% 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 MASTERPIECES OF 
 
 FRENCH FICTION 
 
 Crownefc t>2 
 
 The Academie Francaise 
 fmown as 
 
 "THE IMMORTALS"
 
 'j^UkJlAi Oxtrta afa
 
 Paul Bourget 
 
 [ F,om the Oritsinai Etching by Robtrt Kastor. J

 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 BY 
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 Crowned by the French Academy 
 
 With a Preface by JULES LEMAITRE, 
 of the French Academy, and Illustrations 
 by N.BRIGANTI and EDWARD KING 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Current Literature Publishing Company 
 
 908 
 
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 Copyright, 1905 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT ARNOT 

 
 C % % E * 
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
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 ORN in Amiens, September 2, 1852, 
 Paul Bourget was a pupil at the Ly- 
 cee 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 vari- 
 ous 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 neces- 
 sary to mention here that he also wrote poetry. His 
 poetical works comprise : Poesies (1872-1876), La Vie 
 Inquiete (1875), Edel (1878), and Les Aveux (1882). 
 
 With riper mind and to far better advantage, he ap- 
 peared 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 Bau- 
 delaire and Leconte de Lisle ; the dramatist Dumas fils, 
 and the novelists Turgenieff, the Goncourts, and Stend- 
 hal. Brunetiere says of Bourget that "no one knows 
 more, has read more, read better, or meditated more 
 
 [v] 

 
 PREFACE 
 
 profoundly upon what he has read, or assimilated it 
 more completely." So much "reading" and so much 
 "meditation," even when accompanied by strong as- 
 similative 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 out- 
 come of years of self-culture and of protracted deter- 
 mined endeavor upon the sternest lines. In fact, for a 
 long time, Bourget rose at 3 a.m. and elaborated anx- 
 iously study after study, and sketch after sketch, well 
 satisfied when he sometimes noticed his articles in the 
 theatrical jeuilleton of the Globe and the Parlement, 
 until he finally contributed to the great Debats itself. 
 A period of long, hard, and painful probation must al- 
 ways 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 be- 
 yond 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 
 
 [ vi I
 
 PREFACE 
 
 science. He has wit, humor, charm, and lightness of 
 touch, and ardently strives after philosophy and intel- 
 lectuality — 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 intel- 
 lectual 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, V Irreparable, 
 appeared as late as 1884. It was followed by Cruelle 
 Enigme (1885); Un Crime d* Amour (1886); Andre 
 Cornells 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 Iragique (1896); La Duch- 
 esse Bleue (1898); Le Fantome (1901); and UEtape 
 (1902). 
 
 Le Disciple and Cosmopolis are certainly notable 
 books. The latter marks the cardinal point in Bour- 
 get'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 phi- 
 losophers — 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 
 
 [ vii 1
 
 PREFACE 
 
 of grace about all his writings, it is probable that Bour- 
 get will remain less known as a critic than as a roman- 
 cer. Though he neither feels like Loti nor sees like 
 Maupassant — he reflects. 
 
 de l'Acaddmie Franqaise. 
 
 I viii |
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Author's Preface i 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 A Dilettante and a Believer 5 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Beginning of a Drama 34 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Boleslas Gorka 66 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Approaching Danger g$ 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Countess Steno j^ 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 The Inconsistency of an Old Chouan 168 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 A Little Relative of I ago 228 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 On the Ground 262 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Lucid Alba 297 
 
 [ix]
 
 CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Common Misery 324 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 The Lake di Porto 345 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 Epilogue 367 
 
 [»i
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PACING PAGE 
 
 Paul Bourget {portrait) Frontispiece 
 
 76 
 He examined again the note ' 
 
 276 
 Boleslas confesses! '
 
 AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION 
 
 SEND you, my dear Primoli, from 
 beyond the Alps, the romance of 
 international life, begun in Italy al- 
 most 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 tra- 
 ditional, 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, 
 
 [i]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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 cus- 
 toms nor a general character. It is composed of ex- 
 ceptions 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 friv- 
 olities 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 attrac- 
 tive 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 
 scries of leading facts, as T have done, essaying to deduce 
 a law which governs them. That law, in the present 
 
 [2]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 instance, is the permanence of race. Contradictory 
 as may appear this result, the more one studies the cos- 
 mopolites, the more one ascertains that the most ir- 
 reducible 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 lim- 
 ited 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 rep- 
 resents one phase out of twenty of the European ad- 
 venturer, 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 
 
 [3]
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 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. 
 
 [4]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A DILETTANTE AND A BELIEVER 
 
 ALTHOUGH the narrow stall, flooded 
 with heaped-up books and papers, 
 left the visitor just room enough to 
 stir, and although that visitor was one 
 of his regular customers, the old book- 
 seller 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 be- 
 neath 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, shriv- 
 eled 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 be- 
 longing 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 laryn- 
 gitis, uttering as an apology, with a strong Italian ac- 
 cent, this phrase in French: 
 
 [5]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "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 sin- 
 gular 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 cen- 
 tury. 
 
 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 or- 
 dained 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 ama- 
 teur bookseller, and will refuse you admission if you 
 displease him. Having inherited a small income, he 
 
 [6]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 sells or he does not, following his fancy or the require- 
 ments 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 con- 
 vents 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 ob- 
 ject 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 ex- 
 pected, 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 
 
 [7]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 book-stall, the police discovered nothing except a pro- 
 digious 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 dc 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 east at one blow the fre- 
 quenter 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 presen- 
 timent of the approaching termination of a secular rule, 
 
 [8]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 cam- 
 paign 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 economi- 
 cally, 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 Ger- 
 manic 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 glim- 
 
 [9]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 mers 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 un- 
 doubtedly 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 dis- 
 contented Socialists have several common hatreds. 
 Even on this particular morning we have seen with 
 what indulgence he bore the brusquencss of the old 
 bookseller, at whom he gazed for ten minutes without 
 disconcerting him in the least. At length the revolu- 
 tionist 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 red-shirt," said Montfanon, "which will only be 
 my recompense for having awaited your good pleasure' 
 more patiently than an ambassador. Let us see whom 
 arc 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?' 1 
 
 'No flics enter a closed mouth," replied the old con- 
 spirator, justifying the proverb by the manner in which 
 he shut his toothless mouth, into which, indeed, at 
 
 f 10J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 Bour- 
 bon, those three notarial deeds which you promised 
 me, have you dislodged them?" 
 
 "Patience, patience," repeated the merchant, add- 
 ing, 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, in- 
 stead of composing wretched verses, you would attend 
 to your correspondence, and, if, instead of buying con- 
 tinually, 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 
 
 ["]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 or- 
 namented the precious work; they were almost effaced. 
 The yellow parchment had been torn in places. In- 
 deed, it was a shapeless ruin which the curious noble- 
 man 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 min- 
 iatures by Matteo da Siena, who made them for Pope 
 Pius II Piccolomini. Look at the one which rep- 
 resents Saint Blaise, who is blessing the lions and pan- 
 thers. 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 (In- least resemble Matteo's 
 compact work; and another proof is that the prayer- 
 book is dated 1554. See!" and, with his remaining 
 
 [12]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 Mattco 
 died before 1500. I did not go to college with Mac- 
 chiavelli," 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 ef- 
 faced 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 gules? 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 Pic- 
 colominis. But what does that prove? That after 
 the siege, and just as it was necessary to retire to Mon- 
 talcino, 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 
 
 [13]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 pain- 
 ful 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 
 look up I he volume and grumbled as he turned it over 
 and over in his inky lingers: 
 
 "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
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 docu- 
 ments in two days and the Hafner papers this week. 
 But was that Bourbon who sacked Rome a French- 
 man?" 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 serv- 
 ice. . . . 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 
 
 [i5]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 a brisk pace, with the precious book under his arm. 
 He understood, from having frequently come in con- 
 tact with them, those southern natures, in which swin- 
 dling and chivalry elbow without harming one another 
 — Don Quixotes who set their own windmills in mo- 
 tion. 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, engrav- 
 ings, 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 medi- 
 tating 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 con- 
 tour, 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 car- 
 
 [16]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 riages 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 pas- 
 sers-by, as well as those who paused at the shop-win- 
 dows, and, devout Catholic as Montfanon was, he 
 tasted, in the face of the picturesque scene of a beau- 
 tiful morning in his favorite city, the pleasure of crown- 
 ing 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 noble- 
 man should not enjoy undisturbed the bibliographical 
 trifle obtained so cheaply and which he carried under 
 his arm, nor that feeling so thoroughly Roman; a sud- 
 den 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 la- 
 dies. The one was evidently an inferior, a companion 
 who acted as chaperon to the other, a young girl of al- 
 most sublime beauty, with large black eyes, which con- 
 trasted 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, 
 2 [17]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 Gueril- 
 lot; 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 Borgo- 
 gnona. "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, ex- 
 
 [18]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 hibiting 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 expres- 
 sion 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 Car- 
 dinal 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 
 
 [19]
 
 PAUL BOUKGET 
 
 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 your- 
 self. 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- 
 Francoisc, 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?" . . . in- 
 terrupted 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 mar- 
 riage. It may, too, amuse you that my holy friend, 
 Cardinal Guerillot, should be the dupe of that in- 
 triguer. But I, Monsieur, who have received the sac- 
 rament 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 rdle of dupe and accomplice to an old 
 
 [20]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 re- 
 peated, growing more and more excited, his red face 
 becoming purple with rage, "but they are the quin- 
 tessence 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, pro- 
 claim 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 estab- 
 lishes 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 
 
 [21]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 suit of the Credit Austro-Dalmatc, in 1880, he would 
 be in the galleys, instead of in Rome. The facts were 
 these : there were innumerable failures. I know some- 
 thing 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 cer- 
 tain 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 un- 
 convinced 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 pass- 
 ing 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 pr< venl his daughter from be-
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 ing an angel, for another. As for that cosmopolitan- 
 ism 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 con- 
 tinued; "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 Bour- 
 gogne, Monsieur de Montfanon, of an ancient family, 
 related to all the nobility — upon which I congratu- 
 late you — and you have lived here in Rome for al- 
 most 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 be- 
 came inspired, and the depths of that narrow mind, 
 
 [23]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 mon- 
 archist, 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 Chris- 
 tianity ! It is that chord which I should like to have 
 heard vibrate in a fluent writer like you, and not eter- 
 nally those paradoxes, those sophisms. But what mat- 
 ters it to you who date from yesterday and who boast 
 of it," he added, almost sadly, "that in the most insig- 
 nificant 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-Claude-des-Bour- 
 guignons, our church ? Have you visited, you who are 
 from theVosges, that of your province, Saint-Nicolas-des- 
 Lorrains? Do you know Saint- Yves-des-Brctons? 
 
 "But," and here his voice assumed a gay accent, 
 " I have thoroughly charged into that rascal of a Haf- 
 
 [24]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 ner. I have laid him before you without any hesita- 
 tion. I have spoken to you as I feel, with all the fer- 
 vor of my heart, although it may seem sport to you. 
 You will be punished, for I shall not allow you to es- 
 cape. 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 de- 
 cent words of the obscene Diderot, 'rotten before ma- 
 ture!' Come, will you go?" 
 
 "You are mistaken," replied the writer, "in think- 
 ing 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 Mont- 
 fanon, 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 be- 
 
 [25]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 ginning 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 in- 
 herited 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 integ- 
 rity 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 morn- 
 ing. Have you the patience to listen to the enumera- 
 tion of the persons whom I shall join immediately? 
 It will not be very long, but do not interrupt me. You 
 
 [ 2 6]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 C osmo polls ; then what do you say to the party with 
 which, in twenty minutes, I shall visit the ancient pal- 
 ace of Urban VII ? First of all, we have your beau- 
 tiful 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 inter- 
 rupt. 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 him- 
 self 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, Flor- 
 ent Chapron, to represent a little of France, a little 
 of America, and a little of Africa; for their grand- 
 father 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 al- 
 most finished. We shall have, to represent England, a 
 Catholic wedded to a Pole, Madame Gorka, the wife 
 
 [27]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 of Boleslas, and, lastly, Paris, in the form of your ser- 
 vant. 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 Bo- 
 hemia, more or less gilded, in which there is not one 
 being who has standing or a history. I no longer 
 allude to that scoundrel Hafncr and his daughter, since 
 you have for her, novelist that you arc, 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 spe- 
 cies 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 dot's not it is still more 
 terrible. And Madame Gorka, that honest creature, 
 
 [28]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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, more- 
 over, 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 sis- 
 ter'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 in- 
 tellect. 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 
 
 [29]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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, irresist- 
 ible, 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 in- 
 comparable 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 fanat- 
 icism of truth of the Puritans; beneath the artistic 
 refinement of a Lincoln Maitland you find the squat- 
 ter, invincibly coarse and robust ; in Boleslas Gorka all 
 the nervous irritability of the Slav, which has ruined 
 Poland. These lineaments of race arc hardly visible 
 in the civilized person, who speaks three or four lan- 
 guages 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 char- 
 acteristics, 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 elan 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 re- 
 sembles another. Are you indulgently inclined to- 
 
 [3oJ
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 ward 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 in- 
 penetrable 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 observa- 
 tion 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 to- 
 ward them, that you can aid them in leading better 
 lives?" 
 
 "That," said Dorsenne, "is another subject which 
 
 [31]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 dis- 
 ciples of Monsieur Renan, and which is the very foun- 
 dation 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 Mont- 
 luc, 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 Dorscnnc. 
 
 "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. 1 suppose your Slav and your Anglo-Saxon 
 have no prejudices, and that they share their Venetian 
 
 [32]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 with a dilcttantcism quite modern. It is cosmopolitan, 
 indeed. . . . Well, once more, adieu. . . . Deliver my 
 message to him if you see him, and," his face again ex- 
 pressed a childish malice, "do not fail to tell Made- 
 moiselle 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!" 
 
 [33]
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF A DRAMA 
 
 ''HERE 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 worn- 
 out machine!" And for a brief mo- 
 ment he watched, with a glance in 
 which there was at least as much ad- 
 miration as pity, the Marquis, who was disappearing 
 down the Rue de la Propagande, and who walked at the 
 rapid pace characteristic of monomaniacs. They fol- 
 low their thoughts instead of heeding objects. How- 
 ever, 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, meri- 
 torious 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 ac- 
 quainted with that original personage to know that he 
 had never been able to say "no" to any one who asked 
 charity, gnat or small, of him. Thanks to that sys- 
 
 I ,4 J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 tern, 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 con- 
 ceived for Baron Justus's charming daughter had be- 
 come a species of passion. Under any other circum- 
 stances, 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 sus- 
 pected. The old leaguer would not have been logical 
 if he had not had in point of race an inquisition par- 
 tiality, 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 sin- 
 cerity of heart, the Cardinal reporting them in due sea- 
 son 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 
 
 [35]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 him, notwithstanding all, by a vague sense of his in- 
 iquity. 
 
 But Dorsenne no sooner turned toward the direc- 
 tion 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 cor- 
 ner 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 imi- 
 tation of Lord Byron, against embonpoint, would pre- 
 serve 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 som- 
 bre mass on the margin of the Tiber, at the extremity 
 of the Via Giulia, like a pendant of the Palais Sacchctti, 
 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 rendez- 
 vous a number of buildings teeming with centuries of 
 historical reminiscences. There was first of all the 
 vast Palais Borghese -the piano of the Borghesc, as 
 it has been called, from the form of a clavecin adopted 
 by the architect a monument of splendor, which was, 
 
 [36J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 less than two years later, to serve as the scene of a sit- 
 uation more melancholy than that of the Palais Cas- 
 tagna. 
 
 Dorsenne had not an absent glance for the sump- 
 tuous 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 Far- 
 nese 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 som- 
 bre 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 him- 
 self, not without reason, on being above emotion, he 
 was not possessed of his usual independence of mind 
 
 [37]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 Mait- 
 land. Such pieces of infamy occur among good 
 friends. If Gorka, who is a shot like Casal, kills Mait- 
 land 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 ac- 
 count 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 lie went away; to me, 
 whom he selected last autumn as the confidant of his 
 jealousies, under the pretext that I knew women, and, 
 
 [38]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 mono- 
 logue uttered under similar circumstances by any 
 young man interested in a young girl whose mother 
 does not conduct herself becomingly. It was a touch- 
 ing 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 suc- 
 cess 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 
 
 [39]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 re- 
 tained 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 oc- 
 cupied 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, fhe most un- 
 intelligible to the illiterate, who think waveringly and 
 who do not, happily for them, suffer the continual ser- 
 vitude 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 moth- 
 er'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 belter to blind the two, would have bordered a 
 little more on propriety. To-day Alba would be Lady 
 Axdrahan, leading a prosaic English life, instead of be- 
 
 [40]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 ing 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 im- 
 pressions 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 for- 
 tune on the Bourse, and that the syndicate of his cred- 
 itors, 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: Cat- 
 erina 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 dis- 
 cussions on the merits of Raphael and Perugino. . . . 
 
 [4i]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 incompre- 
 hensible 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 atti- 
 tude 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 haw 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 
 
 [42]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 aim was to " intellectualizc the forcible sensations;" 
 in clearer terms, he dreamed of meeting with, in hu- 
 man 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 ex- 
 isted 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 conscious- 
 ness, attests a continuous frequenting of the Museum, 
 the Sorbonne and the College of France, while Monsieur 
 le Premier presents one of the most striking pictures 
 
 [43]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 pre- 
 tentiously named Tourisime, Les Profits d'Etrangeres 
 and the Eclogue Mondaine, which fluctuated between 
 Florence and London, St.-Moritz and Bayreuth, re- 
 vealed long sojourns out of France; a clever analysis 
 of the Italian, English, and German worlds; a super- 
 ficial but true knowledge of the languages, the history 
 and literature, which in no way accords with Vodor di 
 jemina, exhale from every page. These contrasts are 
 brought out by a mind endowed with strangely com- 
 plex 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 in- 
 numerable intimacies. Some had been frankly affec- 
 tionate The majority were Platonic. Others had con- 
 sisted of the simple coquetry of friendship, as was the 
 case with Mademoiselle Steno. The young man had 
 
 [44 J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 ex- 
 terior sign, he did not think that he was wrong in mak- 
 ing 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, in- 
 stead of hastening, as was natural, to find out at least 
 what meant the return to Rome of the lover whom Ma- 
 dame Steno deceived, he collected his startled sensibil- 
 ities before meeting Alba, and, pausing, he scribbled in a 
 note-book which he drew from his pocket, with a pen- 
 cil always within reach of his fingers, in a firm hand, 
 precise and clear, this note savoring somewhat of sen- 
 timentalism : 
 
 "25 April, '90. Palais Castagna. — Marvellous stair- 
 case 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 
 
 [45]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 Germanic or Anglo-Saxon, the latter respecting the 
 irregularity of nature, the other all in order, humaniz- 
 ing and administering even to the flower-garden. 
 
 "Subject the complexity of life to a thought har- 
 monious 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 for- 
 ests have taught man liberty." 
 
 He had hardly finished writing that oddly inter- 
 preted 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 per- 
 sonage 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 mar- 
 quis had defamed with so much ardor, the father of 
 beautiful Fanny Hafner, Baron Justus himself. The 
 renowned founder of the Credit Austro-Dalmatc 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 dis- 
 tinction so common to old diplomatists. But the dan- 
 gerous 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 t rifles, and above all by those eyes, of 
 
 [46]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 busi- 
 ness 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 oper- 
 ations 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 fort- 
 une 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 
 
 ^ [47]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 cus- 
 tom 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 meas- 
 ure owing to innumerable public and private disast- 
 ers 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 
 
 [48]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 Austria for Italy and Vienna for Rome. There, heed- 
 less 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 frequent- 
 ly 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 com- 
 plication of combinations equal to his former efforts, 
 and that struggle for connection with high life was dis- 
 guised 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 specu- 
 lator were almost unrecognizable in the baron of fifty- 
 four, decorated with several orders, installed in a mag- 
 nificent 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 Na- 
 poleon for war and a Talleyrand for diplomacy. Dor- 
 senne 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 mak- 
 ing 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. 
 
 4 [49]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "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 en- 
 abled 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, shrug- 
 ging 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 rendez- 
 vous where there are ladies. ... It is almost a quar- 
 ter 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 I lamer, "at the last moment she 
 could not make up her mind. She had a slight annoy- 
 ance this morning — I do not know what old book she 
 had set her heart on. Some rascal found out that she 
 wanted it, and lie obtained it first. . . . But that is 
 not the true ( ause of her absence. The true cause is 
 
 L50J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 Mont- 
 fanons 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 profes- 
 sional observers, had only the power of analysis of a ret- 
 
 [5i]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 rospective order. Never had his keen intelligence 
 served him to avoid one of those slight errors of con- 
 versation 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, with- 
 out 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 some- 
 what 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 
 
 [52]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 "Mar- 
 bles" 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 
 
 [53]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 con- 
 fidences 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 com- 
 mon 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 re- 
 main tete-a-tete with the Baron, and also Jo 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. An- 
 cona 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 palau e 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 pro- 
 
 [54]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 fusion 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 mas- 
 terpieces, worthy of the great Medicis, and executed in 
 their time, alternated with the gewgaws of the eigh- 
 teenth 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 nov- 
 elist 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. A-h, 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 Pep- 
 
 [55]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 pino 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 fif- 
 teen 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 Mait- 
 land were not there, and one could hear the musical 
 voice of Alba spelling the heraldry carved on the cof- 
 fers, formerly opened with tender curiosity by young 
 girls, laughing and dreaming by turns like her. 
 
 [56]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "Look, Maud," said she to Madame Gorka, "there 
 is the oak of the Delia 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 ex- 
 pected you, sirs. Every one has disappointed us. Lin- 
 coln 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 prompt- 
 ness 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, 
 
 [57]
 
 PAUL BOX RGET 
 
 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 
 Dos:es. '" 
 
 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 ex- 
 perienced 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 
 offormid onsequences. Both men were possessed 
 
 [58]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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. Xot 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." 
 
 [59]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "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, hav- 
 ing 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 mis- 
 taken. There is absolutely nothing, I assure you. " 
 It was impossible to lie with more apparent awkward- 
 ness, and if any one merited the scorn of Baron Haf- 
 ner, it was he. Hardly had Madame Gorka spoken, 
 when he had, with the rapidity of men of vivid imagi- 
 nation, seen Countess Steno and Maitland surprised 
 by Gorka, at that very moment, in some place of 
 
 [60]
 
 COSMOPOOS 
 
 rendezvous, and that surprise followed by a challenge, 
 perhaps an immediate murder. And, as Alba con- 
 tinued 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 ques- 
 tioned 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 sen- 
 timental, and he added: "I simply think this exposi- 
 tion 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 jetc had been prepared?' 1 
 
 "Baron," said Madame Gorka, "look at this ma- 
 terial; it is of the eighteenth century, is it not?" 
 
