glass so violently

that it was shivered into atoms, cutting her fingers and her wrist.

Lydia exclaimed, angrily:

"Miserable girl, you did that purposely!"

The fierce creature as she uttered these words, rushed toward the large

hole now made in the panel—too late!

She only saw Lincoln erect in the centre of the studio, looking toward

the broken window, while the Countess, standing a few paces from him,

exclaimed:

"My daughter! What has happened to my daughter? I recognized her

voice."

"Do not alarm yourself," replied Lydia, with atrocious sarcasm. "Alba

broke the pane to give you a warning."

"But, is she hurt?" asked the mother.

"Very slightly," replied the implacable woman with the same accent of

irony, and she turned again toward the Contessina with a glance of such

rancor that, even in the state of confusion in which the latter was

plunged by that which she had surprised, that glance paralyzed her with

fear. She felt the same shudder which had possessed her dear friend

Maud, in that same studio, in the face of the sinister depths of that

dark soul, suddenly exposed. She had not time to precisely define her

feelings, for already her mother was beside her, pressing her in her

arms—in those very arms which Alba had just seen twined around the neck

of a lover—while that same mouth showered kisses upon him. The moral

shock was so great that the young girl fainted. She regained

consciousness and almost at once. She saw her mother as mad with anxiety

as she had just seen her trembling with joy and love. She again saw

Lydia Maitland's eyes fixed upon them both with an expression too

significant now. And, as she had had the presence of mind to save that

guilty mother, she found in her tenderness the strength to smile at her,

to lie to her, to blind her forever as to the truth of that hideous scene

which had just been enacted in that lobby.

"I was frightened at the sight of my own blood," said she, "and I believe

it is only a small cut…. See! I can move my hand without pain."

When the doctor, hastily summoned, had confirmed that no particles of

glass had remained in the cuts, the Countess felt so reassured that her

gayety returned. Never had she been in a mood more charming than in the

carriage which took them to the Villa Steno.

To a person obliged by proof to condemn another without ceasing to love

her, there is no greater sorrow than to perceive the absolute

unconsciousness of that other person and her serenity in her fault. Poor

Alba, felt overwhelmed by a sadness greater, more depressing still, and

which became materially insupportable, when, toward half-past two, her

mother bade her farewell, although the fete at the English embassy did

not begin until five o'clock.

"I promised poor Hafner to go to see him to-day. I know he is bowed down

with grief. I would like to try to arrange all…. I will send back the

carriage if you wish to go out awhile. I have telephoned Lydia to expect

me at four o'clock…. She will take me."

She had, on detailing the employment so natural of her afternoon, eyes

too brilliant, a smile too happy. She looked too youthful in her light

toilette. Her feet trembled with too nervous an impatience. How could

Alba not have felt that she was telling her an untruth? The undeceived

child had the intuition that the visit to Fanny's father was only a

pretext. It was not the first time that the Countess employed it to

free herself from inconvenient surveillance, the act of sending back the

carriage, which, in Rome as in Paris, is always the probable sign of

clandestine meetings with women of their rank. It was not the first time

that Alba was possessed by suspicion on certain mysterious disappearances

of her mother. That mother did not mistrust that poor Alba—her Alba,

the child so tenderly loved in spite of all—was suffering at that very

moment and on her account the most terrible of temptations…. When the

carriage had disappeared the fixed gaze of the young girl was turned upon

the pavement, and then she felt arise in her a sudden, instinctive,

almost irresistible idea to end the moral suffering by which she was

devoured. It was so simple!…. It was sufficient to end life. One

movement which she could make, one single movement—she could lean over

the balustrade, against which her arm rested, in a certain manner—so,

a little more forward, a little more—and that suffering would be

terminated. Yes, it would be so very simple. She saw herself lying upon

the pavement, her limbs broken, her head crushed, dead—dead—freed! She

leaned forward and was about to leap, when her eyes fell upon a person

who was walking below, the sight of whom suddenly aroused her from the

folly, the strange charm of which had just laid hold so powerfully upon

her. She drew back. She rubbed her eyes with her hands, and she, who

was accustomed to mystical enthusiasm, said aloud:

"My God! You send him to me! I am saved." And she summoned the footman

to tell him that if M. Dorsenne asked for her, he should be shown into

Madame Steno's small salon. "I am not at home to any one else," she

added.

It was indeed Julien, whom she had seen approach the house at the very

instant when she was only separated from the abyss by that last tremor of

animal repugnance, which is found even in suicide of the most ardent

kind. Do not madmen themselves choose to die in one manner rather than

in another? She paused several moments in order to collect herself.

"Yes," said she at length, to herself, "it is the only solution. I will

find out if he loves me truly. And if he does not?"

She again looked toward the window, in order to assure herself that, in

case that conversation did not end as she desired, the tragical and

simple means remained at her service by which to free herself from that

infamous life which she surely could not bear.

Julien began the conversation in his tone of sentimental raillery, so

speedily to be transformed into one of drama! He knew very well, on

arriving at Villa Steno, that he was to have his last tete-a-tete with

his pretty and interesting little friend. For he had at length decided

to go away, and, to be more sure of not failing, he had engaged his

sleeping-berth for that night. He had jested so much with love that he

entered upon that conversation with a jest; when, having tried to take

Alba's hand to press a kiss upon it, he saw that it was bandaged.

"What has happened to you, little Countess? Have my laurels or those of

Florent Chapron prevented you from sleeping, that you are here with the

classical wrist of a duellist?…. Seriously, how have you hurt

yourself?"

"I leaned against a window, which broke and the pieces of glass cut my

fingers somewhat," replied the young girl with a faint smile, adding: "It

is nothing."

"What an imprudent child you are!" said Dorsenne in his tone of friendly

scolding. "Do you know that you might have severed an artery and have

caused a very serious, perhaps a fatal, hemorrhage?"

"That would not have been such a great misfortune," replied Alba, shaking

her pretty head with an expression so bitter about her mouth that the

young man, too, ceased smiling.

"Do not speak in that tone," said he, "or I shall think you did it

purposely."

"Purposely?" repeated the young girl. "Purposely? Why should I have

done it purposely?"

And she blushed and laughed in the same nervous way she had laughed

fifteen minutes before, when she looked down into the street. Dorsenne

felt that she was suffering, and his heart contracted. The trouble

against which he had struggled for several days with all the energy of an

independent artist, and which for some time systematized his celibacy,

again oppressed him. He thought it time to put between "folly" and him

the irreparability of his categorical resolution. So he replied to his

little friend with his habitual gentleness, but in a tone of firmness,

which already announced his determination:

"I have again vexed you, Contessina, and you are looking at me with the

glance of our hours of dispute. You will later regret having been unkind

to-day."

As he pronounced those enigmatical words, she saw that he had in his eyes

and in his smile something different and indefinable. It must have been

that she loved him still more than she herself believed as for a second

she forgot both her pain and her resolution, and she asked him, quickly:

"You have some trouble? You are suffering? What is it?"

"Nothing," replied Dorsenne. "But time is flying, the minutes are going

by, and not only the minutes. There is an old and charming. French ode,

which you do not know and which begins:

'Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, Madame.

Las, le temps? Non. Mais nous nous en allons.'"

"Which means, little Countess, in simple prose, that this is no doubt the

last conversation we shall have together this season, and that it would

be cruel to mar for me this last visit."

"Do I understand you aright?" said Alba. She, too, knew too well

Julien's way of speaking not to know that that mannerism, half-mocking,

half-sentimental, always served him to prepare phrases more grave, and

against the emotion of which her fear of appearing a dupe rose in

advance. She crossed her arms upon her breast, and after a pause she

continued, in a grave voice: "You are going away?"

"Yes," he replied, and from his coat-pocket he partly drew his ticket.

"You see I have acted like the poltroons who cast themselves into the

water. My ticket is bought, and I shall no longer hold that little

discourse which I have held for months, that, 'Sir executioner, one

moment…. Du Barry'."

"You are going away?" repeated the young girl, who did not seem to have

heeded the jest by which Julien had concealed his own confusion at the

effect of his so abruptly announced departure. "I shall not see you any

more!…. And if I ask you not to go yet? You have spoken to me of our

friendship…. If I pray you, if I beseech you, in the name of that

friendship, not to deprive me of it at this instant, when I have no one,

when I am so alone, so horribly alone, will you answer no? You have

often told me that you were my friend, my true friend? If it be true,

you will not go. I repeat, I am alone, and I am afraid."