 [61]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "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 
 i wo 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 Contcssina, above all when with 
 him. Although they were the sign of a vivid senti- 
 ment, 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 threat- 
 ened were warned, no doubt Hafner would put Countess 
 Steno upon her guard. But when would he see her? 
 Whal if he, Dorsenne, should at once tell Mainland'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 w r as 
 
 I 62 j
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 Flor- 
 ent — sent when very young to the Jesuits of Beau- 
 mont, 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 Lin- 
 coln, 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 unap- 
 preciated by the public, was wrung by despair. The 
 exceptional character of the marriage would have sur- 
 prised 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 him- 
 self. "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 
 
 [63]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 the conviction took possession of the young man in a 
 definite manner. Alba Steno, who still maintained si- 
 lence, 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 por- 
 trait I have noticed in the other room, my dear Chap- 
 ron." 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 cer- 
 tain 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 
 
 [64]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 which Julicn 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 rcvarnished too much." 
 
 "May I have done right!" thought Julien. "He 
 understood me." 
 
 1 65 I
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 BOLESLAS GORKA 
 
 ARDLY 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 ad- 
 venture 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 win- 
 dows 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 
 
 L06]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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, assas- 
 sinated 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 intel- 
 ligence, 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, Dor- 
 senne. 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. 
 Good-day, Florent. Good-day, Lydia. The master 
 
 [67]'
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 bear- 
 ing that Julien suddenly found it absurd to have im- 
 agined 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 arc becoming a great simpleton, my friend, 
 Dorsenne," said he, seating himself more democrat- 
 ically in one of those open cabs called in Rome a botte. 
 "To fear a tragical adventure for the woman who is 
 
 [ *» ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 Asse- 
 lineau 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 re- 
 
 [69]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 quired 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 ex- 
 traordinary women truly created to exalt the ideals of 
 an artist. Never has he painted anything as he paint- 
 ed the portrait of Alba. I can hear this dialogue: 
 
 "'You know the Pole has returned? What Pole? 
 The Countess's. What? You believe those calum- 
 nies?' 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 earth- 
 quake. 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 at 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 
 
 [7oJ
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 con- 
 tinually 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 no.t 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 The- 
 ban 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 Were- 
 kiews, 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 
 
 [71]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 syn- 
 dicate 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 min- 
 imum 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 con- 
 noisseurs 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 sin- 
 gularly 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 Bran- 
 cadori, who could neither read nor write. But he had 
 preserved a faithful remembrance of all his old cus- 
 tomers, 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 
 
 [72]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 stories of Rome in the days of his youth. His ges- 
 tures, 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 Mar- 
 zocco 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 Saba- 
 tina, 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 per- 
 ceived 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 Bran- 
 cadori 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: 
 
 [73]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "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 dwell- 
 ing, "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 every- 
 thing." 
 
 "Ah! Per Bacco!" exclaimed the Tuscan, with 
 evident sorrow upon his old parchment-like face, 
 scorched from forty years of cooking. "If the de- 
 ceased 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'Epi- 
 nag'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 
 ii was Gigi I should be less easy, but Peppinol' Gigi 
 
 [74]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 amuse- 
 ment, 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 jete of St. Joseph, the original evoca- 
 tion of the heir of the Castagnas continually sign- 
 ing and signing, the coarse explanation of his ruin 
 
 [75]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 — very true, however — everything in the recital had 
 amused Dorsenne. He knew enough Italian to ap- 
 preciate 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 some- 
 times designated the young girl, handed him an en- 
 velope 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 let- 
 ter: "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 South- 
 erners could not think of any other trouble in con- 
 nection with so handsome a man as Dorsenne than 
 that of the heart. 
 
 "Chi ha Vamor net petto," said Signorina Sabatina. 
 
 11 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 an- 
 other form, by repeating to himself, as he went along 
 the Rue Sistina: "No, no, I can not interfere in that 
 ;i flair, and I shall tell him so firmly." 
 
 He examined again the note, the perusal of which 
 had rendered him more uneasy than lie had been 
 twice before that morning. He had not been mistaken 
 
 [76]
 
 He examine J again the note. 
 
 [From the Original Drawing by Carl Victor Dmiggins.]


 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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, an- 
 other 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. 
 
 "B. G." 
 
 "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 ac- 
 
 [77]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 quaintance 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 dwell- 
 ing was not the palace alluded to by Signorina Saba- 
 tina, it was neither the usually common house as com- 
 mon to-day 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-dcs-Monts, 
 ;it 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 
 Franfois Copp6e. A few paces distant, almost op- 
 
 [78]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 posite, 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 melencholy epitaph upon it, written by himself: 
 
 Here lies one whose name was writ in water. 
 
 It was seldom that Dorsenne returned home with- 
 out repeating to himself the translation he had at- 
 tempted of that beautiful Ci-git tin dont le nom jut ecrit 
 sur de Veau. 
 
 Sometimes he repeated, at evening, this delicious frag- 
 ment: 
 
 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 
 
 [79]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 fel- 
 low 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 dissol- 
 vent of rancor than intelligent curiosity. His was, 
 indeed, aroused by a simple detail, which consisted in 
 ascertaining under what conditions the Pole had trav- 
 elled; 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 delir- 
 ium 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, Bolcslas 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, Julicn, you arc 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 
 
 [80]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 hand- 
 some 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-Opa- 
 lenskis, the Bnin-Bninskis, the Ponin-Poniniskis and 
 many others — but his checks were sunken beneath 
 his long, brown beard, in which were glints of gold; 
 his eyes were heavy as if from wakeful nights, his nos- 
 trils 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, en- 
 6 [81]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 gravings, 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 Rus- 
 sian 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 writ- 
 ing-table a cup with a bacchanal painted in red on a 
 black ground, of which Julien was very proud, con- 
 tained 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, speak- 
 ing 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 friend- 
 ship. Speak to me. Explain to me what has happened. 
 If there is any advice to give you, I am ready. T 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 
 
 [82]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 Chap- 
 ron. " 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 
 
 [83]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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, experi- 
 enced 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 photo- 
 graph 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 Mon- 
 dainc 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 con- 
 fiding creature to form a friendship with the daughter 
 of her husband's mistress. Still, he deceived her with 
 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 
 
 [84]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 attracted the young man to some one who was at once 
 a sure confidant, a possible portrayer, a moral accom- 
 plice. 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 miser- 
 able, detailed inquiries I have descended, I who always 
 had a horror of espionage, as of some terrible degra- 
 dation. 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 in- 
 famy 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 forebod- 
 ings. I have always believed in presentiments. I had 
 one. I was not mistaken. From the first letter I re- 
 ceived — from whom you can guess — I saw that there 
 was taking place in Rome something which threatened 
 
 [85]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 me in what I held dearest on earth, in that love for 
 which I sacrificed all, toward which I walked by tramp- 
 ling 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, how- 
 ever, 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 writ- 
 ing. \<> reply. I wrote to ask forgiveness. I re- 
 < eived a letter so cold that in my turn I wrote an angry 
 one. Another silence! Ah! You e;m 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 
 
 I 86 j
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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, re- 
 member that we are at the mercy of their indiscre- 
 tion, 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 ab- 
 sence, 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 bitter- 
 ness, 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 anony- 
 mous letter, and he repeated, with an astonishment 
 which in no way aided his interlocutor: 
 
 "What infamy, what infamy!" 
 
 [87]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "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 re- 
 ceiving 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 anony- 
 mous letters detailed to me the events, the prolonga- 
 tion 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 ad- 
 dress of their rendezvous! I set out. I said to my- 
 self, 'If I announce my arrival to my wife they will 
 find it out, they will escape me.' I intended to sur- 
 prise them. I wanted — Do I know what I wanted? 
 I wanted to suffer no longer the agony of uncertainty. 
 I too!, 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, 
 
 [88]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 horri- 
 ble 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. 
 
 [89]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 ar- 
 rival for to-morrow, 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 sur- 
 prised 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 il has cost me for two years never to 
 arouse suspicion. 1 was happy, and it is easy to 
 deceive when one has nothing to hide but happiness. 
 To-day we should nol he together live minutes before 
 
 Loo |
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 she would seek, and she would find. No, no; I can 
 not. I need something more." 
 
 "Unfortunately," replied Julien, "I can not 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 morn- 
 ing 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 nervous- 
 ness 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. 
 
 [9i]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "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 grand-nephew 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 Giobbc, Stra- 
 bane, ten others. Before, during, or after, what dif- 
 ference does it make? Ah, I was sure on knocking 
 ;it your door at this door of honor—I should hear 
 the truth, th.it I would toueh it as I touch this object," 
 and he laid his hand upon a marble bust on the table. 
 
 [92 1
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "You sec I hear it like a man. You can speak to me 
 now. Who knows? Disgust is a great cure for pas- 
 sion. 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, to-morrow, the day after, you will consid- 
 er me a liar or an imbecile. But, since you misin- 
 terpreted 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 Ma- 
 dame 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 
 
 [93]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 
 T 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 drown- 
 ing. 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!" 
 
 [94]
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 APPROACHING DANGER 
 
 O, I could not act differently," re- 
 peated 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 Por- 
 tonaccio, 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 Trin- 
 ite, 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 heaw 
 when he discovered the calculating plan followed by 
 Boleslas. His tardy penetration permitted him to re- 
 view the general outline of their conversation. He 
 perceived that not one of his interlocutor's sentences, 
 n^t even the most agitated, had been uttered at ran- 
 dom. From reply to reply, from confidence to con- 
 fidence, he, Dorsenne, had become involved in the 
 dilemma without being able to foresee or to avoid it; 
 
 [95]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 ex- 
 traordinary 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 Bran- 
 cadori repeat it. He repeated it to himself, and he 
 understood its meaning. Chi non sa fingersi amico, 
 lion sa essere nemico. "He who does not know how to 
 disguise himself as a friend, docs not know how to be 
 .in enemy." In the little corner of society in which 
 Countess Steno, the r.orkas and Lincoln Maitland 
 moved, who was hypocritical and spiteful enough to 
 pra< tise thai counsel ? 
 
 "It is not Madame Steno," thought Julien; "she has 
 
 I 96 I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 to-day, 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 con- 
 descend to the smallest lie for a trinket which she 
 desires. It is that which renders her so easily de- 
 ceived. 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 under- 
 
 7 [97]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 taking 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 doc- 
 trine 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 w-ithout having read twenty lines. 
 He extinguished his lamp, but he could not sleep. The 
 strange suspicion which crossed his mind had some- 
 thing monstrous about it, applied thus to a young girl. 
 What a suspicion and what a young girl! The pre- 
 ferred friend of his entire winter, she on whose account 
 he had prolonged his stay in Rome, for she was the 
 mosl 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 Dor- 
 si ■nni', 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 de- 
 
 [98]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 formity which the abuse of a certain literary work 
 inflicts on some writers. They are so much accus- 
 tomed 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 par- 
 ricide. 
 
 "After all," he said to himself, for there is icono- 
 clasm 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 
 
 [99]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 ten- 
 nis 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 — divin- 
 ing, 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 
 r;\( li oilier. For a young girl the undertaking is great. 
 I will go to the Countess's to morrow night, and f will 
 amuse myself by watching Alba, to see. . . If she is 
 innocent, my deed will be inoffensive. If perchance 
 
 she is I'ol f . . . " 
 
 I >oo]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 It is vain to profess to one's own heart a complaisant 
 dandyism of misanthropy. Such reflections leave be- 
 hind 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 morn- 
 ing, 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 prob- 
 lem. 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 Pous- 
 siere (T 1 dees. 
 
 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, ab- 
 sorption 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 
 
 [101]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 particular day, when looking over the essays of his 
 twenty-fifth year with the talent of his thirty-fifth, re- 
 touching here a word, rewriting an entire page, dis- 
 satisfied here, smiling there at his thought. The pen 
 flew, carrying with it all the sensibility of the intel- 
 lectual man who had completely forgotten Madame 
 Steno, Gorka, Maitland, and the calumniated Contes- 
 sina, 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 prom- 
 ises 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. . . De- 
 cidedly - 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 occu- 
 pied 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 
 
 I io2 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 hun- 
 dred 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," ap- 
 plied by her friends to Alba's mother. Her friends 
 likewise added: "She has been the mistress of Haf- 
 ner, 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 be- 
 gun 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 cred- 
 itors, 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 
 
 [103]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 on the site. It was a large sum of money. The 
 Countess required twenty-four hours in which to con- 
 sider, 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 ad- 
 ministration 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 practi- 
 cal in her material life as she had been light and au- 
 dacious in her sentimental experiences. The story cir- 
 culated of her infidelity to Steno with Werekiew at St. 
 Petersburg, where the diplomatist was stationed, after 
 one year of marriage, was confirmed by the wanton- 
 ness 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 
 
 [ 104]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 her fortune with the same intelligence. A very ad- 
 vantageous investment in Acqua Marcia enabled her 
 to double in five years the enormous profits of her 
 first operation. And what proved still more the excep- 
 tional 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 spend- 
 ing all the morning of the day before at the Palais Cas- 
 tagna, was to realize one of those paradoxes of contra- 
 dictory 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, how- 
 ever. To complete the rest he had to borrow. He 
 speculated in order to pay his debts, lost, and con- 
 tracted 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 
 
 [105]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 col- 
 lection 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 sum- 
 ming 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 im- 
 pressed 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 real- 
 izing an ideal of Parisian luxury. He had amused 
 himself many an evening in separating from the almost 
 
 I 106 I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 be- 
 trayed 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 ac- 
 count of the delicate and transparent fluidity of the 
 coloring; a Sou per chez le Pharisien and a Jesus res- 
 suscite 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 car- 
 nival of visitors: great lords, artists, political men, 
 Russians and Austrians, English and French — pell- 
 mell. 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. 
 
 [107]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 man- 
 ner, 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, 
 
 L ">8 I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 expres- 
 sion 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 ner- 
 vous 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 fin- 
 gers, 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 Julicn, 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 
 
 [109]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 be- 
 tween 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 neg- 
 lected to reply to the Baron's remark, as he would 
 have done at any other time. Never did the founder 
 of the Credit Austro-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. More- 
 over, Ik- had too much tact not to be aware of the in- 
 stil u live repulsion with which lie inspired Julien. But 
 to Eiafner, ;ill social strength was tariffed, and literary 
 success as much as any other. As he was afraid, as 
 on the staircase <>f the Palais Castagna, that he had 
 gone too far, lie 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 
 
 I "OJ
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 profane persons, such as we are, to plague him, with- 
 out 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, ad- 
 dressing 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 ex- 
 
 [in]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 pressions 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 vo- 
 luptuousness, 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 Qeck, 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, 
 
 [112]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 ex- 
 plained those metamorphoses of tastes, of thoughts, 
 even of appearance, so complete, that in six months, 
 in three months of separation they become like dif- 
 ferent 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 pre- 
 sented 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 
 
 8 [113]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 
 " inconvenienl third 1 ' of the classical comedies, then 
 that Ilafner had reported his imprudent remarks of the 
 day before. 
 
 [«4]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "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. lie made, indeed, twenty trifling re- 
 marks, 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 por- 
 trait 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 re- 
 member, Dorsenne, those two canvases by Pier della 
 Francesca, which are at Florence, Due Federigo d'Ur- 
 bino 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 
 
 [115]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 you once raved ? You wrote to me of them, with re- 
 gard 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 
 Franccsca, 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 Transfig- 
 uration by Raphael," resumed the Countess, who add 
 ed in Italian, with an accent of enthusiasm: u Ah, r/ir 
 bellezzal" 
 
 "Do not worry, Countess," said Dorsenne, laughing 
 heartily, "those are an artist's opinions. Ten years 
 ago, T said that Victor Hugo was an amateur and 
 
 I 116]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 re- 
 producer ! " he repeated to himself. "And the descend- 
 ant of the Doges, who listened seriously to those 
 speeches, her ideal should be a madonna en chromo I 
 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: l 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." 
 
 ["7]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "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 con- 
 versation, which Ardea persisted in turning upon his 
 ruin, or finding very well organized a world in which 
 strokes like that of the Credit Anstro-Dalmate are pos- 
 sible, 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 re- 
 minded 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. Bet- 
 ter 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, Dor- 
 senne, would have been exposed to the cudgel like 
 Monsieur de Voltaire, by some jealous lord. . . And 
 Prince dWrdea would have run the risk of being as- 
 sassinated or beheaded at each change of Pope. And 
 
 [ .18]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 jus- 
 tice be added, that the slightly olive tinge in her com- 
 plexion, 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. 
 
 [119]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 She uttered the sentence in so peculiar a manmer 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, Ly- 
 dia 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 neigh- 
 bor 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 agita- 
 tion: 
 
 "You visited my palace yesterday, Mademoiselle?" 
 
 "No," she replied. 
 
 "Ask her why not, Prince," said Ilafner. 
 
 "Father!" cried Fanny, with a supplication in her 
 
 I i ~o J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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. 
 
 [121]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 im- 
 patient frown. "I can not bear to hear lies of a cer- 
 tain 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 pre- 
 vented 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 thai 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 mag- 
 
 I 122]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 nificent 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 
 grand-nephews 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? 
 
 [ I2 3]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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, pass- 
 ing 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, 
 e entered into the mind, never allows of the care- 
 lessness so natural at the age of twenty. 
 
 The impression of premature disenchantment Alba 
 Steno had many times given to Dorsenne, and it had 
 
 I '24]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 tea- 
 kettle, 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. Haf- 
 ner, 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 inter- 
 rupted himself with the start of a man who handles a 
 
 [125]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 Stcno not written the anonymous letters 
 addressed to Gorka, but that, on the contrary, she 
 had r ceived some herself. From whom? Who was the 
 my terious denunciator who had warned in that abom- 
 inable manner the daughter of Madame Steno after 
 the lover? Julien shuddered as he continued: "If 1 
 smiled, it was because I believe Mademoiselle Hafner, 
 in ca i the misfortune should come to her, sensible 
 • Hough to h uli advice as it merits. An anony- 
 
 mous letter does not deserve to be read. Any one 
 
 [126]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 abomi- 
 nations. A book which succeeds, a piece which pleases, 
 an article which is extolled, calls forth from the en- 
 vious unsigned letters which wound us or those whom 
 we love. In such cases, I repeat, I burn them un- 
 read, 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." 
 
 [127]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 mak- 
 ing me lose time by your advice, of which I shall prob- 
 ably 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 eve- 
 ning, and Fanny, too. . . . Ardea takes whiskey and 
 the Baron mineral water. . . . You can ring for his 
 glass of vichv. . . - There. . . . You have delaved me. 
 . . . There are more callers and nothing is ready. 
 . . . Ah," she cried, "it is Maud!" — then, with sur- 
 prise, "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 per- 
 fumed, 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 
 
 [128]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 him his hand. One night and a day of reflection had 
 undermined his work, and if Boleslas had enacted the 
 comedy to the point of lulling his wife's suspicions and 
 of deciding on the visit of that evening, it was because 
 he had resolved not to consult any one and to lead 
 his own inquiry. He was succeeding in the beginning ; 
 he had certainly perceived Madame Steno's white 
 gown upon the terrace, while radiant Maud explained 
 his unexpected return with her usual ingenuous- 
 ness. 
 
 "This is what comes of sending to a doting father 
 accounts of our boy's health. ... I wrote him the 
 other day that Luc had a little fever. He wrote to 
 ask about its progress. I did not receive his letter. 
 He became uneasy, and here he is." 
 
 "I will tell mamma," said Alba, passing out upon 
 the terrace, but her haste seemed too slow to Dorsenne. 
 He had such a presentiment of danger that he did not 
 think of smiling, as he would have done on any other 
 occasion, at the absolute success of the deception 
 which he and Boleslas had planned on the preceding 
 day, and of which the Count had said, with a fatuity 
 now proven: "Maud will be so happy to see me that 
 she will believe all." 
 
 It was a scene both simple and tragical — of that 
 order in which in society the most horrible incidents 
 occur without a sound, without a gesture, amid phrases 
 of conventionality and in a festal framework! Two 
 of the spectators, at least, besides Julien, understood 
 its importance — Ardea and Hafner. For neither the 
 one nor the other had failed to notice the relations 
 
 9 t I2 9]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 between Madame Steno and Maitland, much less her 
 position with regard to Gorka. The writer, the grand 
 seigneur, and the business man had, notwithstanding 
 the differences of age and of position, a large experience 
 of analogous circumstances. 
 
 They knew of what presence of mind a courageous 
 woman was capable, when surprised, as was the Ve- 
 netian. All these have declared since that they had 
 never imagined more admirable self-possession, a com- 
 posure more superbly audacious, than that displayed 
 by Madame Steno, at that decisive moment. She 
 appeared on the threshold of the French window, sur- 
 prised and delighted, just in the measure she con- 
 formably should be. Her fair complexion, which the 
 slightest emotion tinged with carmine, was bewitch- 
 ingly pink. Not a quiver of her long lashes veiled her 
 deep blue eyes, which gleamed brightly. With her 
 smile, which exhibited her lovely teeth, the color of the 
 large pearls which were twined about her neck, with 
 the emeralds in her fair hair, with her fine shoulders 
 displayed by the slope of her white corsage, with her 
 delicate waist, with the splendor of her arms from 
 which she had removed the gloves to yield them to the 
 caresses of Maitland, and which gleamed with more 
 emeralds, with her carriage marked by a certain haugh- 
 tiness, she was truly a woman of another age, the sister 
 of those radiant princesses whom the painters of Venice 
 evoke beneath the marble porticoes, among apostles 
 and martyrs. She advanced to Maud Gorka, whom 
 she embraced affectionately, then, pressing Boleslas's 
 hand, she said in a voice so warm, in which at times 
 
 [130]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 there were deep tones, softened by the habitual use 
 of the caressing dialect of the lagoon : 
 
 'What a surprise! And you could not come to 
 dine with us? Well, sit down, both of you, and relate 
 to me the Odyssey of the traveller," and, turning 
 toward Maitland, who had followed her into the salon 
 with the insolent composure of a giant and of a lover: 
 
 "Be kind, my little Linco, and fetch me my fan and 
 my gloves, which I left on the couch." 
 
 At that moment Dorsenne, who had only one fear, 
 that of meeting Gorka's eyes — he could not have borne 
 their glance— was again by the side of Alba Steno. 
 The young girl's face, just now so troubled, was ra- 
 diant. It seemed as if a great weight had been lifted 
 from the pretty Contessina's mind. 
 
 "Poor child," thought the writer, "she would not 
 think her mother could be so calm were she guilty. 
 The Countess's manner is the reply to the anonymous 
 letter. Have they written all to her? My God ! 
 Who can it be?" 
 
 And he fell into a deep revery, interrupted only by 
 the hum of the conversation, in which he did not par- 
 ticipate. It would have satisfied him had he ob- 
 served, instead of meditated, that the truth with re- 
 gard to the author of the anonymous letters might 
 have become clear to him, as clear as the courage of 
 Madame Steno in meeting danger — as the blind con- 
 fidence of Madame Gorka — as the disdainful imper- 
 turbability of Maitland before his rival and the sup- 
 pressed rage of that rival — as the finesse of Hafner in 
 sustaining the general conversation — as the assiduous 
 
 [131]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 attentions of Ardea to Fanny — as the emotion of the 
 latter — as clear as Alba's sense of relief. All those 
 faces, on Boleslas's entrance, had expressed different 
 feelings. Only one had, for several minutes, expressed 
 the joy of crime and the avidity of ultimately satisfied 
 hatred. But as it was that of little Madame Maitland, 
 the silent creature, considered so constantly by him 
 as stupid and insignificant, Dorsenne had not paid 
 more attention to it than had the other witnesses the 
 surprising reappearance of the betrayed lover. 
 
 Every country has a metaphor to express the idea 
 that there is no worse water than that which is stag- 
 nant. Still waters run deep, say the English, and the 
 Italians, Still waters ruin bridges. 
 
 These adages would not be accurate if one did not 
 forget them in practise, and the professional analyst 
 of the feminine heart had entirely forgotten them on 
 that evening. 
 
 h3 2 ]
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 COUNTESS STENO 
 
 ■O a woman less courageous than the 
 Countess, less capable of looking a 
 situation in the face and of advancing 
 to it, such an evening would have 
 marked the prelude to one of those 
 nights of insomnia when the mind 
 exhausts in advance all the agonies 
 of probable danger. Countess Steno 
 did not know what weakness and fear were. 
 
 A creature of energy and of action, who felt herself 
 to be above all danger, she attached no meaning to 
 the word uneasiness. So she slept, on the night which 
 followed that soiree, a. sleep as profound, as refreshing, 
 as if Gorka had never returned with vengeance in his 
 heart, with threats in his eyes. Toward ten o'clock 
 the following morning, she was in the tiny salon, or 
 rather, the office adjoining her bedroom, examining 
 several accounts brought by one of her men of busi- 
 ness. Rising at seven o'clock, according to her cus- 
 tom, she had taken the cold bath in which, in summer 
 as well as winter, she daily quickened her blood. She 
 had breakfasted, a Panglaise, following the rule to 
 which she claimed to owe the preservation of her di- 
 gestion, upon eggs, cold meat, and tea. She had made 
 
 1*33]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 her complicated toilette, had visited her daughter to 
 ascertain how she had slept, had written five letters, 
 for her cosmopolitan salon compelled her to carry on 
 an immense correspondence, which radiated between 
 Cairo and New York, St. Petersburg and Bombay, 
 taking in Munich, London, and Madeira, and she was 
 as faithful in friendship as she was inconstant in love. 
 Her large handwriting, so elegant in its composition, 
 had covered pages and pages before she said: "I have 
 a rendezvous at eleven o'clock with Maitland. Ardea 
 will be here at ten to talk of his marriage. I have 
 accounts from Finoli to examine. I hope that Gorka 
 will not come, too, this morning." . . . Persons in 
 whom the feeling of love is very complete, but very 
 physical, are thus. They give themselves and take 
 themselves back altogether. The Countess experienced 
 no more pity than fear in thinking of her betrayed 
 lover. She had determined to say to him, "I no 
 longer love you," frankly, openly, and to offer him his 
 choice between a final rupture or a firm friendship. 
 The only annoyance depended upon the word of 
 explanation, which she desired to see postponed until 
 afternoon, when she would be free, an annoyance 
 which, however, did not prevent her from examining 
 with her usual accuracy the additions and multipli- 
 cations of her intendant, who stood near her with a 
 Face such as Borafagio gave to his Pharisees. He 
 managed the seven hundred Jin tares of Piove, near 
 Padua, Madame Steno's favorite estate. She had in- 
 < rea ed the revenue from it tenfold, by the draining of 
 
 a sterile and often malignant lagoon, which, situated 
 
 [134]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 a metre below the water-level, had proved of surpris- 
 ing fertility; and she calculated the probable operations 
 for weeks in advance with the detailed and precise 
 knowledge of rural cultivation which is the character- 
 istic of the Italian aristocracy and the permanent cause 
 of its vitality. 
 
 "Then you estimate the gain from the silkworms 
 at about fifty kilos of cocoons to an ounce?" 
 
 "Yes, Excellency," replied the intendant. 
 
 "One hundred ounces of yellow; one hundred times 
 fifty makes five thousand," resumed the Countess. 
 "At four francs fifty?" 
 
 "Perhaps five, Excellency," said the intendant. 
 
 "Let us say twenty-two thousand five hundred," 
 said the Countess, "and as much for the Japanese. . . . 
 That will bring us in our outlay for building." 
 
 "Yes, Excellency. And about the wine?" 
 
 "I am of the opinion, after what you have told me 
 of the vineyard, that you should sell as quickly as pos- 
 sible to Kauffmann's agent all that remains of the 
 last crop, but not at less than six francs. You know 
 it is necessary that our casks be emptied and cleaned 
 after the month of August. ... If we were to fail 
 this time, for the first year that we manufacture our 
 wine with the new machine, it would be too bad." 
 
 "Yes, Excellency. And the horses?" 
 
 "I think that is an opportunity we should not let 
 escape. My advice is that you take the express to 
 Florence to-day at two o'clock. You will reach Verona 
 to-morrow morning. You will conclude the bargain. 
 The horses will be sent to Piove the same evening. . . 
 
 [i35]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 We have finished just in time," she continued, arrang- 
 ing the intendant's papers. She put them herself in 
 their envelope, which she gave him. She had an ex- 
 tremely delicate sense of hearing, and she knew that 
 the door of the antechamber opened. It seemed that 
 the administrator took away in his portfolio all the 
 preoccupation of this extraordinary woman. For, after 
 concluding that dry conversation, or rather that mon- 
 ologue, she had her clearest and brightest smile with 
 which to receive the new arrival, who was, fortunately, 
 Prince d'Ardea. She said to the servant: 
 
 "I wish to speak with the Prince. If any one asks 
 for me, do not admit him and do not send any one 
 hither. Bring me the card." Then, turning toward 
 the young man, "Well, Simpaticone" it was the nick- 
 name she gave him, "how did you finish your eve- 
 ning?" 
 
 "You would not believe me," replied Peppino Ardea, 
 laughing; "I, who no longer have anything, not even 
 my bed. I went to the club and I played. . . . For 
 the first time in my life I won." 
 
 He was so gay in relating his childish prank, he 
 jested so merrily about his ruin, that the Countess 
 looked at him in surprise, as he had looked at her on 
 entering. . . . We understand ourselves so little, and 
 we know so little about our own singularities of char- 
 acter, that each one was surprised at finding the other 
 so calm. Ardea could not comprehend that Madame 
 Steno should not be at least uneasy about Gorka's 
 return and the consequences which might result there- 
 from. She, on the other hand, admired the strange 
 
 [136]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 youth who, in his misfortune, could find such joviality 
 at his command. He had evidently expended as much 
 care upon his toilette as if he had not to take some 
 immediate steps to assure his future, and his waistcoat, 
 the color of his shirt, his cravat, his yellow shoes, the 
 flower in his buttonhole, all united to make of him 
 an amiable and incorrigibly frivolous dandy. She felt 
 the need which strong characters have in the presence 
 of weak ones; that of acting for the youth, of aiding 
 him in spite of himself, and she attacked at once the 
 question of marriage with Fanny Hafner. With her 
 usual common-sense, and with her instinct of arrang- 
 ing everything, Madame Steno perceived in the union 
 so many advantages for every one that she was in 
 haste to conclude it as quickly as if it involved a per- 
 sonal affair. 
 
 The marriage was earnestly desired by the Baron, 
 who had spoken of it to her for months. It suited 
 Fanny, who would be converted to Catholicism with 
 the consent of her father. It suited the Prince, who 
 at one stroke would be freed from his embarrassment. 
 Finally, it suited the name of Castagna. Although Pep- 
 pino was its only representative at that time, and as, 
 by an old family tradition, he bore a title different 
 from the patronymic title of Pope Urban VII, the sale 
 of the celebrated palace had called forth a scandal to 
 which it was essential to put an end. The Countess 
 had forgotten that she had assisted, without a pro- 
 testation, in that sale. Had she not known through 
 Hafner that he had bought at a low price an enormous 
 heap of the Prince's bills of exchange? Did she not 
 
 [i37]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 know the Baron well enough to be sure that M. Noe 
 Ancona, the implacable creditor who sold the palace, 
 was only the catspaw of this terrible friend? In a fit 
 of ill-humor at the Baron, had she not herself accused 
 him in Alba's presence of this very simple plan, to 
 bring Ardea to a final catastrophe in order to offer 
 him salvation in the form of the union with Fanny, 
 and to execute at the same time an excellent operation ? 
 For, once freed from the mortgages which burdened 
 them, the Prince's lands and buildings would regain 
 their true value, and the imprudent speculator would 
 find himself again as rich, perhaps richer. 
 
 "Come," said Madame Steno to the Prince, after 
 a moment's silence and without any preamble, "it is 
 now time to talk business. You dined by the side 
 of my little friend yesterday ; you had the entire eve- 
 ning in which to study her. Answer me frankly, would 
 she not make the prettiest little Roman princess who 
 could kneel in her wedding-gown at the tomb of the 
 apostles? Can you not see her in her white gown, 
 under her veil, alighting at the staircase of Saint Peter's 
 from the carriage with the superb horses which her 
 father has given her? Close your eyes and see her in 
 your thoughts. Would she not be pretty? Would 
 she not?" 
 
 "Very pretty," replied Ardea, smiling at the tempt- 
 ing vision Madame Steno had conjured up, "but she 
 is not fair. And you know, to me, a woman who is 
 not fair ah, Countess! What a pity that in Venice, 
 five years ago, on a certain evening — do you remem- 
 ber?" 
 
 [138]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "How much like you that is!" interrupted she, 
 laughing her deep, clear laugh. "You came to see 
 me this morning to talk to me of a marriage, unhoped 
 for with your reputation of gamester, of supper-giver, 
 of mauvais sajet; of a marriage which fulfils conditions 
 almost improbable, so perfect are they — beauty, youth, 
 intelligence, fortune, and even, if I have read my lit- 
 tle friend aright, the beginning of an interest, of a 
 very deep interest. And, for a little, you would make 
 a declaration to me. Come, come!" and she extended 
 to him for a kiss her beautiful hand, on which gleamed 
 large emeralds. "You are forgiven. But answer- 
 yes or no. Shall I make the proposal? If it is yes, 
 I will go to the Palace Savorelli at two o'clock. I 
 will speak to my friend Hafner. He will speak to his 
 daughter, and it will not depend upon me if you 
 have not their reply this evening or to-morrow morning. 
 Is it yes? Is it no?" 
 
 " This evening ? To-morrow ?" exclaimed the Prince, 
 shaking his head with a most comical gesture. "I can 
 not decide like that. It is an ambush! I come to 
 talk, to consult you." 
 
 "And on what?" asked Madame Steno, with a 
 vivacity almost impatient. "Can I tell you anything 
 you do not already know? In twenty-four hours, in 
 forty-eight, in six months, what difference will there 
 be, I pray you ? We must look at things as they are, 
 however. To-morrow, the day after, the following 
 days, will you be less embarrassed?" 
 
 "No," said the Prince, "but- -" 
 
 "There is no but," she resumed, allowing him to say 
 
 [!39]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 no more than she had allowed her intendant. The des- 
 potism natural to puissant personalities scorned to be 
 disguised in her, when there were practical decisions 
 in which she was to take part. "The only serious 
 objection you made to me when I spoke to you of this 
 marriage six months ago was that Fanny was not a 
 Catholic. I know to-day that she has only to be asked 
 to be converted. So do not let us speak of that." 
 
 "No," said the Prince, "but- -" 
 
 "As for Hafner, " continued the Countess, "you will 
 say he is my friend and that I am partial, but that 
 partiality even is an opinion. He is precisely the 
 father-in-law you need. Do not shake your head. 
 He will repair all that needs repairing in your fortune. 
 You have been robbed, my poor Peppino. You told 
 me so yourself. . . Become the Baron's son-in-law, 
 and you will have news of your robbers. I know. 
 . . . There is the Baron's origin and the suit of ten 
 years ago with all the pettogolezzi to which it gave rise. 
 All that has not the common meaning. The Baron 
 began life in a small way. He was from a family of 
 Jewish origin — you see, I do not deceive you — but 
 converted two generations back, so that the story of 
 his change of religion since his stay in Italy is a 
 calumny, like the rest. He had a suit in which he 
 was acquitted. You would not require more than the 
 law, would you?" 
 
 "No, but- -" 
 
 "For what are you waiting, then ?" concluded Ma- 
 dame Steno. "That it may be too late? Mow about 
 your lands?"
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "Ah! let me breathe, let me fan myself," said Ardea, 
 who, indeed, took one of the Countess's fans from the 
 desk. "I, who have never known in the morning what 
 I would do in the evening, I, who have always lived 
 according to my pleasure, you ask me to take in five 
 minutes the resolution to bind myself forever!" 
 
 "I ask you to decide what you wish to do," returned 
 the Countess. "It is very amusing to travel at one's 
 pleasure. But when it is a question of arranging one's 
 life, this childishness is too absurd. I know of only 
 one way: to see one's aim and to march directly to it. 
 Yours is very clear — to get out of this dilemma. The 
 way is not less clear; it is marriage with a girl who has 
 five millions dowry. Yes or no, will you have her ? . . . 
 Ah," said she, suddenly interrupting herself, "I shall 
 not have a moment to myself this morning, and I have 
 an appointment at eleven o'clock!" . . . She looked 
 at the timepiece on her table, which indicated twenty- 
 five minutes past ten. She had heard the door open. 
 The footman was already before her and presented to 
 her a card upon a salver. She took the card, looked 
 at it, frowned, glanced again at the clock, seemed to 
 hesitate, then: "Let him wait in the small salon, and 
 say that I will be there immediately," said she, and 
 turning again toward Ardea: "You think you have es- 
 caped. You have not. I do not give you permission 
 to go before I return. I shall return in fifteen minutes. 
 Would you like some newspapers? There are some. 
 Books? There are some. Tobacco? This box is 
 filled with cigars. ... In a quarter of an hour I shall 
 be here and I will have your reply. I wish it, do you 
 
 [141]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 hear? I wish it." . . . And, on the threshold, with 
 another smile, using that time a term of patois common 
 in Northern Italy and which is only a corruption of 
 schiavo or servant: Ciao Simpaticone. 
 
 "What a woman!" said Peppino Ardea, when the 
 door was closed upon the Countess. "Yes, what a 
 pity that five years ago in Venice I was not free! Who 
 knows? If I had dared, when she took me to my 
 hotel in her gondola. She was about to leave San 
 Giobbe. She had not yet accepted Boleslas. She 
 would have advised — have directed me. I should have 
 speculated on the Bourse, as she did, with Hafner's 
 counsel. But not in the quality of son-in-law. I 
 should not have been obliged to marry. And she 
 would not now have such bad tobacco. "... He was 
 on the point of lighting one of the Virginian cigarettes, 
 a present from Maitland. He threw it away, making 
 a grimace with his air of a spoiled child, at the risk of 
 scorching the rug which lay upon the marble floor; 
 and he passed into the antechamber in order to fetch 
 his own case in the pocket of the light overcoat he had 
 prudently taken on coming out after eight o'clock. 
 
 As he lighted one of the cigarettes in that case, filled 
 with so-called Egyptian tobacco, mixed with opium 
 and saltpetre, which he preferred to the tobacco of the 
 American, he mechanically glanced at the card which 
 the s<T\;i nt had left on going from the room the 
 card of the unknown visitor for whom Madame Steno 
 had Left him. 
 
 Ardea read upon it, with astonishment, these words: 
 ( 'on 11/ ilolcslas Gorka. 
 
 [ 142]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "She is better than I thought her," said he, on re- 
 entering the deserted office. "She had no need to bid 
 me not to go. I think I should wait to see her return 
 from that conversation." 
 
 It was indeed Boleslas whom the Countess found in 
 
 i 
 
 the salon, which she had chosen as the room the most 
 convenient for the stormy explanation she anticipated. 
 It was isolated at the end of the hall, and was like a 
 pendant to the terrace. It formed, with the dining- 
 room, the entire ground-floor, or, rather, the entresol 
 of the house. Madame Steno's apartments, as well 
 as the other small salon in which Peppino was, were 
 on the first floor, together with the rooms set apart 
 for the Contessina and her German governess, Frau- 
 lein Weber, for the time being on a journey. 
 
 The Countess had not been mistaken. At the first 
 glance exchanged on the preceding day with Gorka, 
 she had divined that he knew all. She would have 
 suspected it, nevertheless, since Hafner had told her 
 the few words indiscreetly uttered by Dorsenne on 
 the clandestine return of the Pole to Rome. She had 
 not at that time been mistaken in Boleslas's inten- 
 tions, and she had no sooner looked in his face than 
 she felt herself to be in peril. When a man has been 
 the lover of a woman as that man had been hers, 
 with the vibrating communion of a voluptuousness 
 unbroken for two years, that woman maintains a sort 
 of physiological, quasi-animal instinct. A gesture, the 
 accent of a word, a sigh, a blush, a pallor, are signs 
 for her that her intuition interprets with infallible cer- 
 tainty. How and why is that instinct accompanied 
 
 [i43]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 by absolute oblivion of former caresses? It is a par- 
 ticular case of that insoluble and melancholy problem 
 of the birth and death of love. Madame Steno had 
 no taste for reflection of that order. Like all vigorous 
 and simple creatures, she acknowledged and accepted 
 it. As on the previous day, she became aware that 
 the presence of her former lover no longer touched in 
 her being the chord which had rendered her so weak 
 to him during twenty-five months, so indulgent to his 
 slightest caprices. It left her as cold as the marble 
 of the bas-relief by Mino da Fiesole fitted into the 
 wall just above the high chair upon which he leaned. 
 Boleslas, notwithstanding the paroxysm of lucid 
 fury which he suffered at that moment, and which 
 rendered him capable of the worst violence, had on 
 his part a knowledge of the complete insensibility in 
 which his presence left her. He had seen her so often, 
 in the course of their long liaison, arrive at their morn- 
 ing rendezvous at that hour, in similar toilettes, so 
 fresh, so supple, so youthful in her maturity, so eager 
 for kisses, tender and ardent. She had now in her 
 blue eyes, in her smile, in her entire person, some- 
 thing at once so gracious and so inaccessible, which 
 gives to an abandoned lover the mad longing to strike, 
 to murder, a woman who smiles at him with such a 
 smile. At the same time she was so beautiful in the 
 morning light, subdued by the lowered blinds, that 
 she inspired him with an equal desire to clasp her in 
 his arms whether she would or no. He had recognized, 
 when she entered the room, the aroma of a prepara- 
 tion which she had used in her bath, and that trifle 
 
 I '44]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 alone had aroused his passion far more than when the 
 servant told him Madame Steno was engaged, and 
 he wondered whether she was not alone with Maitland. 
 Those impassioned, but suppressed, feelings trembled 
 in the accent of the very simple phrase with which he 
 greeted her. At certain moments, words are nothing; 
 it is the tone in which they are uttered. And to the 
 Countess that of the young man was terrible. 
 
 "I am disturbing you?" he asked, bowing and barely 
 touching with the tips of his fingers the hand she had 
 extended to him on entering. "Excuse me, I thought 
 you alone. Will you be pleased to name another time 
 for the conversation which I take the liberty of de- 
 manding?" 
 
 "No, no," she replied, not permitting him to finish 
 his sentence. "I was with Peppino Ardea, who will 
 await me," said she, gently. "Moreover, you know 
 I am in all things for the immediate. When one has 
 something to say, it should be said, one, two, three! 
 . . . First, there is not much to say, and then it is 
 better said. . . . There is nothing that will sooner 
 render difficult easy explanations and embroil the best 
 of friends than delay and maintaining silence." 
 
 "I am very happy to find you in such a mind," 
 replied Boleslas, with a sarcasm which distorted his 
 handsome face into a smile of atrocious hatred. The 
 good-nature displayed by her cut him to the heart, 
 and he continued, already less self-possessed: "It is 
 indeed an explanation which I think I have the right 
 to ask of you, and which I have come to claim. " 
 
 "To claim, my dear?" said the Countess, looking 
 10 [ i45 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 him fixedly in the face without lowering her proud 
 eyes, in which those imperative words had kindled a 
 flame. 
 
 If she had been admirable the preceding evening in 
 facing as she had done the return of her discarded 
 lover, on coming direct from the tete-a-tete with her 
 new one, perhaps, at that moment, she was doubly 
 so, when she did not have her group of intimate friends 
 to support her. She was not sure that the madman 
 who confronted her was not armed, and she believed 
 him perfectly capable of killing her, while she could 
 not defend herself. But a part had to be played 
 sooner or later, and she played it without flinching. 
 She had not spoken an untruth in saying to Peppino 
 Ardea: "I know only one way: to see one's aim and to 
 march directly to it. " She wanted a definitive rupture 
 with Boleslas. Why should she hesitate as to the 
 means ? 
 
 She was silent, seeking for words. He continued: 
 
 "Will you permit me to go back three months, 
 although that is, it seems, a long space of time for a 
 woman's memory ? I do not know whether you recall 
 our last meeting? Pardon, I meant to say the last 
 but one, since we met last night. Do you concede that 
 the manner in which we parted then did not presage 
 the manner in which wc met?" 
 
 "I concede it," said the Countess, with a gleam of 
 angry pride in her eyes, "although I do not very much 
 like your style of expression. It is the second time 
 you have addressed me as an accuser, and if you 
 assume that attitude it will 1 le useless to continue. " 
 
 [146]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "Catherine!" . . . That cry of the young man, 
 whose anger was increasing, decided her whom he thus 
 addressed to precipitate the issue of a conversation 
 in which each reply was to be a fresh burst of rancor. 
 
 "Well?" she inquired, crossing her arms in a man- 
 ner so imperious that he paused in his menace, and 
 she continued: "Listen, Boleslas, we have talked ten 
 minutes without saying anything, because neither of 
 us has the courage to put the question such as we 
 know and feel it to be. Instead of writing to me, as 
 you did, letters which rendered replies impossible to 
 me; instead of returning to Rome and hiding yourself 
 like a malefactor; instead of coming to my home last 
 night with that threatening face; instead of approach- 
 ing me this morning with the solemnity of a judge, 
 why did you not question me simply, frankly, as one 
 who knows that I have loved him very, very much ? 
 . . . Having been lovers, is that a reason for detest- 
 ing each other when we cease those relations?" 
 
 '"When we cease those relations!'" replied Gorka. 
 "So you no longer love me? Ah, I knew it; I guessed 
 it after the first week of that fatal absence! But to 
 think that you should tell it to me some day like that, 
 in that calm voice which is a horrible blasphemy for 
 our entire past. No, I do not believe it. I do not 
 yet believe it. Ah, it is too infamous." 
 
 "Why?" interrupted the Countess, raising her head 
 with still more haughtiness. "There is only one 
 thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood. Ah, I 
 know it. You men are not accustomed to meeting 
 true women, who have the respect, the religion of their 
 
 [i47]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 sentiment. I have that respect; I practise that re- 
 ligion. I repeat that I loved you a great deal, Boleslas. 
 I did not hide it from you formerly. I was as loyal 
 to you as truth itself. I have the consciousness of be- 
 ing so still, in offering you, as I do, a firm friendship, 
 the friendship of man for man, who only asks to prove 
 to you the sincerity of his devotion." 
 