"Come, little Countess," replied Dorsenne, who began to be terrified by

the young girl's sudden excitement, "it is not reasonable to agitate

yourself thus, because yesterday you had a very sad conversation with

Fanny Hafner! First, it is altogether impossible for me to defer my

departure. You force me to give you coarse, almost commercial reasons.

But my book is about to appear, and I must be there for the launching of

the sale, of which I have already told you. And then you are going away,

too. You will have all the diversions of the country, of your Venetian

friends and charming Lydia Maitland!"

"Do not mention that name," interrupted Alba, whose face became

discomposed at the allusion to the sojourn at Piove. "You do not know

how you pain me, nor what that woman is, what a monster of cruelty and of

perfidy! Ask me no more. I shall tell you nothing. But," the

Contessina that time clasping her hands, her poor, thin hands, which

trembled with the anguish of the words she dared to utter, "do you not

comprehend that if I speak to you as I do, it is because I have need of

you in order to live?" Then in a low voice, choked by emotion: "It is

because I love you!" All the modesty natural to a child of twenty

mounted to her pale face in a flood of purple, when she had uttered that

avowal. "Yes, I love you!" she repeated, in an accent as deep, but more

firm. "It is not, however, so common a thing to find real devotion, a

being who only asks to serve you, to be useful to you, to live in your

shadow. And you will understand that to have the right of giving you my

life, to bear your name, to be your wife, to follow you, I felt very

vividly in your presence at the moment I was about to lose you. You will

pardon my lack of modesty for the first, for the last time. I have

suffered too much."

She ceased. Never had the absolute purity of the charming creature, born

and bred in an atmosphere of corruption, and remaining in the same so

intact, so noble, so frank, flashed out as at that moment. All that

virgin and unhappy soul was in her eyes which implored Julien, on her

lips which trembled at having spoken thus, on her brow around which

floated, like an aureole, the fair hair stirred by the breeze which

entered the open window. She had found the means of daring that

prodigious step, the boldest a woman can permit herself, still more so a

young girl, with so chaste a simplicity that at that moment Dorsenne

would not have dared to touch even the hand of that child who confided

herself to him so madly, so loyally.

Dorsenne was undoubtedly greatly interested in her, with a curiosity,

without enthusiasm, and against which a reaction had already set in.

That touching speech, in which trembled a distress so tender and each

word of which later on made him weep with regret, produced upon him at

that moment an impression of fear rather than love or pity. When at

length he broke the cruel silence, the sound of his voice revealed to the

unhappy girl the uselessness of that supreme appeal addressed by her to

life.

She had only kept, to exorcise the demon of suicide, her hope in the

heart of that man, and that heart, toward which she turned in so

immoderate a transport, drew back instead of responding.

"Calm yourself, I beseech you," said he to her. "You can understand that

I am very much moved, very much surprised, at what I have heard! I did

not suspect it. My God! How troubled you are. And yet," he continued

with more firmness, "I should despise myself were I to lie to you. You

have been so loyal toward me…. To marry you? Ah, it would be the most

delightful dream of happiness if that dream were not prevented by

honesty. Poor child," and his voice sounded almost bitter, "you do not

know me. You do not know what a writer of my order is, and that to unite

your destiny to mine would be for you martyrdom more severe than your

moral solitude of to-day. You see, I came to your home with so much joy,

because I was free, because each time I could say to myself that I need

not return again. Such a confession is not romantic. But it is thus.

If that relation became a bond, an obligation, a fixed framework in which

to move, a circle of habits in which to imprison me, I should only have

one thought—flight. An engagement for my entire life? No, no, I could

not bear it. There are souls of passage as well as birds of passage, and

I am one. You will understand it tomorrow, now, and you will remember

that I have spoken to you as a man of honor, who would be miserable if he

thought he had augmented, involuntarily, the sorrows of your life when

his only desire was to assuage them. My God! What is to be done?" he

cried, on seeing, as he spoke, tears gush from the young girl's eyes,

which she did not wipe away.

"Go away," she replied, "leave me. I do not want you. I am grateful to

you for not having deceived me."

"But your presence is too cruel. I am ashamed of having spoken to you,

now that I know you do not love me. I have been mad, do not punish me by

remaining longer. After the conversation we have just had, my honor will

not permit us to talk longer."