 "I, a friendship with you, I — I — I?" exclaimed 
 Boleslas. "Have I had enough patience in listening 
 to you as I have listened? I heard you lie to me 
 and scented the lie in the same breath. Why do you 
 not ask me as well to form a friendship for him with 
 whom you have replaced me? Ah, so you think I 
 am blind, and you fancy I did not see that Maitland 
 near you, and that I did not know at the first glance 
 what part he was playing in your life? You did not 
 think I might have good reasons for returning as I 
 did? You did not know that one does not dally with 
 one whom one loves as I love you ? ... It is not true. 
 . . . You have not been loyal to me, since you took 
 this man for a lover while you were still my mistress. 
 You had not the right, no, no, no, you had not the 
 right! . . . And what a man! ... If it had been 
 Ardca, Dorscnne, no matter whom, that I might not 
 blush for you. . . . But that brute, that idiot, who 
 has nothing in his favor, neither good looks, birth, 
 elegance, mind nor talent, for he has none — he has 
 nothing but his neck and shoulders of a bull. ... It 
 is as if you had deceived me with a lackey. . . .No. 
 .... it is too terrible. . . . Ah, Catherine, swear to 
 me that it is not true. Tell me that you no longer 
 
 [148]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 love me, I will submit, I will go away, I will accept all, 
 provided that you swear to me you do not love that 
 man — swear, swear!" ... he added, grasping her 
 hands with such violence that she uttered a slight 
 exclamation, and, disengaging herself, said to him: 
 
 "Cease; you pain me. You are mad, Gorka; that 
 can be your sole excuse. ... I have nothing to swear 
 to you. What I feel, what I think, what I do no longer 
 concerns you after what I have told you. . . . Believe 
 what it pleases you to believe. . . . But," and the 
 irritation of an enamored woman, wounded in the 
 man she adores, possessed her, "you shall not speak 
 twice of one of my friends as you have just spoken. 
 You have deeply offended me, and I will not pardon 
 you. In place of the friendship I offered you so hon- 
 estly, we will have no further connections excepting 
 those of society. That is what you desired. . . . 
 Try not to render them impossible to yourself. Be 
 correct at least in form. Remember you have a wife, 
 I have a daughter, and that we owe it to them to spare 
 them the knowledge of this unhappy rupture. . . . 
 God is my witness, I wished to have it otherwise." 
 
 "My wife! Your daughter!" cried Boleslas with 
 bitterness. "This is indeed the hour to remember 
 them and to put them between you and my just ven- 
 geance! They never troubled you formerly, the two 
 poor creatures, when you began to win my love? 
 ... It was convenient for you that they should be 
 friends ! And I lent myself to it ! ... I accepted such 
 baseness — that to-day you might take shelter behind 
 the two innocents! . . . No, it shall not be. . . . No, 
 
 [i49]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 you shall not escape me thus. Since it is the only 
 point on which I can strike you, I will strike you there. 
 I hold you by that means, do you hear, and I will keep 
 you. Either you dismiss that man, or I will no longer 
 respect anything. My wife shall know all! Her! So 
 much the better ! For some time I have been stifled by 
 my lies. . . . Your daughter, too, shall know all. She 
 shall judge you now as she would judge you one day." 
 
 As he spoke he advanced to her with a manner so 
 cruel that she recoiled. A few more moments and the 
 man would have carried out his threat. He was about 
 to strike her, to break objects around him, to call 
 forth a terrible scandal. She had the presence of 
 mind of an audacity more courageous still. An elec- 
 tric bell was near at hand. She pressed it, while 
 Gorka said to her, with a scornful laugh, "That was 
 the only affront left you to offer me — to summon your 
 servants to defend you." 
 
 "You are mistaken," she replied. "I am not afraid. 
 I repeat you are mad, and I simply wish to prove it 
 to you by recalling you to the reality of your situation. 
 . . . Bid Mademoiselle Alba come down," said she 
 to the footman whom her ring had summoned. That 
 phrase was the drop of cold water which suddenly 
 broke the furious jet of vapor. She had found the 
 only means of putting an end to the terrible scene. 
 For, notwithstanding his menace, she knew that 
 Maud's husband always recoiled before the young 
 girl, the friend of his wife, of whose delicacy and sen- 
 sibility he was aware 
 
 Gorka was capable of the mosl dangerous and most 
 
 L'5°J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 cruel deeds, in an excess of passion augmented by 
 vanity. 
 
 He had in him a chivalrous element which would 
 paralyze his frenzy before Alba. As for the immor- 
 ality of that combination of defence which involved 
 her daughter in her rupture with a vindictive lover, 
 the Countess did not think of that. She often said: 
 "She is my comrade, she is my friend." . . . And she 
 thought so. To lean upon her in that critical moment 
 was only natural to her. In the tempest of indigna- 
 tion which shook Gorka, the sudden appeal to innocent 
 Alba appeared to him the last degree of cynicism. 
 During the short space of time which elapsed between 
 the departure of the footman and the arrival of the 
 young girl, he only uttered these words, repeating them 
 as he paced the floor, while his former mistress de- 
 fied him with her bold gaze: 
 
 "I scorn you, I scorn you; ah, how I scorn you!" 
 Then, when he heard the door open: "We will re- 
 sume our conversation, Madame." 
 
 "When you wish," replied Countess Steno, and to 
 her daughter, who entered, she said: "You know the 
 carriage is to come at ten minutes to eleven, and it is 
 now the quarter. Are you ready?" 
 
 "You can see," replied the young girl, displaying 
 her pearl-gray gloves, which she was just buttoning, 
 while on her head a large hat of black tulle made a 
 dark and transparent aureole around her fair head. 
 Her delicate bust was displayed to advantage in the 
 corsage Maitland had chosen for her portrait, a sort 
 of cuirass of a dark-blue material, finished at the neck 
 
 [151]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 and wrists with bands of velvet of a darker shade. 
 The fine lines of cuffs and a collar gave to that pure 
 face a grace of youth younger than her age. 
 
 She had evidently come at her mother's call, with 
 the haste and the smile of that age. Then, to see 
 Gorka's expression and the feverish brilliance of the 
 Countess's eyes had given her what she called, in an 
 odd but very appropriate way, the sensation of "a 
 needle in the heart," of a sharp, fine point, which en- 
 tered her breast to the left. She had slept a sleep so 
 profound, after the soiree of the day before, on which 
 she had thought she perceived in her mother's attitude 
 between the Polish count and the American painter a 
 proof of certain innocence. 
 
 She admired her mother so much, she thought her 
 so intelligent, so beautiful, so good, that to doubt her 
 was a thought not to be borne! There were times 
 when she doubted her. A terrible conversation about 
 the Countess, overheard in a ballroom, a conversa- 
 tion between two men, who did not know Alba to be 
 behind them, had formed the principal part of the 
 doubt, which, by turns, had increased and diminished, 
 which had abandoned and tortured her, according to 
 the signs, as little decisive as Madame Steno's tran- 
 quillity of the preceding day or her confusion that 
 morning. It was only an impression, very rapid, in- 
 stantaneous, the prick of a needle, which merely leaves 
 after it a drop of blood, and yet she had a smile with 
 which to say to Boleslas: 
 
 "How did Maud rest? How is she this morning? 
 And my little friend Luc?" 
 
 [152]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "They are very well," replied Gorka. The last 
 stage of his fury, suddenly arrested by the presence of 
 the young girl, was manifested, but only to the Count- 
 ess, by the simple phrase to which his eyes and his 
 voice lent an extreme bitterness: "I found them as I 
 left them. . . .Ah! They love me dearly. ... I 
 leave you to Peppino, Countess," added he, walking 
 toward the door. "Mademoiselle, I will bear your 
 love to Maud." ... He had regained all the courtesy 
 which a long line of savage grands seigneurs, but grands 
 seigneurs nevertheless, had instilled in him. If his 
 bow to Madame Steno was very ceremonious, he put 
 a special grace in the low bow with which he took leave 
 of the Contessina. It was merely a trifle, but the 
 Countess was keen enough to perceive it. She was 
 touched by it, she whom despair, fury, and threats 
 had found so impassive. For an instant she was 
 vaguely humiliated by the success which she had 
 gained over the man whom she would, voluntarily, 
 five minutes before, have had cast out of doors by her 
 servants. She was silent, oblivious even of her daugh- 
 ter's presence, until the latter recalled her to herself 
 by saying: 
 
 "Shall I put on my veil and fetch my parasol?" 
 "You can join me in the office, whither I am going 
 to talk with Ardea," replied her mother; adding, "I 
 shall perhaps have some news to tell you in the carriage 
 which will give you pleasure!" . . . She had again 
 her bright smile, and she did not mistrust while she 
 resumed her conversation with Peppino that poor Alba, 
 on reentering her chamber, wiped from her pale cheeks 
 
 [153]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 two large tears, and that she opened, to re-read it, the 
 infamous anonymous letter received the day before. 
 She knew by heart all the perfidious phrases. Must 
 it not have been that the mind which had composed 
 them was blinded by vengeance to such a degree that 
 it had no scruples about laying before the innocent 
 child a denunciation which ran thus: 
 
 "A true friend of Mademoiselle Steno warns lier 
 that she is compromised, more than a marriageable 
 young girl should be, in playing, with regard to M. 
 Maitland the role she has already played with regard 
 to M. Gorka. There are conditions of blindness so 
 voluntary that they become complicity." 
 
 Those words, enigmatical to any one else, but to 
 the Contessina horribly clear, had been, like the let- 
 ters of which Boleslas had told Dorsenne, cut from a 
 journal and pasted on a sheet of paper. How had 
 Alba trembled on reading that note for the first time, 
 with an emotion increased by the horror of feeling 
 hovering over her and her mother a hatred so relent- 
 less! Later in the day how much had the words ex- 
 changed with Dorsenne comforted her, and how re- 
 assured had she been by the Countess's imperturbabil- 
 ity on the entrance of Boleslas Gorka! Fragile peace, 
 which had vanished when she saw her mother and the 
 husband of her best friend face to face, with traces in 
 their eyes, in their gestures, upon their countenances, 
 of an angry scene! The thought "Why were they 
 thus! What had they said?" again occurred to her 
 in sadden her. Suddenly she crushed in her hand 
 
 [i54]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 with violence the anonymous letter, which gave a con 
 crete form to her sorrow and her suspicion, and, 
 lighting a taper, she held it to the paper, which the 
 flames soon reduced to ashes. She ran her fingers 
 through the debris until there was very little left, and 
 then, opening the window, she cast it to the winds. 
 
 She looked at her glove after doing this --her 
 glove, a few moments before, of so delicate a gray, 
 now stained by the smoky dust. It was symbolical of 
 the stain which the letter, even when destroyed, had 
 left upon her mind. The gloves, too, inspired her 
 with horror. She hastily drew them off, and, when 
 she descended to rejoin Madame Steno, it was not 
 any more possible to perceive on those hands, freshly 
 gloved, the traces of that tragical childishness, than it 
 was possible to discern, beneath the large veil which 
 she had tied over her hat, the traces of tears. She 
 found the mother for whom she was suffering so much, 
 wearing, too, a large sun-hat, but a white one with a 
 white veil, beneath which could be seen her fair hair, 
 her sparkling blue eyes and pink-and-white complexion; 
 her form was enveloped in a gown of a material and 
 cut more youthful than her daughter's, while, radiant 
 with delight, she said to Peppino Ardea : 
 
 "Well, I congratulate you on having made up your 
 mind. The step shall be taken to-day, and you will 
 be grateful to me all your life!" 
 
 "Yet," replied the young man, "I understand my- 
 self. I shall regret my decision all the afternoon. It 
 is true," he added, philosophically, "that I should 
 regret it — just as much if I had not made it."
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "You have guessed that we were talking of Fanny's 
 marriage," said Madame Steno to her daughter several 
 minutes later, when they were seated side by side, like 
 two sisters, in the victoria which was bearing them 
 toward Maitland's studio. 
 
 "Then," asked the Contessina, "you think it will 
 be arranged?" 
 
 "It is arranged," gayly replied Madame Steno. "I 
 am commissioned to make the proposition. . . . How 
 happy all three will be! . . . Hafner has aimed at it 
 this long time! I remember how, in 1880, after his 
 suit, he came to see me in Venice — you and Fanny 
 played on the balcony of the palace— he questioned 
 me about the Quirinal, the Vatican and society. . . . 
 Then he concluded, pointing to his daughter, 'I shall 
 make a Roman princess of the little one!" 
 
 The dogaresse was so delighted at the thought of 
 the success of her negotiations, so delighted, too, to 
 go, as she was going, to Maitland's studio, behind her 
 two English cobs, which trotted so briskly, that she 
 did not see on the sidewalk Bolcslas Gorka, who 
 watched her pass. 
 
 Alba was so troubled by that fresh proof of her 
 mother's lack of conscience that she did not notice 
 Maud's husband either. Baron I tafner's and Prince 
 d'Ardea's manner toward Fanny had inspired her the 
 day before with a dolorous analogy between the atmos- 
 phere of falsehood in which that poor girl lived and 
 the atmosphere in which she at times thought she 
 herself lived. That analogy again possessed her, and 
 she again fell the "needle in the heart" as she recalled 
 
 [ 156 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 what she had heard before from the Countess of the 
 intrigue by which Baron Justus Hafner had, indeed, 
 ensnared his future son-in-law. She was overcome 
 by infinite sadness, and she lapsed into one of her 
 usual silent moods, while the Countess related to her 
 Peppino's indecision. What cared she for Boleslas's 
 anger at that moment? What could he do to her? 
 Gorka was fully aware of her utter carelessness of the 
 scene which had taken place between them, as soon as 
 he saw the victoria pass. For some time he remained 
 standing, watching the large white and black hats 
 disappear down the Rue du Vingt Septembre. 
 
 This thought took possession of him at once. Ma- 
 dame Steno and her daughter were going to Maitland's 
 atelier. ... He had no sooner conceived that bitter 
 suspicion than he felt the necessity of proving it at 
 once. He entered a passing cab, just as Ardea, having 
 left the Villa Steno after him, sauntered up, saying: 
 
 "Where are you going? May I go with you that 
 we may have a few moments' conversation?" 
 
 "Impossible," replied Gorka. "I have a very ur- 
 gent appointment, but in an hour I shall perhaps have 
 occasion to ask a service of you. . . . Where shall I 
 find you?" 
 
 "At home," said Peppino, "lunching." 
 
 "Very well," replied Boleslas, and, raising himself, 
 he whispered in the cabman's ear, in a voice too low 
 for his friend to hear what he said: "Ten francs for 
 you if in five minutes you drive me to the corner of 
 the Rue Napoleon III and the Place de la Victor- 
 Emmanuel." 
 
 [i57]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 The man gathered up his reins, and, by some 
 sleight-of-hand, the jaded horse which drew the botte 
 was suddenly transformed into a fine Roman steed, 
 the botte itself into a light carriage as swift as the 
 Tuscan carrozzelle, and the whole disappeared in a 
 cross street, while Peppino said to himself: 
 
 "There is a fine fellow who would do so much bet- 
 ter to remain with his friend Ardea than to go whither 
 he is going. This affair will end in a duel. If I had 
 not to liquidate that folly," and he pointed out with 
 the end of his cane a placard relative to the sale of 
 his own palace, "I would amuse myself by taking 
 Caterina from both of them. But those little amuse- 
 ments must wait until after my marriage." 
 
 As we have seen, the cunning Prince had not been 
 mistaken as to the course taken by the cab Gorka had 
 hailed. It was indeed into the neighborhood of the 
 atelier occupied by Maitland that the discarded lover 
 hastened, but not to the atelier. The madman wished 
 to prove to himself that the exhibition of his despair 
 had availed him nothing, and that, scarcely rid of him, 
 Madame Steno had repaired to the other. What 
 would it avail him to know it and what would the 
 evidence prove? Had the Countess concealed those 
 sittings those convenient sittings— as the jealous lover 
 had told Dorsenne? The very thought of them caused 
 the blood to How in his veins much more feverishly 
 than did the thoughts of the other meetings. For 
 those Ik could Still doubt, notwithstanding the anony- 
 mous letters, notwithstanding the it'tc-a-tete on the ter 
 race, notwithstanding the insolent " Linco," whom she 
 
 1 '58]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 had addressed thus before him, while of the long 
 intimacies of the studio he was certain. They mad- 
 dened him, and, at the same time, by that strange 
 contradiction which is characteristic of all jealousy, 
 he hungered and thirsted to prove them. 
 
 He alighted from his cab at the corner he had named 
 to his cabman, and from which point he could watch 
 the Rue Leopardi, in which was his rival's house. It 
 was a large structure in the Moorish style, built by the 
 celebrated Spanish artist, Juan Santigosa, who had 
 been obliged to sell all five years before — house, stu- 
 dio, horses, completed paintings, sketches begun — 
 in order to pay immense losses at gaming. Florent 
 Chapron had at the time bought the sort of counterfeit 
 Alhambra, a portion of which he rented to his brother- 
 in-law. During the few moments that he stood at the 
 corner, Boleslas Gorka recalled having visited that 
 house the previous year, while taking, in the company 
 of Madame Steno, Alba, Maud, and Hafner, one of 
 those walks of which fashionable women are so fond 
 in Rome as well as in Paris. An irrational instinct 
 had rendered the painter and his paintings antipathetic 
 to him at their first meeting. Had he had sufficient 
 cause ? Suddenly, on leaning forward in such a man- 
 ner as to see without being seen, he perceived a vic- 
 toria which entered the Rue Leopardi, and in that vic- 
 toria the black hat of Mademoiselle Steno and the light 
 one of her mother. In two minutes more the elegant car- 
 riage drew up at the Moorish structure, which gleamed 
 among the other buildings in that street, for the most 
 part unfinished, with a sort of insolent sumptuousness. 
 
 [159 3
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 The two ladies alighted and disappeared through 
 the door, which closed upon them, while the coachman 
 started up his horses at the pace of animals which are 
 returning to their stable. He checked them that they 
 might not become overheated, and the fine cobs 
 trembled impatiently in their harnesses. Evidently 
 the Countess and Alba were in the studio for a long 
 sitting. What had Boleslas learned that he did not 
 already know ? Was he not ridiculous, standing upon 
 the sidewalk of the square in the centre of which rose 
 the ruin of an antique reservoir, called, for a reason 
 more than doubtful, the trophy of Marius. With one 
 glance the young man took in this scene — the empty 
 victoria turning in the opposite direction, the large 
 square, the ruin, the row of high houses, his cab. He 
 appeared to himself so absurd for being there to spy 
 out that of which he was only too sure, that he burst 
 into a nervous laugh and reentered his cab, giving his 
 own address to the cabman: Palazzctto Doria, Place 
 de Venise. The cab that time started off leisurely, 
 for the man comprehended that the mad desire to 
 arrive hastily no longer possessed his fare. By a sud- 
 den metamorphosis, the swift Roman steed became a 
 common nag, and the vehicle a heavy machine which 
 rumbled along the streets. Boleslas yielded to de- 
 pression, the inevitable reaction of an excess of violence 
 such as he had just experienced. His composure 
 could not last. The studio, in which was Madame 
 Steno, began to take a clear form in the jealous lover's 
 mind in proportion as he drove farther from it. In 
 his thoughts he saw his former mistress walking about 
 
 [160]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 in the framework of tapestry, armor, studies begun, as 
 he had frequently seen her walking in his smoking- 
 room, with the smile upon her lips of an amorous 
 woman, touching the objects among which her lover 
 lives. He saw impassive Alba, who served as chap- 
 eron in the new intrigue of her mother's with the same 
 naivete she had formerly employed in shielding their 
 liaison. He saw Maitland with his indifferent glance 
 of the day before, the glance of a preferred lover, so 
 sure of his triumph that he did not even feel jealous 
 of the former lover. 
 
 The absolute tranquillity of one who replaces us in 
 an unfaithful mistress's affections augments our fury 
 still more if we have the misfortune to be placed in a 
 position similar to Gorka's. In a moment his rival's 
 evocation became to him impossible to bear. He was 
 very near his own home, for he was just at that ad- 
 mirable square encumbered with the debris of basilica, 
 the Forum of Trajan, which the statue of St. Peter at 
 the summit of the column overlooks. Around the 
 base of the sculptured marble, legends attest the 
 triumph of the humble Galilean fisherman who landed 
 at the port of the Tiber 1800 years ago, unknown, 
 persecuted, a beggar. What a symbol and what coun- 
 sel to say with the apostle: "Whither shall we go, 
 Lord? Thou alone hast the words of eternal life!" 
 
 But Gorka was neither a Montfanon nor a Dor- 
 senne to hear within his heart or his mind the echo of 
 such precepts. He was a man of passion and of action, 
 who only saw his passion and his actions in the posi- 
 tion in which fortune threw him. A fresh access of 
 11 [161]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 fury recalled to him Maitland's attitude of the preced- 
 ing day. This time he would no longer control him- 
 self. He violently pulled the surprised coachman's 
 sleeve, and called out to him the address of the Rue 
 Leopardi in so imperative a tone that the horse began 
 again to trot as he had done before, and the cab to 
 go quickly through the labyrinth of streets. A wave 
 of tragical desire rolled into the young man's heart. 
 No, he would not bear that affront. He was too bit- 
 terly wounded in the most sensitive chords of his being, 
 in his love as well as his pride. Both struggled within 
 him, and another instinct as well, urging him to the 
 mad step he was about to take. The ancient blood 
 of the Palatines, with regard to which Dorsenne always 
 jested, boiled in his veins. If the Poles have furnished 
 many heroes for dramas and modern romances, they 
 have remained, through their faults, so dearly atoned 
 for, the race the most chivalrously, the most madly 
 brave in Europe. When men of so intemperate and 
 so complex an excitability are touched to a certain 
 depth, they think of a duel as naturally as the de- 
 scendants of a line of suicides think of killing them- 
 selves. 
 
 Joyous Ardea, with his Italian keenness, had seen at 
 a glance the end to which Gorka's nature would lead 
 him. The betrayed lover required a duel to enable 
 him to bear the treason. He might wound, he might, 
 perhaps, kill his rival, and his passion would be satis- 
 fied, or else he would risk being killed himself, and the 
 courage he would display braving death would suffice 
 to raise him in his own estimation. A mad thought 
 
 [x6a]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 possessed him and caused him to hasten toward the 
 Rue Leopardi, to provoke his rival suddenly and before 
 Madame Steno! Ah, what pleasure it would give him 
 to see her tremble, for she surely would tremble when 
 she saw him enter the studio! Rut he would be cor- 
 rect, as she had so insolently asked him to be. He 
 would go, so to speak, to see Alba's portrait. He 
 would dissemble, then he would be better able to find 
 a pretext for an argument. It is so easy to find one 
 in the simplest conversation, and from an argument 
 a quarrel is soon born. He would speak in such a 
 manner that Maitland would have to answer him. 
 The rest would follow. But would Alba Steno be 
 present? Ha, so much the better! He would be so 
 much more at ease, if the altercation arose before her, 
 to deceive his own wife as to the veritable reason of 
 the duel. Ah, he would have his dispute at any price, 
 and from the moment that the seconds had exchanged 
 visits the American's fate would be decided. He 
 knew how to render it impossible for the fellow to 
 remain longer in Rome. The young man was greatly 
 wrought up by the romance of the provocation and 
 the duel. 
 
 "How it refreshes the blood to be avenged upon 
 two fools," said he to himself, descending from his 
 cab and inquiring at the door of the Moorish house. 
 
 "Monsieur Maitland?" he asked the footman, who 
 at one blow dissipated his excitement by replying with 
 this simple phrase, the only one of which he had not 
 thought in his frenzy: 
 
 "Monsieur is not at home." 
 
 [163]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "He will be at home to me," replied Boleslas. "I 
 have an appointment with Madame and Mademoiselle 
 Steno, who are awaiting me." 
 
 "Monsieur's orders are strict," replied the servant. 
 
 Accustomed, as are all servants entrusted with the 
 defence of an artist's work, to a certain rigor of orders, 
 he yet hesitated, in the face of the untruth which 
 Gorka had invented on the spur of the moment, and he 
 was about to yield to his importunity when some one 
 appeared on the staircase of the hall. That some one 
 was none other than Florent Chapron. Chance de- 
 creed that the latter should send for a carriage in which 
 to go to lunch, and that the carriage should be late. 
 At the sound of wheels stopping at the door, he looked 
 out of one of the windows of his apartment, which 
 faced the street. He saw Gorka alight. Such a visit, 
 at such an hour, with the persons who were in the 
 atelier, seemed to him so dangerous that he ran down- 
 stairs immediately. He took up his hat and his cane, 
 to justify his presence in the hall by the very natural 
 excuse that he was going out. He reached the middle 
 of the staircase just in time to stop the servant, who 
 had decided to "go and see," and, bowing to Boleslas 
 with more formality than usual: 
 
 " My brother-in-law is not there, Monsieur," said he; 
 and he added, turning to the footman, in order to dispose 
 of him in case an altercation should arise between the 
 importunate visitor and himself, "Nero, fetch mc a 
 handkerchief from my room. I have forgotten mine." 
 
 "That order could not be meant for me, Monsieur," 
 insisted Boleslas. "Monsieur Maitland has made an 
 
 [164]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 appointment with me, with Madame Steno, in order 
 to show us Alba's portrait." 
 
 "It is no order," replied Florent. "I repeat to you 
 that my brother-in-law has gone out. The studio is 
 closed, and it is impossible for me to undertake to 
 open it to show you the picture, since I have not the 
 key. As for Madame and Mademoiselle Steno, they 
 have not been here for several days; the sittings have 
 been interrupted." 
 
 "What is still more extraordinary, Monsieur, " replied 
 the other, "is that I saw them with my own eyes, five 
 minutes ago, enter this house and I, too, saw their 
 carriage drive away." ... He felt his anger increase 
 and direct itself altogether against the watch-dog so 
 suddenly raised upon the threshold of his rival's house. 
 
 Florent, on his part, had begun to lose patience. 
 He had within him the violent irritability of the negro 
 blood, which he did not acknowledge, but which 
 slightly tinted his complexion . The manner of Madame 
 Steno's former lover seemed to him so outrageous that 
 he replied very dryly, as he opened the door, in order 
 to oblige the caller to leave: 
 
 "You are mistaken, Monsieur, that is all." 
 
 "You are aware, Monsieur, " replied Boleslas, "of the 
 fact that you just addressed me in a tone which is not 
 the one which I have a right to expect from you. . . . 
 When one charges one's self with a certain business, it 
 is at least necessary to introduce a little form." 
 
 "And I, Monsieur," replied Chapron, "would be 
 very much obliged to you if, when you address me, you 
 would not do so in enigmas. I do not know what you 
 
 [165]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 mean by 'a certain business,' but I know that it is 
 unbefitting a gentleman to act as you have acted at the 
 door of a house which is not yours and for reasons 
 that I can not comprehend." 
 
 "You will comprehend them very soon, Monsieur," 
 said Boleslas, beside himself, "and you have not consti- 
 tuted yourself your brother's slave without motives." 
 
 He had no sooner uttered that sentence than Florent, 
 incapable any longer of controlling himself, raised his 
 cane with a menacing gesture, which the Polish Count 
 arrested just in time, by seizing it in his right hand. 
 It was the work of a second, and the two men were 
 again face to face, both pale with anger, ready to 
 collar one another rudely, when the sound of a door 
 closing above their heads recalled to them their dig- 
 nity. The servant descended the stairs. It was Chap- 
 ron who first regained his self-possession, and he said 
 to Boleslas, in a voice too low to be heard by any one 
 but him: 
 
 "No scandal, Monsieur, eh? I shall have the honor 
 of sending two of my friends to you." 
 
 "It is I, Monsieur, " replied Gorka, "who will send 
 you two. You shall answer to me for your manner, I 
 assure you." 
 
 "Ha! Whatsoever you like," said the other. "I 
 accept all your conditions in advance. . . . But one 
 thing I ask of you," he added, "that no names be 
 mentioned. There would be too many persons in- 
 volved. Let it appear that we had an argument on 
 the street, that we disagreed, and that I threatened 
 you." 
 
 I -66]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "So be it," said Boleslas, after a pause. "You 
 have my word. There is a man," said he to himself 
 five minutes later, when again rolling through the 
 streets in his cab, after giving the cabman the address 
 of the Palais Castagna. "Yes, there is a man. . . . 
 He was very insolent just now, and I lacked compos- 
 ure. I am too nervous. I should be sorry to injure 
 the boy. But, patience, the other will lose nothing 
 by waiting." 
 
 [167]
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE INCONSISTENCY OF AN OLD CHOUAN 
 
 HILE the madman, Boleslas, hastened 
 to Ardea to ask his cooperation in 
 the most unreasonable of encounters, 
 with a species of savage delight, 
 Florent Chapron was possessed by 
 only one thought: at any price to 
 prevent his brother-in-law from sus- 
 pecting his quarrel with Madame 
 Steno's former lover and the duel which was to be the 
 result. His passionate friendship for Lincoln was so 
 strong that it prevented the nervousness which usually 
 precedes a first duel, above all when he who appears 
 upon the ground has all his life neglected practising 
 with the sword or pistol. To a fencer, and to one 
 accustomed to the use of firearms, a duel means a 
 number of details which remove the thought of dan- 
 ger. The man conceives the possibilities of the strug- 
 gle, of a deed to be bravely accomplished. That is 
 sufficient to inspire him with a composure which 
 absolute ignorance can not inspire, unless it is sup- 
 ported by one of those deep attachments often so 
 strong within us. Such was the case with Florent. 
 I )ors( une's instinct, which could so easily read the 
 heart, was not mistaken there; the painter had in his 
 
 [168]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 wife's brother a friend of self-sacrificing devotion. He 
 could exact anything of the Mameluke, or, rather, of 
 that slave, for it was the blood of the slaves, of his 
 ancestors, which manifested itself in Chapron by so 
 total an absorption of his personality. The atavism 
 of servitude has these two effects which are apparently 
 contradictory: it produces fathomless capacities of 
 sacrifice or of perfidy. Both of these qualities were 
 embodied in the brother and in the sister. As happens, 
 sometimes, the two characteristics of their race were 
 divided between them ; one had inherited all the virtue 
 of self-sacrifice, the other all the puissance of hypocrisy. 
 
 But the drama called forth by Madame Steno's 
 infidelity, and finally by Gorka's rashness, would only 
 expose to light the moral conditions which Dorsenne 
 had foreseen without comprehending. He was com- 
 pletely ignorant of the circumstances under which 
 Florent had developed, of those under which Maitland 
 and he had met, of how Maitland had decided to 
 marry Lydia; finally an exceptional and lengthy his- 
 tory which it is necessary to sketch here at least, in 
 order to render clear the singular relations of those 
 three beings. 
 
 As we have seen, the allusion coarsely made by 
 Boleslas to negro blood marked the moment when 
 Florent lost all self-control, to the point even of raising 
 his cane to his insolent interlocutor. That blemish, 
 hidden with the most jealous care, represented to the 
 young man what it had represented to his father, the 
 vital point of self-love, secret and constant humiliation. 
 It was very faint, the trace of negro blood which 
 
 [169]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 flowed in their veins, so faint that it was necessary to 
 
 be told of it, but it was sufficient to render a stay in 
 
 America so much the more intolerable to both, as they 
 
 had inherited all the pride of their name, a name 
 
 which the Emperor mentioned at St. Helena as that 
 
 of one of his bravest officers. Florent's grandfather 
 
 was no other, indeed, than the Colonel Chapron who, 
 
 as Napoleon desired information, swam the Dnieper 
 
 on horseback, followed a Cossack on the opposite shore, 
 
 hunted him like a stag, laid him across his saddle and 
 
 took him back to the French camp. When the Empire 
 
 fell, that hero, who had compromised himself in an 
 
 irreparable manner in the army of the Loire, left his 
 
 country and, accompanied by a handful of his old 
 
 comrades, went to found in the southern part of 
 
 the United States, in Alabama, a sort of agricultural 
 
 colony, to which they gave the name — which it still 
 
 preserves- of Areola, a naive and. melancholy tribute 
 
 to the fabulous epoch which, however, had been dear 
 
 to them. 
 
 Who would have recognized the brilliant colonel, 
 who penetrated by the side of Montbrun the heart of 
 the Grande Redoute, in the planter of forty-five, busy 
 \sith his cotton and his sugar-cane, who made a fortune 
 in a short time by dint of energy and good sense? 
 Hi- success, told of in France, was the indirect cause 
 of another emigration to Texas, led by General Lalle- 
 mand, ;ind which terminated so disastrously. Colonel 
 Chapron had not, as can be believed, acquired in roam- 
 ing through Europe very scrupulous notions on the 
 relation of the two exes. Having made the mother of 
 
 [170]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 his child a pretty and sweet-tempered mulattress whom 
 he met on a short trip to New Orleans, and whom he 
 brought back to Areola, he became deeply attached 
 to the charming creature and to his son, so much the 
 more so as, with a simple difference of complexion 
 and of hair, the child was the image of him. Indeed, 
 the old warrior, who had no relatives in his native land, 
 on dying, left his entire fortune to that son, whom he 
 had christened Napoleon. While he lived, not one of 
 his neighbors dared to treat the young man differently 
 from the way in which his father treated him. 
 
 But it was not the same when the prestige of the 
 Emperor's soldier was not there to protect the boy 
 against that aversion to race which is morally a pre- 
 judice, but socially interprets an instinct of preser- 
 vation of infallible surety. The United States has 
 grown only on that condition. The mixture of blood 
 would there have dissolved the admirable Anglo-Saxon 
 energy which the struggle against a nature at once very 
 rich and very mutinous has exalted to such surprising 
 splendor. It is not necessary to ask those who are 
 the victims of such an instinct to comprehend the legal 
 injustice. They only feel its ferocity. Napoleon 
 Chapron, rejected in several offers of marriage, thwarted 
 in his plans, humiliated under twenty trifling circum- 
 stances by the Colonel's former companions, became 
 a species of misanthrope. He lived, sustained by a 
 twofold desire, on the one hand to increase his fortune, 
 and on the other to wed a white woman. It was not 
 until 1857, at the age of thirty-five, that he realized the 
 second of his two projects. In the course of a trip to 
 
 [171]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 Europe, he became interested on the steamer in a 
 young English governess, who was returning from 
 Canada, summoned home by family troubles. He met 
 her again in London. He helped her with such deli- 
 cacy in her distress, that he won her heart, and she 
 consented to become his wife. From that union were 
 born, one year apart, Florent and Lydia. 
 
 Lydia had cost her mother her life, at the moment 
 when the War of Secession jeoparded the fortune of 
 Chapron, who, fortunately for him, had, in his desire to 
 enrich himself quickly, invested his money a little on 
 all sides. He was only partly ruined, but that semi- 
 ruin prevented him from returning to Europe, as he 
 had intended. He was compelled to remain in Ala- 
 bama to repair that disaster, and he succeeded, for at 
 his death, in 1880, his children inherited more than four 
 hundred thousand dollars each. The incomparable 
 father's devotion had not limited itself to the building 
 up of a large fortune. He had the courage to deprive 
 himself of the presence of the two beings whom he 
 adored, to spare them the humiliation of an American 
 school, and he sent them after their twelfth year to 
 England, the boy to the Jesuits of Beaumont, the girl 
 to the convent of the Sacred Heart, at Rochampton. 
 After four years there, he sent them to Paris, Florent 
 to Vaugirard, Lydia to the Rue deVarenne, and just at 
 tin time that he had realized the amount he considered 
 requisite, when he was preparing to return to live near 
 them in a country without prejudices, a stroke of 
 apoplexy took him off suddenly. The double wear 
 of toil and care had told upon one of those organisms 
 
 [172]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 which the mixture of the black and white races often 
 produces, athletic in appearance, but of a very keen 
 sensibility, in which the vital resistance is not in pro- 
 portion to the muscular vigor. 
 
 Whatever care the man, so deeply grieved by the 
 blemish upon his birth, had taken to preserve his 
 children from a similar experience, he had not been 
 able to do so, and soon after his son entered Beau- 
 mont his trials began. The few boys with whom 
 Florent was thrown in contact, in the hotels or in his 
 walks, during his sojourn in America, had already 
 made him feel that humiliation from which his father 
 had suffered so much. The youth of twelve, silent 
 and absurdly sensitive, who made his appearance on 
 the lawn of the peaceful English college on an autumn 
 morning, brought with him a self-love already bleed- 
 ing, to whom it was a delightful surprise to find him- 
 self among comrades of his age who did not even 
 seem to suspect that any difference separated them 
 from him. It required the perception of a Yankee to 
 discern, beneath the nails of the handsome boy with 
 the dark complexion, the tiny drops of negro blood, 
 so far removed. Between an octoroon and a Creole 
 a European can never tell the difference. Florent had 
 been represented as what he really was, the grandson 
 of one of the Emperor's best officers. His father had 
 taken particular pains to designate him as French, 
 and his companions only saw in him a pupil like 
 themselves, coming from Alabama- — that is to say, 
 from a country almost as chimerical as Japan or China. 
 
 All who in early youth have known the torture 
 
 [i73]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 of apprehension will be able to judge of the poor 
 child's agony when, after four months of a life amid 
 the warmth of sympathy, one of the Jesuit fathers 
 who directed the college announced to him, thinking 
 it would afford him pleasure, the expected arrival of 
 an American, of young Lincoln Maitlamd. This was to 
 Florent so violent a shock that he had a fever for forty- 
 eight hours. In after years he could remember what 
 thoughts possessed him on the day when he descended 
 from his room to the common refectory, sure that as 
 soon as he was brought face to face with the new 
 pupil he would have to sustain the disdainful glance 
 suffered so frequently in the United States. There 
 was no doubt in his mind that, his origin once dis- 
 covered, the atmosphere of kindness in which he- 
 moved with so much surprise would soon be changed 
 to hostility. He could again see himself crossing the 
 yard; could hear himself called by Father Roberts — 
 the master w T ho had told him of the expected new 
 arrival — and his surprise when Lincoln Maitland had 
 given him the hearty handshake of one demi-com- 
 ( >at riot who meets another. He was to learn later that 
 that reception was quite natural, coming from the son 
 of an Englishman, educated altogether by his mother, 
 and taken from New York to Europe before his fifth 
 year, there t<» live in a circle as little American as pos- 
 sible. Chapron did not reason in that manner. He 
 had an infinitely tender heart. Gratitude entered it 
 gratitude as impassioned ,is had been his fear. One 
 week later Lincoln Maitland and he were friends, and 
 friends so intimate that they never parted. 
 
 I 'VI I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 The affection, which was merely to the indifferent 
 nature of Maitland a simple college episode, became 
 to Florent the most serious, most complete sentiment 
 of his life. Those fraternities of election, the loveliest 
 and most delicate of the heart of man, usually dawn 
 thus in youth. It is the ideal age of passionate friend- 
 ship, that period between ten and sixteen, when the 
 spirit is so pure, so fresh, still so virtuous, so fertile in 
 generous projects for the future. One dreams of a 
 companionship almost mystical with the friend from 
 whom one has no secret, whose character one sees in 
 such a noble light, on whose esteem one depends as 
 upon the surest recompense, whom one innocently 
 desires to resemble. Indeed, they are, between the 
 innocent lads who work side by side on a problem of 
 geometry or a lesson in history, veritable poems of 
 tenderness at which the man will smile later, find- 
 ing so far different from him in all his tastes, him 
 whom he desired to have for a brother. It happens, 
 however, in certain natures of a sensibility particularly 
 precocious and faithful at the same time, that the 
 awakening of effective life is so strong, so encroaching, 
 that the impassioned friendship persists, first through 
 the other awakening, that of sensuality, so fatal to all 
 the senses of delicacy, then through the first tumult of 
 social experience, not less fatal to our ideal of youth. 
 
 That was the case with Florent Chapron, whether 
 his character, at once somewhat wild and yet sub- 
 missive, rendered him more qualified for that renun- 
 ciation of his personality than friendship demands, 
 whether, far from his father and his sister and not 
 
 [i75]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 having any mother, his loving heart had need of attach- 
 ing itself to some one who could fill the place of his 
 relatives, or whether Maitland exercised over him a 
 special prestige by his opposite qualities. Fragile and 
 somewhat delicate, was he seduced by the strength 
 and dexterity which his friend exhibited in all his 
 exercises? Timid and naturally taciturn, was he 
 governed by the assurance of that athlete with the 
 loud laugh, with the invincible energy? Did the sur- 
 prising tendency toward art which the other one showed 
 conquer him, as well as sympathy for the misfor- 
 tunes which were confided to him and which touched 
 him more than they touched him who experienced 
 them ? 
 
 Gordon Maitland, Lincoln's father, of an excel- 
 lent family of New York, had been killed at the 
 battle of Chancellorsville, during the same war which 
 had ruined Florent's father in part. Mrs. Maitland, 
 the poor daughter of a small rector of a Presbyterian 
 church at Newport, and who had only married her 
 husband for his money, had but one idea, when once a 
 widow— to go abroad. Whither? To Europe, vague 
 and fascinating spot, where she fancied she would be 
 distinguished by her intelligence and her beauty. She 
 was pretty, vain and silly, and that voyage in pursuit 
 of a part to play in the Old World caused her to pass 
 two years first in one hotel and then in another, after 
 which she married the second son of a poor Irish peer, 
 with the new chimera of entering that Olympus of 
 British aristocracy of which she had dreamed so much. 
 She became a Catholic, and her son with her, to obtain 
 
 I 176]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 the result which cost her dear, for not only was the 
 lord who had given her his name brutal, a drunkard 
 and cruel, but he added to all those faults that of 
 being one of the greatest gamblers in the entire United 
 Kingdom. He kept his stepson away from home, 
 beat his wife, and died toward 1880, after dissipating 
 the poor creature's fortune and almost all of Lincoln's. 
 At that time the latter, whom his stepfather had nat- 
 urally left to develop in his own way, and who, since 
 leaving Beaumont, had studied painting at Venice, 
 Rome and Paris, was in the latter city and one of the 
 first pupils in Bonnat's studio. Seeing his mother 
 ruined, without resources at forty-four years of age, per- 
 suaded himself of his glorious future, he had one of 
 those magnificent impulses such as one has in youth and 
 which prove much less the generosity than the pride 
 of life. Of the fifteen thousand francs of income re- 
 maining to him, he gave up to his mother twelve thou- 
 sand five hundred. It is expedient to add that in less 
 than a year afterward he married the sister of his 
 college friend and four hundred thousand dollars. 
 He had seen poverty and he was afraid of it. His 
 action with regard to his mother seemed to justify in 
 his own eyes the purely interested character of the 
 combination which freed his brush forever. There 
 are, moreover, such artistic consciences. Maitland 
 would not have pardoned himself a concession of art. 
 He considered rascals the painters who begged success 
 by compromise in their style, and he thought it quite 
 natural to take the money of Mademoiselle Chapron, 
 whom he did not love, and for whom, now that he 
 12 [177]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 had grow n to manhood and knew several of her com- 
 patriots, he likewise felt the prejudice of race. "The 
 glory of the colonel of the Empire and friendship for 
 that good Florent," as he said, "covered all." 
 
 Poor and good Florent! That marriage was to him 
 the romance of his youth realized. He had desired it 
 since the first week that Maitland had given him the 
 cordial handshake which had bound them. To live 
 in the shadow of his friend, become at once his brother- 
 in-law and his ideal— he did not dream of any other 
 solution of his own destiny. The faults of Maitland, 
 developed by age, fortune, and success — we recall the 
 triumph of his Femme en violet et en jaune in the Salon 
 of 1884 — found Florent as blind as at the epoch when 
 they played cricket together in the fields at Beaumont. 
 Dorsenne very justly diagnosed there one of those 
 hypnotisms of admiration such as artists, great or 
 small, often inspire around them. But the author, 
 who always generalized too quickly, had not com- 
 prehended that the admirer with Florent was grafted 
 on a friend worthy to be painted by La Fontaine or by 
 Balzac, the two poets of friendship, the one in his sub- 
 lime and tragic Cousin Pons, the other in that short 
 but fine fable, in which is this verse, one of the most 
 tender in the French language: 
 
 Vous Dir/rs, ni dormant, tin pen Irislr dp paru. 
 
 Florent did not love Lincoln because he admired 
 
 him; he admin d him bceause he loved him. He 
 was not wrong in considering the painter as one of the 
 most gifted who had appeared for thirty years. But 
 
 I '78]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 Lincoln would have had neither the bold elegance of 
 his drawing, nor the vivid strength of coloring, nor the 
 ingenious finesse of imagination if the other had lent 
 himself with less ardor to the service of the work and 
 to the glory of the artist. When Lincoln wanted to 
 travel he found his brother-in-law the most diligent of 
 couriers. When he had need of a model he had only 
 to say a word for Florent to set about finding one. 
 Did Lincoln exhibit at Paris or London, Florent took 
 charge of the entire proceeding — seeing the journalists 
 and picture dealers, composing letters of thanks for 
 the articles, in a handwriting so like that of the painter 
 that the latter had only to sign it. Lincoln desired to 
 return to Rome. Florent had discovered the house 
 on the Rue Leopardi, and he settled it even before Mait- 
 land, then in Egypt, had finished a large study be- 
 gun at the moment of the departure of the other. 
 
 Florent had, by virtue of the affection felt for his 
 brother-in-law, come to comprehend the paintings as 
 well as the painter himself. These words will be clear 
 to those who have been around artists and who know 
 what a distance separates them from the most en- 
 lightened amateur. The amateur can judge and feel. 
 The artist only, who has wielded the implements, 
 knows, before a painting, how it is done, what stroke 
 of the brush has been given, and why; in short, the 
 trituration of the matter by the workman. Florent 
 had watched Maitland work so much, he had rendered 
 him so many effective little services in the studio, that 
 each of his brother-in-law's canvases became animated 
 to him, even to the slightest details. When he saw 
 
 [i79]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 them on the wall of the gallery they told him of an 
 intimacy which was at once his greatest joy and his 
 greatest pride. In short, the absorption of his per- 
 sonality in that of his former comrade was so complete 
 that it had led to this anomaly, that Dorsenne him- 
 self, notwithstanding his indulgence for psychological 
 singularities, had not been able to prevent himself 
 from finding almost monstrous: Florent was Lincoln's 
 brother-in-law, and he seemed to find it perfectly nat- 
 ural that the latter should have adventures outside, if 
 the emotion of those adventures could be useful to 
 his talent ! 
 