"You are right," said Julien, after another pause. He took his hat,

which he had placed upon a table at the beginning of that visit, so

rapidly and abruptly terminated by a confession of sentiments so strange.

He said:

"Then, farewell." She inclined her fair head without replying.

The door was closed. Alba Steno was again alone. Half an hour later,

when the footman entered to ask for orders relative to the carriage sent

back by the Countess, he found her standing motionless at the window from

which she had watched Dorsenne depart. There she had once more been

seized by the temptation of suicide. She had again felt with an

irresistible force the magnetic attraction of death. Life appeared to

her once more as something too vile, too useless, too insupportable to be

borne. The carriage was at her disposal. By way of the Portese gate and

along the Tiber, with the Countess's horses, it would take an hour and a

half to reach the Lake di Porto. She had, too, this pretext, to avoid

the curiosity of the servants: one of the Roman noblewomen of her

acquaintance, Princess Torlonia, owned an isolated villa on the border of

that lake…. She ascended hastily to don her hat. And without writing

a word of farewell to any one, without even casting a glance at the

objects among which she had lived and suffered, she descended the

staircase and gave the coachman the name of the villa, adding "Drive

quickly; I am late now."

The Lake di Porto is only, as its name indicates, the port of the ancient

Tiber. The road which leads from Transtevere runs along the river, which

rolls through a plain strewn with ruins and indented with barren hills,

its brackish water discolored from the sand and mud of the Apennines.

Here groups of eucalyptus, there groups of pine parasols above some

ruined walls, were all the vegetation which met Alba Steno's eye. But

the scene accorded so well with the moral devastation she bore within her

that the barrenness around her in her last walk was pleasant to her.

The feeling that she was nearing eternal peace, final sleep in which she

should suffer no more, augmented when she alighted from the carriage,

and, having passed the garden of Villa Torlonia, she found herself facing

the small lake, so grandiose in its smallness by the wildness of its

surroundings, and motionless, surprised in even that supreme moment by

the magic of that hidden sight, she paused amid the reeds with their red

tufts to look at that pond which was to become her tomb, and she

murmured:

"How beautiful it is!"

There was in the humid atmosphere which gradually penetrated her a charm

of mortal rest, to which she abandoned herself dreamily, almost with

physical voluptuousness, drinking into her being the feverish fumes of

that place—one of the most fatal at that season and at that hour of all

that dangerous coast—until she shuddered in her light summer gown. Her

shoulders contracted, her teeth chattered, and that feeling of discomfort

was to her as a signal for action. She took another allee of rose-bushes

in flower to reach a point on the bank barren of vegetation, where was

outlined the form of a boat. She soon detached it, and, managing the

heavy oars with her delicate hands, she advanced toward the middle of the

lake.

When she was in the spot which she thought the deepest and the most

suitable for her design, she ceased rowing. Then, by a delicate care,

which made her smile herself, so much did it betray instinctive and

childish order at such a solemn moment, she put her hat, her umbrella and

her gloves on one of the transversal boards of the boat. She had made

effort to move the heavy oars, so that she was perspiring. A second

shudder seized her as she was arranging the trifling objects, so keen,

so chilly, so that time that she paused. She lay there motionless, her

eyes fixed upon the water, whose undulations lapped the boat. At the

last moment she felt reenter her heart, not love of life, but love for

her mother. All the details of the events which would follow her suicide

were presented to her mind.

She saw herself plunging into the deep water which would close over her

head. Her suffering would be ended, but Madame Steno? She saw the

coachman growing uneasy over her absence, ringing at the door of Villa

Torlonia, the servants in search. The loosened boat would relate enough.

Would the Countess know that she had killed herself? Would she know the

cause of that desperate end? The terrible face of Lydia Maitland

appeared to the young girl. She comprehended that the woman hated her

enemy too much not to enlighten her with regard to the circumstances

which had preceded that suicide. The cry so simple and of a significance

so terrible: "You did it purposely!" returned to Alba's memory. She saw

her mother learning that her daughter had seen all. She had loved her so

much, that mother, she loved her so dearly still!