 Perhaps this long and yet incomplete analysis will 
 permit us the better to comprehend what emotions 
 agitated the young man as he reascended the staircase 
 of his house — of their house, Lincoln's and his — after 
 his unexpected dispute with Boleslas Gorka. It will 
 attenuate, at least with respect to him, the severity of 
 simple minds. All passion, when developed in the 
 heart, has the effect of etiolating around it the vigor 
 of other instincts. Chapron was too fanatical a friend 
 to be a very equitable brother. It seemed to him very 
 simple and very legitimate that his sister should be at 
 the service of the genius of Lincoln, as he himself was. 
 Moreover, if, since the marriage with her brother's 
 friend, his sister had been stirred by the tempest of a 
 mora] tragedy, Florent did not suspect it. When had 
 he studied Lydia, the silent, reserved Lydia, of whom 
 he had once for all formed an opinion, as is the almost 
 invariable custom of relative with relative? Those 
 who have seen us when young arc like those who see 
 
 [180]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 us daily. The images which they trace of us always 
 reproduce what we were at a certain moment — scarcely 
 ever what we are. Florent considered his sister very 
 good, because he had formerly found her so; very 
 gentle, because she had never resisted him; not intel- 
 ligent, because she did not seem sufficiently interested 
 in the painter's work; as for the suffering and secret 
 rebellion of the oppressed creature, crushed between 
 his blind partiality and the selfishness of a scornful 
 husband, he did not even suspect them, much less the 
 terrible resolution of which that apparent resignation 
 was capable. 
 
 If he had trembled when Madame Steno began to 
 interest herself in Lincoln, it was solely for the work 
 of the latter, so much the more as for a year he had 
 perceived not a decline but a disturbance in the paint- 
 ing of that artist, too voluntary not to be unequal. 
 Then Florent had seen, on the other hand, the nerve 
 of Maitland reawakened in the warmth of that little 
 intrigue. 
 
 The portrait of Alba promised to be a magnificent 
 study, worthy of being placed beside the famous Femme 
 en violet et en jaune, which those envious of Lincoln 
 always remembered. Moreover, the painter had fin- 
 ished with unparalleled ardor two large compositions 
 partly abandoned. In the face of that proof of a fever 
 of production more and more active, how would not 
 Florent have blessed Madame Steno, instead of cursing 
 her, so much the more that it sufficed him to close 
 his eyes and to know that his conscience was in repose 
 when opposite his sister ? He knew all, however. The 
 
 [181I
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 proof of it was in his shudder when Dorsenne an- 
 nounced to him the clandestine arrival in Rome of 
 Madame Steno's other lover, and one proof still more 
 certain, the impulse which had precipitated him upon 
 Boleslas, who was parleying with the servant, and 
 now it was he who had accepted the duel which an 
 exasperated rival had certainly come to propose to his 
 dear Lincoln, and he thought only of the latter. 
 
 "He must know nothing until afterward. He would 
 take the affair upon himself, and I have a chance to 
 kill him, that Gorka — to wound him, at least. In any 
 case, I will arrange it so that a second duel will be 
 rendered difficult to that lunatic. . . . But, first of 
 all, let us make sure that we have not spoken too loudly 
 and that they have not heard upstairs the ill-bred 
 fellow's loud voice." 
 
 It was in such terms that he qualified his adversary 
 of the morrow. For very little more he would have 
 judged Gorka unpardonable not to thank Lincoln, 
 who had done him the honor to supplant him in the 
 Countess's favor! 
 
 In the meantime, let us cast a glance at the atelier! 
 When the friend, devoted to complicity, but also to 
 heroism, entered the vast room, he could see at the 
 first glance that he had been mistaken and that no 
 sound of voices had reached that peaceful retreat. 
 
 The atelier of the American painter was furnished 
 with a harmonious sumptuousness which real artists 
 know how to gather around them. The large strip 
 of sky seen through the windows looked down upon a 
 < oincr veritably Roman of the Rome of to-day, which 
 
 [182]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 attests an uninterrupted effort toward forming a new 
 city by the side of the old one. One could see an 
 angle of the old garden and the fragment of an antique 
 building, with a church steeple beyond. It was on 
 a background of azure, of verdure and of ruins, in a 
 horizon larger and more distant, but composed of the 
 same elements, that was to arise the face of the young 
 girl, designed after the manner, so sharp and so mod- 
 elled, of the Pier della Francesca, with whom Mait- 
 land had been preoccupied for six months. 
 
 All great composers, of an originality more com- 
 posite than genitive, have these infatuations. 
 
 Maitland was at his easel, dressed with that correct 
 elegance which is the almost certain mark of Anglo- 
 Saxon artists. With his little varnished shoes, his fine 
 black socks, spotted with red, his coat of quilted silk, 
 his light cravat and the purity of his linen, he had the 
 air of a gentleman who applied himself to an amateur 
 effort, and not of the patient and laborious worker he 
 really was. But his canvases and his studies, hung on 
 all sides, among tapestries, arms and trinkets, bespoke 
 patient labor. It was the history of an energy bent 
 upon the acquisition of a personality constantly fleeting. 
 Maitland manifested in a supreme degree the trait 
 common to almost all his compatriots, even those who 
 came in early youth to Europe, that intense desire not 
 to lack civilization, which is explained by the fact that 
 the American is a being entirely new, endowed with 
 an activity incomparable, and deprived of traditional 
 saturation. He is not born cultivated, matured, al- 
 ready fashioned virtually, if one may say so, like a 
 
 [183]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 child of the Old World. He can create himself at his 
 will. With superior gifts, but gifts entirely physical, 
 Maitland was a self-made man of art, as his grand- 
 father had been a self-made man of money, as his father 
 had been a self-made man of war. He had in his eye 
 and in his hand two marvellous implements for paint- 
 ing, and in his perseverence in developing a still more 
 marvellous one. He lacked constantly the something 
 necessary and local w T hich gives to certain very inferior 
 painters the inexpressible superiority of a savor of soil. 
 It could not be said that he was not inventive and 
 new, yet one experienced on seeing no matter which 
 one of his paintings that he was a creature of culture 
 and of acquisition. The scattered studies in the atelier 
 first of all displayed the influence of his first master, 
 of solid and simple Bonnat. Then he had been 
 tempted by the English pre-Raphaelites, and a fine 
 copy of the famous Song of Love, by Burne- Jones, 
 attested that reaction on the side of an art more sub- 
 tle, more impressed by that poetry which professional 
 painters treat scornfully as literary. But Lincoln was 
 too vigorous for the languors of such an ideal, and he 
 quickly turned to other teachings. Spain conquered 
 him, and Velasquez, the colorist of so peculiar a fancy 
 that, after a visit to the Museum of the Prado, one car- 
 ries away the idea that one has just seen the only 
 painting worthy of the name. 
 
 The spirit of the greal Spaniard, that despotic stroke 
 of the brush which seems to draw the color in the 
 groundwork of the picture, to make it stand out in 
 almost solid lights, his absolute absence of abstract 
 
 [184]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 intentions and his newness which affects entirely to 
 ignore the past, all in that formula of art, suited Mait- 
 land's temperament. To him, too, he owed his mas- 
 terpiece, the Femme en violet et en jaune, but the restless 
 seeker did not adhere to that style. Italy and the 
 Florentines next influenced him, just those the most 
 opposed to Velasquez; the Pollajuoli, Andrea del 
 Castagna, Paolo Uccello and Pier della Francesca. 
 Never would one have believed that the same hand 
 which had wielded with so free a brush the color of the 
 Femme en violet could be that which sketched the contour 
 of the portrait of Alba with so severe, so rigid a drawing. 
 
 At the moment Florent entered the studio that work 
 so completely absorbed the attention of the painter 
 that he did not hear the door open any more than did 
 Madame Steno, who was smoking cigarettes, reclining 
 indolently and blissfully upon the divan, her half- 
 closed eyes fixed upon the man she loved. Lincoln 
 only divined another presence by a change in Alba's 
 face. God! How pale she was, seated in the immo- 
 bility of her pose in a large, heraldic armchair, with 
 a back of carved wood, her hands grasping the arms, 
 her mouth so bitter, her eyes so deep in their fixed 
 glance! . . . Did she divine that which she could not, 
 however, know, that her fate was approaching with 
 the visitor who entered, and who, having left the studio 
 fifteen minutes before, had to justify his return by an 
 excuse. 
 
 "It is I," said he. "I forgot to ask you, Lincoln, 
 if you wish to buy Ardea's three drawings at the price 
 they offer." 
 
 [185]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "Why did you not tell me of it yesterday, my little 
 Linco?" interrupted the Countess. "I saw Peppino 
 again this morning. ... I would have from him his 
 lowest figure." 
 
 "That would only be lacking," replied Maitland, 
 laughing his large laugh. "He does not acknowledge 
 those drawings, dear dogaresse. . . . They are a part 
 of the series of trinkets he carefully subtracted from 
 his creditor's inventory and put in different places. 
 There are some at seven or eight antiquaries', and we 
 may expect that for the next ten years all the cockneys 
 of my country will be allured by this phrase, 'This is 
 from the Palais Castagna. I have it by a little ar- 
 rangement.'" 
 
 His eyes sparkled as he imitated one of the most 
 celebrated bric-a-brac dealers in Rome, with the in- 
 comparable art of imitation which distinguishes all 
 the old habitues of Parisian studios. 
 
 "At present these three drawings are at an anti- 
 quary's of Babuino, and very authentic." 
 
 "Except when they are represented as Vincis, " said 
 Florent, "when Leonardo was left-handed, and their 
 hatchings are made from left to right." 
 
 "And you think Ardea would not agree with me in 
 it?" resumed the Countess. 
 
 "Not even with you," said the painter. "He had 
 the assurance last night, when I mentioned them be- 
 fore him, to ask me the address in order to go to see 
 them." 
 
 "How did you learn their production?" questioned 
 Madame Steno. 
 
 I '86]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "Ask him," said Maitland, pointing to Chapron 
 with the end of his brush. "When there is a question 
 of enriching his old Maitland's collection, he becomes 
 more of a merchant than the merchants themselves. 
 They tell him all. . . . Vinci or no Vinci, it is the 
 pure Lombard style. Buy them. I want them." 
 
 "I will go, then," replied Florent. "Countess. . . . 
 Contessina." 
 
 He bowed to Madame Steno and her daughter. 
 The mother bestowed upon him her pleasantest smile. 
 She was not one of those mistresses to whom their 
 lovers' intimate friends are always enemies. On the 
 contrary, she enveloped them in the abundant and 
 blissful sympathy which love awoke in her. Besides, 
 she was too cunning not to feel that Florent approved 
 of her love. But, on the other hand, the intense 
 aversion which Alba at that moment felt toward her 
 mother's suspected intrigues was expressed by the for- 
 mality with which she inclined her head in response 
 to the farewell of the young man, who was too happy 
 to have found that the dispute had not been heard. 
 
 "From now until to-morrow," thought he, on re- 
 descending the staircase, "there will be no one to warn 
 Lincoln. . . . The purchase of the drawings was an 
 invention to demonstrate my tranquillity. . . . Now I 
 must find two discreet seconds." 
 
 Florent was a very deliberate man, and a man who 
 had at his command perfect evenness of temperament 
 whenever it was not a question of his enthusiastic 
 attachment to his brother-in-law. He had the power 
 of observation habitual to persons whose sensitive 
 
 [187]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 amour propre has frequently been wounded. He 
 therefore deferred until later his difficult choice and 
 went to luncheon, as if nothing had happened, at the 
 restaurant where he was expected. Certainly the pro- 
 prietor did not mistrust, in replying to the questions of 
 his guest relative to the most recent portraits of Len- 
 bach, that the young man, so calm, so smiling, had on 
 hand a duel which might cost him his life. It was 
 only on leaving the restaurant that Florent, after 
 mentally reviewing ten of his older acquaintances, 
 resolved to make a first attempt upon Dorsenne. He 
 recalled the mysterious intelligence given him by the 
 novelist, whose sympathy for Maitland had been pub- 
 licly manifested by an eloquent article. Moreover, he 
 believed him to be madly in love with Alba Steno. 
 That was one probability more in favor of his dis- 
 cretion. 
 
 Dorsenne would surely maintain silence with re- 
 gard to a meeting in connection with which, if it were 
 known, the cause of the contest would surely be men- 
 tioned. It was only too clear that Gorka and Chapron 
 had no real reason to quarrel and fight a duel. But 
 at ten-thirty, that is to say, three hours after the un- 
 reasonable altercation in the vestibule, Florent rang 
 at the door of Julien's apartments. The latter was 
 at home 1 , busy upon the last correction of the proofs 
 of Poussicrc d'Id&es. His visitor's confidence upset 
 him to such a degree that his hands trembled as he 
 arranged his scattered papers. lie remembered the 
 presence of Boleslas on that same couch, at the same 
 time of the day, forty eight hours heforc. How the 
 
 I ««8]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 drama would progress if that madman went away in 
 that mood! He knew only too well that Maitland's 
 brother-in-law had not told him all. 
 
 "It is absurd," he cried, "it is madness, it is folly! 
 . . . You arc not going to fight about an argument 
 such as you have related to me? You talked at the 
 corner of the street, you exchanged a few angry words, 
 and then, suddenly, seconds, a duel. . . . Ah, it is 
 absurd." 
 
 "You forget that I offered him a violent insult in 
 raising my cane to him," interrupted Florent, "and 
 since he demands satisfaction I must give it to him." 
 
 "Do you believe," said the writer, "that the public 
 will be contented with those reasons? Do you think 
 they will not look for the secret motives of the duel? 
 Do I know the story of a woman? . . . You see, I 
 ask no questions. I rely upon what you confide in 
 me. But the world is the world, and you will not 
 escape its remarks." 
 
 "It is precisely for that reason that I ask absolute 
 discretion of you," replied Florent, "and for that 
 reason that I have come to ask you to serve me as a 
 second. . . . There is no one in whom I trust as 
 implicitly as I do in you. ... It is the only excuse 
 for my step." 
 
 "I thank you," said Dorsenne. He hesitated a 
 moment. Then the image of Alba, which had haunted 
 him since the previous day, suddenly presented itself 
 to his mind. He recalled the sombre anguish he had 
 surprised in the young girl's eyes, then her comforted 
 glance when her mother smiled at once upon Gorka 
 
 [189]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 and Maitland. He recalled the anonymous letter and 
 the mysterious hatred which impended over Madame 
 Steno. If the quarrel between Boleslas and Florent 
 became known, there was no doubt that it would be 
 said generally that Florent was fighting for his brother- 
 in-law on account of the Countess. No doubt, too, 
 that the report would reach the poor Contessina. It 
 was sufficient to cause the writer to reply: "Very 
 well! I accept. I will serve you. Do not thank me. 
 We are losing valuable time. You will require an- 
 other second. Of whom have you thought?" 
 
 "Of no one," returned Florent. "I confess I have 
 counted on you to aid me." 
 
 "Let us make a list," said Julien. "It is the best 
 way, and then cross off the names." 
 
 Dorsenne wrote down a number of their acquaint- 
 ances, and they indeed crossed them off, according to 
 his expression, so effectually that after a minute exam- 
 ination they had rejected all of them. They were then 
 as much perplexed as ever, when suddenly Dorsenne's 
 eyes brightened, he uttered a slight exclamation, and 
 said brusquely: 
 
 "What an idea! But it is an idea! . . . Do you 
 know the Marquis de Montfanon?" he asked Flor- 
 ent. 
 
 "He with one arm?" replied the latter. "1 saw 
 him once with reference to a monumenl I put up at 
 Saint Louis des Francais." 
 
 "He lold me of it," said Dorsenne. "For one of 
 your relatives, was it not ?" 
 
 "Oh, a distanl cousin," replied Florent; "one
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 Captain Chapron, killed in 'forty-nine in the trenches 
 before Rome." 
 
 "Now, to our business," cried Dorsenne, rubbing 
 his hands. "It is Montfanon who must be your 
 second. First of all, he is an experienced duellist, 
 while I have never been on the ground. That is very 
 important. You know the celebrated saying: 'It is 
 neither swords nor pistols which kill ; it is the seconds. ' 
 . . . And then if the matter has to be arranged, he 
 will have more prestige than your servant." 
 
 "It is impossible," said Florent; "Marquis de 
 Montfanon. ... He will never consent. I do not 
 exist for him." 
 
 ' ' That is my affair, ' ' cried Dorsenne . ' ' Let me take 
 the necessary steps in my own name, and then if he 
 agrees you can make it in yours. . . . Only we have 
 no time to lose. Do not leave your house until six 
 o'clock. By that time I shall know upon what to 
 depend." 
 
 If, at first, the novelist had felt great confidence in 
 the issue of his strange attempt with reference to his 
 old friend, that confidence changed to absolute appre- 
 hension when he found himself, half an hour later, 
 at the house which Marquis Claude Francois occupied 
 in one of the oldest parts of Rome, from which location 
 he could obtain an admirable view of the Forum. 
 How many times had Julien come, in the past six 
 months, to that Marquis who dived constantly in 
 the sentiment of the past, to gaze upon the tragical 
 and grand panorama of the historical scene! At the 
 voice of the recluse, the broken columns rose, the 
 
 [191]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 ruined temples were rebuilt, the triumphal view was 
 cleared from its mist. He talked, and the formidable 
 epopee of the Roman legend was evoked, interpreted 
 by the fervent Christian in that mystical and provi- 
 dential sense, which all, indeed, proclaims in that 
 spot, where the Mamertine prison relates the trial of 
 St. Peter, where the portico of the temple of Faustine 
 serves as a pediment to the Church of St. Laurent, 
 where Ste.-Marie-Liberatrice rises upon the site of 
 the Temple of Vesta — Sancta Maria, libera nos a pcenis 
 injcrni — Montfanon always added when he spoke of 
 it, and he pointed out the Arch of Titus, which tells 
 of the fulfilment of the prophecies of Our Lord against 
 Jerusalem, while, opposite, the groves reveal the out- 
 lines of a nunnery upon the ruins of the dwellings of 
 the Caesars. And, at the extreme end, the Coliseum 
 recalls to mind the ninety thousand spectators come 
 to see the martyrs suffer. 
 
 Such were the sights where lived the former pontifi- 
 cal zouave, and, on ringing the bell of the third elage, 
 Julicn said to himself: "I am a simpleton to come to 
 propose to such a man what I have to propose. Yet 
 it is not to be a second in an ordinary duel, but 
 simply to prevent an adventure which might cost the 
 lives of two men in the first place, then the honor of 
 Madame Steno, and, lastly, the peace of mind of 
 three innocent persons, Madame Gorka, Madame 
 Maitland and my little friend Alba. . . . lie alone has 
 sufficient authority to arrange all. It will be an act 
 of charity, like any other. ... I hope he is at home," 
 he concluded, hearing the footstep of the servant, who 
 
 [192]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 recognized the visitor and who anticipated all ques- 
 tions. 
 
 "The Marquis went out this morning before eight 
 o'clock. He will not return until dinner-time." 
 
 "Do you know where he has gone?" 
 
 "To hear mass in a catacomb, and to be present 
 at a procession," replied the footman, who took 
 Dorsenne's card, adding: "The Trappists of Saint 
 Calixtus certainly know where the Marquis is. . . . 
 He lunched with them." 
 
 "We shall see," said the young man to himself, 
 somewhat disappointed. His carriage rolled in the 
 direction of Porte St. Sebastien, near which was the 
 catacomb and the humble dwelling contiguous to it 
 — the last morsel of the Papal domains kept by the 
 poor monks. "Montfanon will have taken com- 
 munion this morning," thought he, "and at the very 
 word duel he will listen to nothing more. However, 
 the matter must be arranged; it must be. . . . What 
 would I not give to know the truth of the scene be- 
 tween Gorka and Florent? By what strange and 
 diabolical ricochet did the Palatine hit upon the latter 
 when his business was with the brother-in-law? . . . 
 Will he be angry that I am his adversary's second? 
 . . . Bah! . . . After our conversation of the other 
 day our friendship is ended. . . . Good, I am already 
 at the little church of Domine, quo vadis.* I might 
 say to myself: 'Juliane, quo vadis? 1 'To perform an 
 act a little better than the majority of my actions,' I 
 might reply." 
 
 *" Lord, whither art thou going?" 
 J 3 193 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 That impressionable soul which vibrated at the 
 slightest contact was touched by the souvenir of one of 
 the innumerable pious legends which nineteen centuries 
 of Catholicism have suspended at all the corners of 
 Rome and its surrounding districts. He recalled the 
 touching story of St. Peter flying from persecution and 
 meeting our Lord: "Lord, whither art thou going?" 
 asked the apostle. "To be crucified a second time," 
 replied the Saviour, and Peter was ashamed of his 
 weakness and returned to martyrdom. Montfanon 
 himself had related that episode to the novelist, who 
 again began to reflect upon the Marquis's character 
 and the best means of approaching him. He forgot 
 to glance at the vast solitude of the Roman suburbs 
 before him, and so deep was his reverie that he almost 
 passed unheeded the object of his search. Another 
 disappointment awaited him at the first point in his 
 voyage of exploration. 
 
 The monk who came at his ring to open the door of 
 the inclosure contiguous to St. Calixtus, informed him 
 tli at he of whom he was in search had left half an 
 hour before. 
 
 "You will find him at the Basilica of Saint Neree 
 and Saint Achilles," added the Trappist; "it is the 
 jetc of those two saints, and at five o'clock there will 
 be a procession in their catacombs. ... It is a fifteen 
 minutes 1 ride from here, near the tower Maraneia, on 
 the Via Ardeatina." 
 
 "Shall I miss him a third time?" thought Dorscnne, 
 alighting from the carriage finally, and proceeding on 
 foot to the opening which leads to the subterranean 
 
 I '04 J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 Necropolis dedicated to the two saints who were the 
 eunuchs of Domitilla, the niece of Emperor Vespasian. 
 A few ruins and a dilapidated house alone mark the 
 spot where once stood the pious Princess's magnificent 
 villa. The gate was open, and, meeting no one who 
 could direct him, the young man took several steps in 
 the subterranean passage. He perceived that the long 
 gallery was lighted. He entered there, saying to him- 
 self that the row of tapers, lighted every ten paces, 
 assuredly marked the line which the procession would 
 follow, and which led to the central basilica. Although 
 his anxiety as to the issue of his undertaking was 
 extreme, he could not help being impressed by the 
 grandeur of the sight presented by the catacomb thus 
 illuminated. The uneven niches reserved for the dead, 
 asleep in the peace of the Lord for so many centuries, 
 made recesses in the corridors and gave them a solemn 
 and tragical aspect. Inscriptions were to be seen 
 there, traced on the stone, and all spoke of the great 
 hope which those first Christians had cherished, the 
 same which believers of our day cherish. 
 