Then, as a third violent chill shook her from head to foot, Alba began to

think of another mode, and one as sure, of death without any one in the

world being able to suspect that it was voluntary. She recalled the fact

that she was in one of the most dreaded corners of the Roman Campagna;

that she had known persons carried off in a few days by the pernicious

fevers contracted in similar places, at that hour and in that season,

notably one of her friends, one of the Bonapartes living in Rome, who

came thither to hunt when overheated. If she were to try to catch that

same disease?…. And she took up the oars. When she felt her brow

moist with the second effort, she opened her bodice and her chemise, she

exposed her neck, her breast, her throat, and she lay down in the boat,

allowing the damp air to envelop, to caress, to chill her, inviting the

entrance into her blood of the fatal germs. How long did she remain

thus, half-unconscious, in the atmosphere more and more laden with miasma

in proportion as the sun sank? A cry made her rise and again take up the

oars. It was the coachman, who, not seeing her return, had descended

from the box and was hailing the boat at all hazards. When she stepped

upon the bank and when he saw her so pale, the man, who had been in the

Countess's service for years, could not help saying to her, with the

familiarity of an Italian servant:

"You have taken cold, Mademoiselle, and this place is so dangerous."

"Indeed," she replied, "I have had a chill. It will be nothing. Let us

return quickly. Above all, do not say that I was in the boat. You will

cause me to be scolded."

CHAPTER XII

EPILOGUE

"And it was directly after that conversation that the poor child left for

the lake, where she caught the pernicious fever?" asked Montfanon.

"Directly," replied Dorsenne, "and what troubles me the most is that I

can not doubt but that she went there purposely. I was so troubled by

our conversation that I had not the strength to leave Rome the same

evening, as I told her I should. After much hesitation—you understand

why, now that I have told you all—I returned to the Villa Steno at six

o'clock. To speak to her, but of what? Did I know? It was madness.

For her avowal only allowed of two replies, either that which I made her

or an offer of marriage. Ah, I did not reason so much. I was afraid….

Of what?…. I do not know. I reached the villa, where I found the

Countess, gay and radiant, as was her custom, and tete-a-tete with her

American. 'Only think, there is my child,' said she to me, 'who has

refused to go to the English embassy, where she would enjoy herself, and

who has gone out for a drive alone…. Will you await her?'"

"At length she began to grow uneasy, and I, seeing that no one returned,

took my leave, my heart oppressed by presentiments…. Alba's carriage

stopped at the door just as I was going out. She was pale, of a greenish

pallor, which caused me to say on approaching her: 'Whence have you

come?' as if I had the right. Her lips, already discolored, trembled as

they replied. When I learned where she had spent that hour of sunset,

and near what lake, the most deadly in the neighborhood, I said to her:

'What imprudence!' I shall all my life see the glance she gave me at the

moment, as she replied: 'Say, rather, how wise, and pray that I may have

taken the fever and that I die of it.' You know the rest, and how her

wish has been realized. She indeed contracted the fever, and so severely

that she died in less than six days. I have no doubt, since her last

words, that it was a suicide."

"And the mother," asked Montfanon, "did she not comprehend finally?"

"Absolutely nothing," replied Dorsenne. "It is inconceivable, but it is

thus. Ah! she is truly the worthy friend of that knave Hafner, whom his

daughter's broken engagement has not grieved, in spite of his

discomfiture. I forgot to tell you that he had just sold Palais Castagna

to a joint-stock company to convert it into a hotel. I laugh," he

continued with singular acrimony, "in order not to weep, for I am

arriving at the most heartrending part. Do you know where I saw poor

Alba Steno's face for the last time? It was three days ago, the day

after her death, at this hour. I called to inquire for the Countess!

She was receiving! 'Do you wish to bid her adieu?' she asked me. 'Good

Lincoln is just molding her face for me.' And I entered the chamber of

death. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks were sunken, her pretty nose was

pinched, and upon her brow and in the corners of her mouth was a mixture

of bitterness and of repose which I can not describe to you. I thought:

'If you had liked, she would be alive, she would smile, she would love

you!' The American was beside the bed, while Florent Chapron, always

faithful, was preparing the oil to put upon the face of the corpse, and

sinister Lydia Maitland was watching the scene with eyes which made me

shudder, reminding me of what I had divined at the time of my last

conversation with Alba. If she does not undertake to play the part of a

Nemesis and to tell all to the Countess, I am mistaken in faces! For the

moment she was silent, and guess the only words the mother uttered when

her lover, he on whose account her daughter had suffered so much,

approached their common victim: 'Above all, do not injure her lovely

lashes!' What horrible irony, was it not? Horrible!"