 Julien knew enough of symbols to understand the 
 significance of the images between which the perse- 
 cuted of the primitive church had laid their fathers. 
 They are so touching and so simple! The anchor 
 represents safety in the storm; the gentle dove and 
 the ewe, symbols of the soul, which flies away and seeks 
 its shepherd; the phcenix, whose wings announce the 
 resurrection. Then there were the bread and the 
 wine, the branches of the olive and the palm. The 
 silent cemetery was filled with a faint aroma of incense, 
 
 [i95]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 noticed by Dorsenne on entering. High mass, cele- 
 brated in the morning, left the sacred perfume diffused 
 among those bones, once the forms of human beings 
 who kneeled there amid the same holy aroma. The 
 contrast was strong between that spot, where every- 
 thing spoke of things eternal, and the drama of pas- 
 sion, worldly and culpable, the progress of which 
 agitated even Dorsenne. At that moment he appeared 
 to himself in the light of a profaner, although he was 
 obeying generous and humane instincts. He expe- 
 rienced a sense of relief when, at a bend in one of the 
 corridors which he had selected from among many 
 others, he found himself face to face with a priest, 
 who held in his hand a basket filled with the petals 
 of flowers, destined, no doubt, for the procession. 
 Dorsenne inquired of him the way to the Basilica in 
 Italian, while the reply was given in perfect French. 
 
 "Perhaps you know the Marquis de Montfanon, 
 father?" asked the novelist. 
 
 "I am one of the chaplains of Saint Louis," said 
 the priest, with a smile, adding: "You will find him 
 in the Basilica." 
 
 "Now, the moment has come," thought Dorsenne, 
 "I must be subtle. . . . After all, it is charity I am 
 about to ask him to do. . . . Here I am. I recog- 
 nize the staircase and the opening above." 
 
 A corner of the sky, indeed, was to be seen, and a 
 ray of light entered which permitted the writer to 
 distinguish him whom he was seeking among the few 
 persons assembled in the ruined chapel, the most ven- 
 erable of all those which encircle Rome with a hidden 
 
 [196]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 girdle of sanctuaries. Montfanon, too recognizable, 
 alas! by the empty sleeve of his black redingote, was 
 seated on a chair, not very far from the altar, on which 
 burned enormous tapers. Priests and monks were 
 arranging baskets filled with petals, like those of the 
 chaplain, whom Dorsenne had just met. A group of 
 three curious visitors commented in whispers upon 
 the paintings, scarcely visible on the discolored stucco 
 of the ceiling. Montfanon was entirely absorbed in 
 the book which he held in his one hand. The large 
 features of his face, ennobled and almost transfigured 
 by the ardor of devotion, gave him the admirable 
 expression of an old Christian soldier. Bonus miles 
 Christi—a, good soldier of Christ — had been inscribed 
 upon the tomb of the chief under whom he had been 
 wounded at Patay. One would have taken him for 
 a guardian layman of the tombs of the martyrs, ca- 
 pable of confessing his faith like them, even to the 
 death. And when Julien determined to approach and 
 to touch him lightly on the shoulder, he saw that, in 
 the nobleman's clear, blue eyes, ordinarily so gay, 
 and sometimes so choleric, sparkled unshed tears. 
 His voice, too, naturally sharp, was softened by the 
 emotion of the thought which his reading, the place, 
 the time, the occupation of his day had awakened 
 within him. 
 
 "Ah, you here?" said he to his young friend, with- 
 out any astonishment. "You have come for the 
 procession. That is well. You will hear sung the 
 lovely lines: Hi sunt quos jatuc mundus abhorruit." 
 He pronounced ou as w, a V Italienne, for his liturgic 
 
 [i97]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 training had been received in Rome. "The season 
 is favorable for the ceremonies. The tourists have 
 gone. There will only be people here who pray and 
 who feel, like you. . . . And to feel is half of prayer. 
 The other half is to believe. You will become one of 
 us. I have always predicted it. There is no peace 
 but here." 
 
 "I would gladly have come only for the procession," 
 replied Dorsenne, "but my visit has another motive, 
 dear friend," said he, in a still lower tone. "I have 
 been seeking for you for more than an hour, that you 
 might aid me in rendering a great service to several 
 people, in preventing a very great misfortune, perhaps. " 
 
 "I can help you to prevent a very great misfortune?" 
 repeated Montfanon. 
 
 "Yes," replied Dorsenne, "but this is not the place 
 in which to explain to you the details of the long and 
 terrible adventure. ... At what hour is the cere- 
 mony? I will wait for you, and tell it to you on leav- 
 ing here." 
 
 "It does not begin until five o'clock — five-thirty," 
 said Montfanon, looking at his watch, "and it is now 
 fifteen minutes past four. Let us leave the catacomb, 
 if you wish, and you can repeal your story to me up 
 above. A very great misfortune? Well," he added, 
 pressing the hand of the young man whom, personally, 
 he Liked as much as he detested his views, "rest as- 
 sured, my dear child, we will prevent it!" 
 
 There was in the manner in which he uttered those 
 words the tranquillity of a mind which knows not un- 
 easiness, that of a believer who feels sure of always 
 
 I "«;8J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 accomplishing all that he wishes to do. It would 
 not have been Montfanon, that is to say, a species of 
 visionary, who loved to argue with Dorsenne, because 
 he knew that in spite of all he was understood, if he 
 had not continued, as they walked along the lighted 
 corridor, while remounting toward daylight: 
 
 "If it is all the same to you, sir apologist of the mod- 
 ern world, I should like to pause here and ask you frank- 
 ly: Do you not feel yourself more contemporary with 
 all the dead who slumber within these walls than with 
 a radical elector or a free-mason deputy ? Do you not 
 feel that if these martyrs had not come to pray be- 
 neath these vaults eighteen hundred years ago, the 
 best part of your soul would not exist? Where will 
 you find a poetry more touching than that of these 
 symbols and of these epitaphs? That admirable De 
 Rossi showed me one at Saint Calixtus last year. My 
 tears flow as I recall it. 'Pete pro Phoebe et pro vir- 
 ginio ejus. Pray for Phoebus and for — How do you 
 translate the word virginius, the husband who has 
 known only one wife, the virgin husband of a virgin 
 spouse? Your youth will pass, Dorsenne. You will 
 one day feel what I feel, the happiness which is 
 wanting on account of bygone errors, and you will 
 comprehend that it is only to be found in Christian 
 marriage, whose entire sublimity is summed up in 
 this prayer: Pro virginio ejus. . . . You will be like 
 me then, and you will find in this book," he held up 
 PEucologe, which he clasped in his hand, "something 
 through which to offer up to God your remorse and 
 your regrets. Do you know the hymn of the Holy 
 
 [i99]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 Sacrament, Adoro te, devote? No. Yet you are capa- 
 ble of feeling what is contained in these lines. Lis- 
 ten. It is this idea: That on the cross one sees only 
 the man, not the God; that in the host one does not 
 even see the man, and that yet one believes in the 
 real presence. 
 
 In cruce latebat sola Deltas. 
 
 At hie latet sitnul et humanitas. 
 
 Atnbo la men credens atque confitens . . . 
 
 "And now this last verse: 
 
 Peto quod petivit latro poenitens ! * 
 
 "What a cry! Ah, but it is beautiful! It is beau- 
 tiful! What words to say in dying! And what did 
 the poor thief ask, that Dixmas of whom the church 
 has made a saint for that one appeal: ' Remember me, 
 Lord, in Thy kingdom /' But we have arrived. Stoop, 
 that you may not spoil your hat. Now, what do you 
 want with me? You know the motto of the Mont- 
 fanons: Excelsior et firmior — Always higher and al- 
 ways firmer. . . . One can never do too many good 
 deeds. If it be possible, present, as we said to the roll- 
 call." 
 
 A singular mixture of fervor and of good-nature, 
 of enthusiastic eloquence and of political or religious 
 fanaticism, was Montfanon. But the good-nature 
 rapidly vanished from his face, at once so haughty 
 and so simple, in proportion as Dorsenne's story pro- 
 ceeded. The writer, indeed, did not make the error 
 
 * I ask that which the penitent thief asked. 
 [ 200 J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 of at once formulating his proposition. He felt that 
 he could not argue with the pontifical zouave of by- 
 gone days. Either the latter would look upon it as 
 monstrous and absurd, or he would see in it a char- 
 itable duty to be accomplished, and then, whatever 
 annoyance the matter might occasion him, he would 
 accept it, as he would bestow alms. It was that chord 
 of generosity which Julien, diplomatic for once in his 
 life, essayed to touch by his confidence. Gaining 
 authority by their conversation of a few days before, 
 he related all he could of Gorka's visit, concealing the 
 fact of that word of honor so falsely given, which 
 still oppressed him with a mortal weight. He told 
 how he had soothed the madman, how he conducted 
 him to the station, then he described the meeting of 
 the two rivals twenty-four hours later. He dwelt upon 
 Alba's manner that evening and the infamy of the 
 anonymous letters written to Madame Steno's dis- 
 carded lover and to her daughter. And after he had 
 reported the mysterious quarrel which had suddenly 
 arisen between Gorka and Chapron: 
 
 "I, therefore, promised to be his second," he con- 
 cluded, "because I believe it my absolute duty to do 
 all I can to prevent the duel from taking place. Only 
 think of it. If it should take place, and if one of 
 them is killed or wounded, how can the affair be kept 
 secret in this gossiping city of Rome? And what 
 remarks it will call forth! It is evident that these 
 two boys have quarrelled only on account of the rela- 
 tions between Madame Steno and Maitland. By 
 what strange coincidence? Of that I know nothing. 
 
 [201]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 But there will not be a doubt in public opinion. And 
 can you not see additional anonymous letters written 
 to Alba, Madame Gorka, Madame Maitland? . . . 
 The men I do not care for. . . . Two out of three 
 merit all that comes to them. But those innocent 
 creatures — is it not frightful?" 
 
 "Frightful, indeed," replied Montfanon; "it is 
 that which renders those adulterous adventures so 
 hideous. There are many people who are affected 
 by it besides the guilty ones. . . . You see that, you 
 who thought that society so pleasant, so refined, so 
 interesting, the day before yesterday? But it does no 
 good to recriminate. I understand. You have come 
 to ask me to advise you in your role of second. My 
 follies of youth will enable me to direct you. . . . 
 Correctness in the slightest detail and no nerves, when 
 one has to arrange a duel. Oh! You will have 
 trouble. Gorka is mad. I know the Poles. They 
 have great faults, but they are brave. Lord, but they 
 are brave! And little Chapron, I know him, too; he 
 has one of those stubborn natures, which would allow 
 their breasts to be pierced without saying 'Ouf!' And 
 amour propre. He has good soldier's blood in his 
 veins, that child, notwithstanding the mixture. And 
 with that mixture, do you not see what a hero the 
 first of the three Dumas, the mulatto general, has 
 been? . . . Yes. You have there a hard job, my 
 good Dorsenne. . . . You will need another second 
 to assist you, who will have the same views as you 
 and pardon me — more experience, perhaps." 
 
 "Marquis," replied Julien, whose voice trembled 
 
 [ 202 J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 with anxiety, "there is only one person in Rome who 
 would be respected enough, venerated by all, so that 
 his intervention in that delicate and dangerous matter 
 be decisive, one person who could suggest excuses to 
 Chapron, or obtain them from the other. ... In short, 
 there is only one person who has the authority of a 
 hero before whom they will remain silent when he 
 speaks of honor, and that person is you." 
 
 "I," exclaimed Montfanon, "I, you wish me to 
 be"— 
 
 "One of Chapron's seconds," interrupted Dorsenne. 
 "Yes. It is true. I come on his part and for that. 
 Do not tell me what I already know, that your position 
 will not allow of such a step. It is because it is what 
 it is, that I thought of coming to you. Do not tell 
 me that your religious principles are opposed to duels. 
 It is that there may be no duel that I conjure you to 
 accept. ... It is essential that it does not take place. 
 I swear to you, that the peace of too many innocent 
 persons is concerned." 
 
 And he continued, calling into service at that mo- 
 ment all the intelligence and all the eloquence of which 
 he was capable. He could follow on the face of the 
 former duellist, who had become the most ardent of 
 Catholics and the most monomaniacal of old bachelors, 
 twenty diverse expressions. At length Montfanon 
 laid his hand with veritable solemnity on his inter- 
 locutor's arm and said to him: 
 
 "Listen, Dorsenne, do not tell me any more. . . . 
 I consent to what you ask of me, but on two condi- 
 tions. They are these: The first is that Monsieur 
 
 [ 2 °3l
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 Chapron will trust absolutely to my judgment, what- 
 soever it may be; the second is that you will retire 
 with me if these gentlemen persist in their childish- 
 ness. ... I promise to aid you in fulfilling a mission 
 of charity, and not anything else; I repeat, not any- 
 thing else. Before bringing Monsieur Chapron to me 
 you will repeat to him what I have said, word for 
 word." 
 
 "Word for word," replied the other, adding: "He 
 is at home awaiting the result of my undertaking." 
 
 "Then," said the Marquis, "I will return to Rome 
 with you at once. He has probably already received 
 Gorka's seconds, and if they really wish to arrange a 
 duel the rule is not to put it off. ... I shall not see 
 my procession, but to prevent misfortune is to do a 
 good deed, and it is one way of praying to God." 
 
 "Let me press your hand, my noble friend," said 
 Dorsenne; "never have I better understood what a 
 truly brave man is." 
 
 When the writer alighted, three-quarters of an hour 
 later, at the house on the Rue Leopardi, after having 
 seen Montfanon home, he felt sustained by such moral 
 support that was almost joyous. He found Florent 
 in liis species of salon-smoking-room, arranging his 
 papers with methodical composure. 
 
 "He accepts," were- tin- first words the young men 
 uttered, almost simultaneously, while Dorsenne re- 
 peated Montfanon's words. 
 
 "I depend absolutely on you two," replied the 
 other. "I have no thirsl for Monsieur de Gorka's 
 blood. . . . But that gentleman must not accuse the 
 
 I 'I I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 grandson of Colonel Chapron of cowardice. . . . 
 For that I rely upon the relative of General Dorsenne 
 and on the old soldier of Charctte." 
 
 As he spoke, Florent handed a letter to JuHen, who 
 asked: "From whom is this?" 
 
 "This," said Florent, a is a letter addressed to you, 
 on this very table half an hour ago by Baron Hafner. 
 . . . There is some news. I have received my ad- 
 versary's seconds. The Baron is one, Ardea the 
 other." 
 
 "Baron Hafner!" exclaimed Dorsenne. "What a 
 singular choice!" He paused, and he and Florent 
 exchanged glances. They understood one another 
 without speaking. Boleslas could not have found a 
 surer means of informing Madame Steno as to the 
 plan he intended to employ in his vengeance. On the 
 other hand, the known devotion of the Baron for the 
 Countess gave one chance more for a pacific solution, 
 at the same time that the fanaticism of Montfanon 
 would be confronted with Fanny's father, an episode 
 of comedy suddenly cast across Gorka's drama of 
 jealousy. 
 
 Julien resumed with a smile: "You must watch 
 Montfanon's face when we inform him of those two 
 witnesses. He is a man of the fifteenth century, 
 you know, a Montluc, a Due d'Alba, a Philippe II. 
 I do not know which he detests the most, the Free- 
 masons, the Free-thinkers, the Protestants, the Jews, or 
 the Germans. And as this obscure and tortuous Haf- 
 ner is a little of everything, he has vowed hatred against 
 him! . . . Leaving that out of the question, he sus- 
 
 [205]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 pects him of being a secret agent in the service of 
 the Triple Alliance ! But let us see the letter." 
 
 He opened and glanced through it. " This craftiness 
 serves for something, it is equivalent almost to kind- 
 ness. He, too, has felt that it is necessary to end our 
 affair, were it only to avoid scandal. He appoints a 
 meeting at his house between six and seven o'clock 
 with me and your second. Come, time is flying. You 
 must come to the Marquis to make your request 
 officially. Begin this way. Obtain his promise before 
 mentioning Hafncr's name. I know him. He will 
 not retract his word. But it is just." 
 
 The two friends found Montfanon awaiting them 
 in his office, a large room Riled with books, from which 
 could be obtained a fine view of the panorama of 
 the Forum, more majestic still on that afternoon when 
 the shadows of the columns and arches grew longer 
 on the sidewalk. The room with its brick floor had 
 no other comfort than a carpet under the large desk 
 littered with papers — no doubt fragments of the 
 famous work on the relations of the French nobility 
 and the Church. A crucifix stood upon the desk. 
 On the wall were two engravings, that of Monscigneur 
 Pie, the holy Bishop of Poitiers, and that of General 
 de Sunis, on foot, with his wooden leg, and a painting 
 representing St. Francois, the patron of the house. 
 Those were the only artistic decorations of the modest 
 habitation. The nobleman often said: "I have freed 
 myself from the tyranny of objects." But with that 
 marvellous background of grandiose ruins and that 
 sky, the simple spot was an incomparable retreat in 
 
 [206]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 which to end in meditation and renouncement a life 
 already shaken by the tempests of the senses and of 
 the world. 
 
 The hermit of that Thebai'dc rose to greet his two 
 visitors, and pointing out to Chapron an open volume 
 on his table, he said to him: 
 
 "I was thinking of you. It is Chateauvillars's book 
 on duelling. It contains a code which is not very 
 complete. I recommend it to you, however, if ever 
 you have to fulfil a mission like ours," and he pointed 
 to Dorsenne and himself, with a gesture which con- 
 stituted the most amicable of acceptations. "It seems 
 you had too hasty a hand. . . . Ha! ha! Do not 
 defend yourself. Such as you see me, at twenty-one 
 I threw a plate in the face of a gentleman who ban- 
 tered Comte de Chambord before a number of Jacobins 
 at a table d'hote in the provinces. See," continued he, 
 raising his white moustache and disclosing a scar, " this 
 is the souvenir. The fellow was once a dragoon; he 
 proposed the sabre. I accepted, and this is what I 
 got, while he lost two fingers. . . . That will not hap- 
 pen to us this time at least. . . . Dorsenne has told 
 you our conditions." 
 
 "And I replied that I was sure I could not intrust 
 my honor to better hands," replied Florent. 
 
 "Cease!" replied Montfanon, with a gesture of sat- 
 isfaction. "No more phrases. It is well. Moreover, 
 I judged you, sir, from the day on which you spoke 
 to me at Saint Louis. You honor your dead. That is 
 why I shall be happy, very happy, to be useful to 
 you." 
 
 [207]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "Now tell me very clearly the recital you made to 
 Dorsenne. " 
 
 Then Florent related concisely that which had taken 
 place between him and Gorka — that is to say, their 
 argument and his passion, carefully omitting the de- 
 tails in which the name of his brother-in-law would 
 be mixed. 
 
 "The deuce!" said Montfanon, familiarly, "the 
 affair looks bad, very bad. . . . You see, a second is 
 a confessor. You have had a discussion in the street 
 with Monsieur Gorka, but about what ? You can not 
 reply? What did he say to you to provoke you to the 
 point of wishing to strike him? That is the first key 
 to the position." 
 
 "I can not reply," said Florent. 
 
 "Then," resumed the Marquis, after a silence, 
 "there only remains to assert that the gesture on your 
 part was — how shall I say? Unmeditated and un- 
 finished. That is the second key to the position. . . . 
 You have no special grudge against Monsieur Gorka?" 
 
 "None." 
 
 "Nor he against you?" 
 
 "None." 
 
 "The affair looks better," said Montfanon, who was 
 silent For a time, to resume, in the voice of a man who 
 is talking to himself, "Count Gorka considers himself 
 offended? But is there any offence? It is that which 
 we should discuss. ... An assault or the threat of 
 an assault would afford occasion for an arrangement. 
 . . . Bui a gesture restrained, since it was not carried 
 into effect. ... Do not interrupt me," he continued. 
 
 [208]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "I am trying to understand it clearly. . . . We must 
 arrive at a solution. We shall have to express our 
 regret, leaving the field open to another reparation, 
 if Gorka requires it. . . . And he will not require it. 
 The entire problem now rests on the choice of his 
 seconds. . . . Whom will he select?" 
 
 "I have already received visits from them," said 
 Florent. " Half an hour ago. One is Prince d'Ardea. " 
 
 "He is a gentleman," replied Montfanon. "I shall 
 not be sorry to see him to tell him my feelings with 
 regard to the public sale of his palace, to which he 
 should never have allowed himself to be driven. . . . 
 And the other?" 
 
 "The other?" interrupted Dorsenne. "Prepare 
 yourself for a blow. ... I swear to you I did not 
 know his name when I went in search of you at the 
 catacomb. It is — in short — it is Baron Hafner. " 
 
 "Baron Hafner!" exclaimed Montfanon. "Boleslas 
 Gorka, the descendant of the Gorkas, of that grand 
 Luc Gorka who was Palatine of Posen and Bishop of 
 Cujavie, has chosen for his second Monsieur Justus 
 Hafner, the thief, the scoundrel, who had the disgrace- 
 ful suit! . . . No, Dorsenne, do not tell me that; it 
 is not possible." Then, with the air of a combatant: 
 "We will challenge him, that is all, for his lack of 
 honor. I take it upon myself, as well as to tell of his 
 deeds to Boleslas. We will spend an enjoyable quar- 
 ter of an hour there, I promise you." 
 
 "You will not do that," said Dorsenne, quickly. 
 "First, with regard to official honor, there is only 
 one law, is there not? Hafner was acquitted and his 
 14 [ 209 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 adversaries condemned. You told me so the other 
 day. . . . And then, you forget the conversation we 
 just had." 
 
 "Pardon," interrupted Florent, in his turn. "Mon- 
 sieur de Montfanon, in promising to assist me, has 
 done me a great honor, which I shall never forget. If 
 there should result from it any annoyance to him I 
 should be deeply grieved, and I am ready to release 
 him from his promise." 
 
 "No," said the Marquis, after another silence. "I 
 will not take it back." ... He was so magnanimous 
 when his two or three hobbies were not involved that 
 the slightest delicacy awoke an echo in him. He 
 again extended his hand to Chapron and continued, 
 but with an accent which betrayed suppressed irrita- 
 tion: "After all, it docs not concern us if Monsieur 
 Gorka has chosen to be represented in an affair of 
 honor by one whom he should not even salute. . . . 
 You will, then, give our two names to those two gentle- 
 men . . . and Dorsenne and I will await them, as is 
 the rule. ... It is their place to come, since they are 
 the proxies of the person insulted." 
 
 "They have already arranged a meeting for this 
 evening," replied Chapron. 
 
 "What's arranged? With whom? For whom?" 
 exclaimed Montfanon, a prey to a fresh access of 
 choler. "With you? . . . For us? . . . Ah, I do not 
 like such conduct where such grave matters are con- 
 cerned. . . . The code is absolute on that subject. 
 . . . Their challenge once made, to which you, Mon- 
 sieur Chapron, have to reply by yes or no, these gentle- 
 
 [210]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 men should withdraw immediately. ... It is not 
 your fault, it is Ardea's, who has allowed that dabbler 
 in spurious dividends to perform his part of intriguer. 
 . . . But we will rectify all in the right way, which is 
 the French. . . . And where is the rendezvous?" 
 