The young man sank upon a bench as he uttered that cry of distress and of

remorse, which Montfanon mechanically repeated, as if startled by the

tragical confidence he had just received.

Montfanon shook his gray head several times as if deliberating; then

forced Dorsenne to rise, chiding him thus:

"Come, Julien, we can not remain here all the afternoon dreaming and

sighing like young women! The child is dead. We can not restore her to

life, you in despairing, I in deploring. We should do better to look in

the face our responsibility in that sinister adventure, to repent of it

and to expiate it."

"Our responsibility?" interrogated Julien. "I see mine, although I can

truly not see yours."

"Yours and mine," replied Montfanon. "I am no sophist, and I am not in

the habit of shifting my conscience. Yes or no," he insisted, with a

return of his usual excitement, "did I leave the catacombs to arrange

that unfortunate duel? Yes or no, did I yield to the paroxysm of choler

which possessed me on hearing of the engagement of Ardea and on finding

that I was in the presence of that equivocal Hafner? Yes or no, did that

duel help to enlighten Madame Gorka as to her husband's doings, and, in

consequence, Mademoiselle Steno as to her mother's? Did you not relate

to me the progress of her anguish since that scandal, there just now?….

And if I have been startled, as I have been, by the news of that suicide,

know it has been for this reason especially, because a voice has said to

me: 'A few of the tears of that dead girl are laid to your account."'

"But, my poor friend," interrupted Dorsenne, "whence such reasoning?

According to that, we could not live any more. There enters into our

lives, by indirect means, a collection of actions which in no way

concerns us, and in admitting that we have a debt of responsibility to

pay, that debt commences and ends in that which we have wished directly,

sincerely, clearly."

"It would be very convenient," replied the Marquis, with still more

vivacity, "but the proof that it is not true is that you yourself are

filled with remorse at not having saved the soul so weak of that

defenseless child. Ah, I do not mince the truth to myself, and I shall

not do so to you. You remember the morning when you were so gay, and

when you gave me the theory of your cosmopolitanism? It amused you, as a

perfect dilettante, so you said, to assist in one of those dramas of race

which bring into play the personages from all points of the earth and of

history, and you then traced to me a programme very true, my faith, and

which events have almost brought about. Madame Steno has indeed

conducted herself toward her two lovers as a Venetian of the time of

Aretin; Chapron, with all the blind devotion of a descendant of an

oppressed race; his sister with the villainous ferocity of a rebel who at

length shakes off the yoke, since you think she wrote those anonymous

letters. Hafner and Ardea have laid bare two detestable souls, the one

of an infamous usurer, half German, half Dutch; the other of a degraded

nobleman, in whom is revived some ancient 'condottiere'. Gorka has been

brave and mad, like entire Poland; his wife implacable and loyal, like

all of England. Maitland continues to be positive, insensible, and

wilful in the midst of it all, as all America. And poor Alba ended as

did her father. I do not speak to you of Baron Hafner's daughter," and

he raised his hat. Then, in an altered voice:

"She is a saint, in whom I was deceived. But she has Jewish blood in her

veins, blood which was that of the people of God. I should have

remembered it and the beautiful saying of the Middle Ages: 'The Jewish

women shall be saved because they have wept for our Lord in secret.'….

You outlined for me in advance the scene of the drama in which we have

been mixed up…. And do you remember what I said: 'Is there not among

them a soul which you might aid in doing better?' You laughed in my face

at that moment. You would have treated me, had you been less polite, as

a Philistine and a cabotin. You wished to be only a spectator, the

gentleman in the balcony who wipes the glasses of his lorgnette in order

to lose none of the comedy. Well, you could not do so. That role is not

permitted a man. He must act, and he acts always, even when he thinks he

is looking on, even when he washes his hands as Pontius Pilate, that

dilettante, too, who uttered the words of your masters and of yourself.

What is truth? Truth is that there is always and everywhere a duty to

fulfil. Mine was to prevent that criminal encounter. Yours was not to

pay attention to that young girl if you did not love her, and if you

loved her, to marry her and to take her from her abominable surroundings.

We have both failed, and at what a price!"

"You are very severe," said the young man; "but if you were right would

not Alba be dead? Of what use is it for me to know what I should have

done when it is too late?"

"First, never to do so again," said the Marquis; "then to judge yourself

and your life."

"There is truth in what you say," replied Dorsenne, "but you are mistaken

if you think that the most intellectual men of our age have not suffered,

too, from that abuse of thought. What is to be done? Ah, it is the

disease of a century too cultivated, and there is no cure."

"There is one," interrupted Montfanon, "which you do not wish to see….

You will not deny that Balzac was the boldest of our modern writers. Is

it necessary for me, an ignorant man, to recite to you the phrase which

governs his work: 'Thought, principle of evil and of good can only be

prepared, subdued, directed by religion.' See?" he continued, suddenly

taking his companion by the arm and forcing him to look into a

transversal allee through the copse, "there he is, the doctor who holds

the remedy for that malady of the soul as for all the others. Do not

show yourself. They will have forgotten our presence. But, look, look!

….Ah, what a meeting!"

The personage who appeared suddenly in that melancholy, deserted garden,

and in a manner almost supernatural, so much did his presence form a

living commentary to the discourse of the impassioned nobleman, was no

other than the Holy Father himself, on the point of entering his carriage

for his usual drive. Dorsenne, who only knew Leo XIII from his

portraits, saw an old man, bent, bowed, whose white cassock gleamed

beneath the red mantle, and who leaned on one side upon a prelate of his

court, on the other upon one of his officers. In drawing back, as

Montfanon had advised, in order not to bring a reprimand upon the

keepers, he could study at his leisure the delicate face of the Sovereign

Pontiff, who paused at a bed of roses to converse familiarly with a

kneeling gardener. He saw the infinitely indulgent smile of that

spirituelle mouth. He saw the light of those eyes which seemed to

justify by their brightness the 'lumen in coelo' applied to the successor

of Pie IX by a celebrated prophecy. He saw the venerable hand, that

white, transparent hand, which was raised to give the solemn benediction

with so much majesty, turn toward a fine yellow rose, and the fingers

bend the flower without plucking it, as if not to harm the frail creation

of God. The old Pope for a second inhaled its perfume and then resumed

his walk toward the carriage, vaguely to be seen between the trunks of

the green oaks. The black horses set off at a trot, and Dorsenne,

turning again toward Montfanon, perceived large tears upon the lashes of

the former zouave, who, forgetting the rest of their conversation, said,

with a sigh: "And that is the only pleasure allowed him, who is, however,

the successor of the first apostle, to inhale his flowers and drive in a

carriage as rapidly as his horses can go! They have procured four

paltry kilometers of road at the foot of the terrace where we were half

an hour since. And he goes on, he goes on, thus deluding himself with

regard to the vast space which is forbidden him. I have seen many

tragical sights in my life. I have been to the war, and I have spent one

entire night wounded on a battlefield covered with snow, among the dead,

grazed by the wheels of the artillery of the conquerors, who defiled

singing. Nothing has moved me like that drive of the old man, who has

never uttered a complaint and who has for himself only that acre of land

in which to move freely. But these are grand words which the holy man

wrote one day at the foot of his portrait for a missionary. The words

explain his life: 'Debitricem martyrii fidem'—Faith is bound to

martyrdom."

"'Debitricem martyrii fidem'," repeated Dorsenne, "that is beautiful,

indeed. And," he added, in a low voice, "you just now abused very rudely

the dilettantes and the sceptic. But do you think there would be one of

them who would refuse martyrdom if he could have at the same time faith?"

Never had Montfanon heard the young man utter a similar phrase and in

such an accent. The image returned to him, by way of contrast, of

Dorsenne, alert and foppish, the dandy of literature, so gayly a scoffer

and a sophist, to whom antique and venerable Rome was only a city of

pleasure, a cosmopolis more paradoxical than Florence, Nice, Biarritz,

St. Moritz, than such and such other cities of international winter and

summer. He felt that for the first time that soul was strained to its

depths, the tragical death of poor Alba had become in the mind of the

writer the point of remorse around which revolved the moral life of the

superior and incomplete being, exiled from simple humanity by the most

invincible pride of mind. Montfanon comprehended that every additional

word would pain the wounded heart. He was afraid of having already

lectured Dorsenne too severely. He took within his arm the arm of the

young man, and he pressed it silently, putting into that manly caress all

the warm and discreet pity of an elder brother.