 "I will read to you the letter which the Baron left 
 for me with Florent, " said Dorsenne, who indeed read 
 the very courteous note Hafner had written to him, in 
 which he excused himself for choosing his own house 
 as a rendezvous for the four witnesses. "One can not 
 ignore so polite a note?" 
 
 "There are too many dear sirs, and too many com- 
 pliments," said Montfanon, brusquely. "Sit here," 
 he continued, relinquishing his armchair to Florent, 
 "and inform the two men of our names and address, 
 adding that we are at their service and ignoring the 
 first inaccuracy on their part. Let them return! . . . 
 And you, Dorsenne, since you are afraid of wounding 
 that gentleman, I will not prevent you from going to 
 his house — personally, do you hear — to warn him that 
 Monsieur Chapron, here present, has chosen for his 
 first second a disagreeable person, an old duellist, 
 anything you like, but who desires strict form, and, 
 first of all, a correct call made upon us by them, in 
 order to settle officially upon a rendezvous." 
 
 "What did I tell you?" asked Dorsenne, when he 
 with Florent descended Montfanon's staircase. "He 
 is a different man since you mentioned the Baron to 
 him. The discussion between them will be a hot one. 
 I hope he will not spoil all by his folly. On my honor, 
 if I had guessed whom Gorka would choose I should 
 
 [211]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 not have suggested to you the old leaguer, as I call 
 him." 
 
 "And I, if Monsieur de Montfanon should make me 
 fight at five paces," replied Chapron, with a laugh, 
 "would be grateful to you for having brought me into 
 relations with him. He is a whole-souled man, as was 
 my poor father, as is Maitland. I adore such people. " 
 
 "Is there no means of having at once heart and 
 head?" said Julien to himself, on reaching the Palais 
 Savorelli, where Hafner lived, and recalling the Mar- 
 quis's choler on the one hand, and on the other the 
 egotism of Maitland, of which Florent's last words 
 reminded him. His apprehension of the afternoon 
 returned in a greater degree, for he knew Montfanon 
 to be very sensitive on certain points, and it was one 
 of those points which would be wounded to the quick 
 by the forced relations with Gorka's witnesses. "I 
 do not trust Hafner," thought he; "if the cunning 
 fellow has accepted the mission utterly contrary to his 
 tastes, his habits, almost to his age, it must be to con- 
 nive with his future son-in-law and to conciliate all. 
 Perhaps even the marriage had been already settled? 
 I hope not. The Marquis would be so furious he 
 would require the duel to a Idler." 
 
 The young man had guessed aright. Chance, which 
 often brings one event upon another, decreed that 
 Ardea, at the very moment that he was deliberating 
 with ( rorka as to the choice of another second, received 
 a note from Madame Steno containing simply these 
 words: " Your proposal has been made, and the answer 
 is yes. May I be the first to embrace you, Simpaticonc?" 
 
 [212]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 An ingenious idea occurred to him; to have arranged 
 by his future father-in-law the quarrel which he con- 
 sidered at once absurd, useless, and dangerous. The 
 eagerness with which Gorka had accepted Hafncr's 
 name, proved, as Dorsenne and Florent had divined, 
 his desire that his perfidious mistress should be in- 
 formed of his doings. As for the Baron, he consented 
 —oh, irony of coincidences!— by saying to Peppino 
 Ardea words almost identical with those which Mont- 
 fanon had uttered to Dorsenne: 
 
 "We will draw up, in advance, an official plan of 
 conciliation, and, if the matter can not be arranged, 
 we will withdraw." 
 
 It was in such terms that the memorable conver- 
 sation was concluded, a conversation truly worthy of 
 the combinazione which poor Fanny's marriage repre- 
 sented. There had been less question of the marriage 
 itself than that of the services to be rendered to the 
 infidelity of the woman who presided over the sorry 
 traffic! Is it necessary to add that neither Ardea nor 
 his future father-in-law had made the shadow of an 
 allusion to the true side of the affair? Perhaps at 
 any other time the excessive prudence innate to the 
 Baron and his care never to compromise himself would 
 have deterred him from the possible annoyances which 
 might arise from an interference in the adventure of 
 an exasperated and discarded lover. But his joy at 
 the thought that his daughter was to become a Roman 
 princess — and with what a name ! — had really turned 
 his brain. 
 
 He had, however, the good sense to say to the 
 
 [213]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 stunned Ardea: "Madame Steno must know nothing 
 of it, at least beforehand. She would not fail to 
 inform Madame Gorka, and God knows of what the 
 latter would be capable." 
 
 In reality, the two men were convinced that it was 
 essential, directly or indirectly, to beware of warning 
 Maitland. They employed the remainder of the after- 
 noon in paying their visit to Florent, then in sending 
 telegram after telegram to announce the betrothal, 
 with which charming Fanny seemed more satisfied 
 since Cardinal ' Guerillot had consented, at simply a 
 word from her, to preside at her baptism. The Baron, 
 in the face of that consent, could not restrain his joy. 
 He loved his daughter, strange man, somewhat in the 
 manner in which a breeder loves a favorite horse which 
 has won the Grand Prix for him. When Dorsenne 
 arrived, bearing Chapron's note and Montfanon's 
 message, he was received with a cordiality and a com- 
 plaisance which at once enlightened him upon the 
 result of the matrimonial intrigue of which Alba had 
 spoken to him. 
 
 "Anything that your friend wishes, my dear sir. . . . 
 Is it not so, Peppino?" said the Baron,. seating him- 
 self at his table. "Will you dictate the letter your- 
 self, Dorsenne? . . . See, is this all right? You will 
 understand with what sentiments we have accepted 
 this mission when you learn that Fanny is betrothed to 
 Prince Ardea, here present. The news dates from 
 three o'clock. So you are the first to know it, is he 
 not, Peppino?" Me had drawn up not less than two 
 hundred despatches. "Return whenever you like with 
 
 [214]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 the Marquis. ... I simply ask, under the circum- 
 stances, that the interview take place, if it be possible, 
 between six and seven, or between nine and ten, in 
 order not to interfere with our little family dinner." 
 
 "Let us say nine o'clock," said Dorsenne. "Mon- 
 sieur de Montfanon is somewhat formal. He would 
 like to have your reply by letter." 
 
 "Prince Ardea to marry Mademoiselle Hafner!" 
 That cry which the news brought by Julien wrested 
 from Montfanon was so dolorous that the young man 
 did not think of laughing. He had thought it wiser 
 to prepare his irascible friend, lest the Baron might 
 make some allusion to the grand event during the 
 course of the conversation, and that the other might 
 not make some impulsive remark. 
 
 "Did I not tell you that the girl's Catholicism was 
 a farce? Did I not tell Monseigneur Guerillot? 
 This was what she aimed at all those years, with such 
 perfect hypocrisy ? It was the Palais Castagna. And 
 she will enter there as mistress! . . . She will bring 
 there the dishonor of that pirated gold on which there 
 arc stains of blood! Warn them, that they do not 
 speak to me of it, or I will not answer for myself. . . . 
 The second of a Gorka, the father-in-law of an Ardea, 
 he triumphs, the thief who should by rights be a con- 
 vict! . . . But we shall see. Will not all the other 
 Roman princes who have no blots upon their escutch- 
 eons, the Orsinis, the Colonnas, the Odeschalchis, 
 the Borgheses, the Rospigliosis, not combine to pre- 
 vent this monstrosity? Nobility is like love, those 
 who buy those sacred things degrade them in paying 
 
 [215]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 for them, and those to whom they are given are no 
 better than mire. . . . Princess d'Ardea! That crea- 
 ture! Ah, what a disgrace! . . . But we must re- 
 member our engagement relative to that brave young 
 Chapron. The boy pleases me; first, because very 
 probably he is going to fight for some one else and out 
 of a devotion which I can not very well understand! 
 It is devotion all the same, and it is chivalry! . . . 
 He desires to prevent that miserable Gorka from call- 
 ing forth a scandal which would have warned his 
 sister. . . . And then, as I told him, he respects the 
 dead. . . . Let us. . . . I have my wits no longer about 
 me, that intelligence has so greatly disturbed me. . . . 
 Princess dArdea! . . . Well, write that we will be 
 at Monsieur Hafner's at nine o'clock. ... I do not 
 want any of those people at my house. ... At yours 
 it would not be proper; you are too young. And I 
 prefer going to the father-in-law's rather than to the 
 son-in-law's. The rascal has made a good bargain in 
 buying what he has bought with his stolen millions. 
 But the other. . . . And his great-great-uncle might 
 have been Jules Second, Pie Fifth, Hildebrand; he 
 would have sold all just the same ! ... He can not de- 
 ceive himself! He has heard the suit against that man 
 spoken of! He knows whence come those millions! 
 He has heard their family, their lives spoken of! And 
 he has not been inspired with too great a horror to 
 accept the gold of that adventurer. Docs he not 
 know what a name is? Our name! It is ourselves, 
 our honor, in the mouths, in the thoughts, of others! 
 How happy I am, Dorsenne, to have been fifty-two 
 
 [216]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 years of age last month. I shall be gone before hav- 
 ing seen what you will see, the agony of all the aris- 
 tocrats and royalties. It was only in blood that they 
 fell! But they do not fall. Alas! They fix them- 
 selves upon the ground, which is the saddest of all. 
 Still, what matters it ? The monarchy, the nobility, 
 and the Church are everlasting. The people who dis- 
 regard them will die, that is all. Come, write your 
 letter, which I will sign. Send it away, and you will 
 dine with me. We must go into the den provided 
 with an argument which will prevent this duel, and 
 sustaining our part toward our client. There must 
 be an arrangement which I would accept myself. I 
 like him, I repeat." 
 
 The excitement which began to startle Dorsenne 
 was only augmented during dinner, so much the more 
 so as, on discussing the conditions of that arrangement 
 he hoped to bring about, the recollection of his terrible 
 youth filled the thoughts and the discourse of the for- 
 mer duellist. Was it, indeed, the same personage who 
 recited the verses of a hymn in the catacombs a few 
 hours before? It only required the feudal in him to 
 be reawakened to transform him. The fire in his 
 eyes and the color in his face betrayed that the duel 
 in which he had thought best to engage, out of charity, 
 intoxicated him on his own statement. It was the 
 old amateur, the epicure of the sword, very ungovern- 
 able, which stirred within that man of faith, in whom 
 passion had burned and who had loved all excitement, 
 including that of danger, as to-day he loved his ideas, 
 as he loved his flag — immoderately. He no longer 
 
 [217]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 thought of the three women to be spared suspicion, 
 nor of the good deed to be accomplished. He saw 
 all his old friends and their talent for fighting, the 
 thrusts of this one, the way another had of striking, 
 the composure of a third, and then this refrain inter- 
 rupted constantly his warlike anecdotes: "But why 
 the deuce has Gorka chosen that Hafner for his 
 second? ... It is incomprehensible." . . . On en- 
 tering the carriage which was to bear them to their 
 interview, he heard Dorsenne say to the coachman: 
 " Palais Savorelli." 
 
 "That is the final blow," said he, raising his arm 
 and clenching his fist. "The adventurer occupies 
 the Pretender's house, the house of the Stuarts." . . . 
 He repeated: "The house of the Stuarts!" and then 
 lapsed into a silence which the writer felt to be laden 
 with more storminess than his last denunciation. He 
 did not emerge from his meditations until ushered into 
 the salon of the ci-devant jeweller, now a grand seigneur 
 -into one of the salons, rather, for there were five. 
 There Montfanon began to examine everything around 
 him, with an air of such contempt and pride that, 
 notwithstanding his anxiety, Dorsenne could not re- 
 sist laughing and teasing him by saying: 
 
 "You will not pretend to say that there are no 
 pretty things here? These two paintings by Moroni, 
 for example?" 
 
 "Nothing that is appropriate," replied Montfanon. 
 "Yes, they are two magnificent portraits of ancestors, 
 and this man has no ancestors! . . . There are some 
 weapons in that cupboard, and he has never touched 
 
 [218]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 a sword ! And there is a piece of tapestry representing 
 the miracles of the loaves, which is a piece of audacity! 
 You may not believe me, Dorsenne, but it is making 
 me ill to be here. ... I am reminded of the human 
 toil, of the human soul in all these objects, and to end 
 here, paid for how? Owned by whom? Close your 
 eyes and think of Schroeder and of the others whom 
 you do not know. Look into the hovels where there 
 is neither furniture, fire, nor bread. Then, open your 
 eyes and look at this." 
 
 "And you, my dear friend," replied the novelist, 
 "I conjure you to think of our conversation in the 
 catacombs, to think of the three ladies in whose names 
 I besought you to aid Florent." 
 
 "Thank you," said Montfanon, passing his hand 
 over his brow, "I promise you to be calm." 
 
 He had scarcely uttered those words when the door 
 opened, disclosing to view another room, lighted also, 
 and which, to judge by the sound of voices, contained 
 several persons. No doubt Madame Steno and Alba, 
 thought Julien; and the Baron entered, accompanied 
 by Peppino Ardea. While going through the intro- 
 ductions, the writer was struck by the contrast offered 
 between his three companions. Hafner and Ardea 
 in evening dress, with buttonhole bouquets, had the 
 open and happy faces of two citizens who had clear 
 consciences. The usually sallow complexion of the 
 business man was tinged with excitement, his eyes, as 
 a rule so hard, were gentler. As for the Prince, the 
 same childish carelessness lighted up his jovial face, 
 while the hero of Patay, with his coarse boots, his 
 
 [219]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 immense form enveloped in a somewhat shabby redin- 
 gote, exhibited a face so contracted that one would 
 have thought him devoured by remorse. A dishonest 
 intendant, forced to expose his accounts to generous 
 and confiding masters, could not have had a face 
 more gloomy or more anxious. He had, moreover, 
 put his one arm behind his back in a manner so formal 
 that neither of the two men who entered offered him 
 their hands. That appearance was without doubt 
 little in keeping with what the father and the fiance of 
 Fanny had expected; for there was, when the four 
 men were seated, a pause which the Baron was the 
 first to break. He began in his measured tones, in a 
 voice which handles words as the weight of a usurer 
 weighs gold pieces to the milligramme: 
 
 "Gentlemen, I believe I shall express our common 
 sentiment in first of all establishing a point which 
 shall govern our meeting. . . . We are here, it is 
 understood, to bring about the work of reconciliation 
 between two men, two gentlemen whom we know, 
 whom we esteem — I might better say, whom we all 
 love." . . . He turned, in pronouncing those words, 
 successively to each of his three listeners, who all 
 bowed, with the exception of the Marquis. Hafner 
 examined the nobleman, with his glance accustomed to 
 read the depths of the mind in order to divine the 
 intentions. He saw that Chapron's first witness was 
 a troublesome customer, and he continued: "That 
 done, 1 beg to read to you this little paper." He 
 drew from his pocket a sheet of folded paper and 
 placed upon the end of his nose his famous gold lorg- 
 
 [ 220 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 non: "It is very trifling, one of those directives, as 
 Monsieur de Moltke says, which serve to guide opera- 
 tions, a plan of action which we will modify after 
 discussion. In short, it is a landmark that we may 
 not launch into space." 
 
 "Pardon, sir," interrupted Montfanon, whose brows 
 contracted still more at the mention of the celebrated 
 field-marshal, and, stopping by a gesture the reader, 
 who, in his surprise, dropped his lorgnon upon the 
 table on which his elbow rested. "I regret very 
 much," he continued, "to be obliged to tell you that 
 Monsieur Dorsenne and I' -here he turned to Dor- 
 senne, who made an equivocal gesture of vexation— 
 "can not admit the point of view in which you place 
 yourself. . . . You claim that we are here to arrange 
 a reconciliation. That is possible. ... I concede 
 that it is desirable. . . . But I know nothing of it 
 and, permit me to say, you do not know any more. 
 I am here — we are here, Monsieur Dorsenne and I, 
 to listen to the complaints which Count Gorka has 
 commissioned you to formulate to Monsieur Florent 
 Chapron's proxies. Formulate those complaints, and 
 we will discuss them. Formulate the reparation you 
 claim in the name of your client and we will discuss 
 it. The papers will follow, if they follow at all, and, 
 once more, neither you nor we know what will be 
 the issue of this conversation, nor should we know it, 
 before establishing the facts." 
 
 "There is some misunderstanding, sir," said Ardea, 
 whom Montfanon's words had irritated somewhat. 
 He could not, any more than ITafncr, understand the 
 
 [221]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 very simple, but very singular, character of the Mar- 
 quis, and he added: "I have been concerned in sev- 
 eral rencontres — four times as second, and once as 
 principal — and I have seen employed without discus- 
 sion the proceeding which Baron Hafner has just pro- 
 posed to you, and which of itself is, perhaps, only a 
 more expeditious means of arriving at what you very 
 properly call the establishment of facts." 
 
 "I was not aware of the number of your affairs, 
 sir," replied Montfanon, still more nervous since Haf- 
 ner's future son-in-law joined in the conversation; 
 "but since it has pleased you to tell us I will take the 
 liberty of saying to you that I have fought seven times, 
 and that I have been a second fourteen. ... It is 
 true that it was at an epoch when the head of your 
 house was your father, if I remember right, the de- 
 ceased Prince Urban, whom I had the honor of know- 
 ing when I served in the zouaves. He was a fine 
 Roman nobleman, and did honor to his name. What 
 I have told you is proof that I have some competence 
 in the matter of a duel. . . .'Well, we have always 
 held that seconds were constituted to arrange affairs 
 that could be arranged, but also to settle affairs, as 
 well as they can, that seem incapable of being arranged. 
 Let us now inquire into the matter; we are here for 
 that, and for nothing else." 
 
 "Arc these gentlemen of that opinion?" asked Haf- 
 ner in a conciliatory voice, turning first to Dorsenne, 
 then to Anlea: "1 do not adhere to my method," he 
 continued, again folding his paper. He slipped it 
 into his vest pocket and continued: "Let us establish 
 
 [ 222 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 the facts, as you say. Count Gorka, our friend, con- 
 siders himself seriously, very seriously, offended by 
 Monsieur Florent Chapron in the course of the dis- 
 cussion in a public street. Monsieur Chapron was 
 carried away, as you know, sirs, almost to — what 
 shall I say? — hastiness, which, however, was not fol- 
 lowed by consequences, thanks to the presence of 
 mind of Monsieur Gorka. . . . But, accomplished or 
 not, the act remains. Monsieur Gorka was insulted, 
 and he requires satisfaction. ... I do not believe 
 there is any doubt upon that point which is the cause 
 of the affair, or, rather, the whole affair." 
 
 "I again ask your pardon, sir," said Montfanon, 
 dryly, who no longer took pains to conceal his anger, 
 "Monsieur Dorsenne and I can not accept your man- 
 ner of putting the question. . . . You say that Mon- 
 sieur Chapron's hastiness was not followed by con- 
 sequences by reason of Monsieur Gorka's presence 
 of mind. We claim that there was only on the part 
 of Monsieur Chapron a scarcely indicated gesture, 
 which he himself restrained. In consequence you 
 attribute to Monsieur Gorka the quality of the in- 
 sulted party; you are over-hasty. He is merely the 
 plaintiff, up to this time. It is very different." 
 
 "But by rights he is the insulted party," interrupted 
 Ardea. "Restrained or not, it constitutes a threat of 
 assault. I did not wish to claim to be a duellist by 
 telling you of my engagements. But this is the ABC 
 of the codice cavallcresco, if the insult be followed by 
 an assault, he who receives the blow is the offended 
 party, and the threat of an assault is equivalent to an 
 
 [223]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 actua-1 a'ssault. The offended party has the choice of 
 a duel, weapons and conditions. Consult your authors 
 and ours: Chateau villars, Du Verger, Angelini and 
 Gelli, all agree." 
 
 "I am sorry for their sakes, " said Montfanon, and 
 he looked at the Prince with a contraction of the 
 brows almost menacing, "but it is an opinion which 
 does not hold good generally, nor in this particular 
 case. The proof is that a duellist, as you have just 
 said," his voice trembled as he emphasized the inso- 
 lence offered by the other, "a bravo, to use the ex- 
 pression of your country, would only have to commit 
 a justifiable murder by first insulting him at whom he 
 aims with rude words. The insulted person replies 
 by a voluntary gesture, on the signification of which 
 one may be mistaken, and you will admit that the 
 bravo is the offended party, and that he has the choice 
 of weapons." 
 
 "But, Marquis," resumed Hafner, with evident dis- 
 gust, so greatly did the cavilling and the ill-will of 
 the nobleman irritate him, "where are you wandering 
 to? What do you mean by bringing up chicanery of 
 this sort?" 
 
 "Chicanery!" exclaimed Montfanon, half rising. 
 
 "Montfanon!" besought Dorsennc, rising in his turn 
 and forcing the terrible man to be seated. 
 
 "I retract the word," said the Baron, "if it has 
 insulted you. Nothing was farther from my thoughts. 
 . . . T repeat that I apologize, Marquis. . . . But, 
 come, tell US what you want for your client, that is very 
 simple. . . . And then we will do all we can to make 
 
 [224]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 your demands agree with those of our client. ... It 
 is a trifling matter to be adjusted." 
 
 "No, sir," said Montfanon, with insolent severity, 
 "it is justice to be rendered, which is very different. 
 What we, Monsieur Dorsenne and I, desire," he con- 
 tinued in a severe voice, "is this: Count Gorka has 
 gravely insulted Monsieur Chapron. Let me finish," 
 he added upon a simultaneous gesture on the part of 
 Ardea and of Hafner. "Yes, sirs, Monsieur Chap- 
 ron, known to us all for his perfect courtesy, must have 
 been very gravely insulted, even to make the improper 
 gesture of which you just spoke. But it was agreed 
 upon between these two gentlemen, for reasons of 
 delicacy which we had to accept — it was agreed, I say, 
 that the nature of the insult offered by Monsieur 
 Gorka to Monsieur Chapron should not be divulged. 
 . . . We have the right, however, and I may add the 
 duty devolves upon us, to measure the gravity of that 
 insult by the excess of anger aroused in Monsieur 
 Chapron. ... I conclude from it that, to be just, the 
 plan of reconciliation, if we draw it up, should contain 
 reciprocal concessions. Count Gorka will retract his 
 words and Monsieur Chapron apologize for his hasti- 
 ness." 
 
 "It is impossible," exclaimed the Prince; "Gorka 
 will never accept that." 
 
 "You, then, wish to have them fight the duel?" 
 groaned Hafner. 
 
 "And why not?" said Montfanon, exasperated. 
 "It would be better than for the one to nurse his in- 
 sults and the other his blow." 
 15 [ 22 5]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "Well, sirs," replied the Baron, rising after the 
 silence which followed that imprudent whim of a man 
 beside himself, "we will confer again with our client. 
 If you wish, we will resume this conversation to-mor- 
 row at ten o'clock, say here or in any place convenient 
 to you. . . . You will excuse me, Marquis. Dorsenne 
 has no doubt told you under what circumstances — " 
 
 "Yes, he has told me," interrupted Montfanon, 
 who again glanced at the Prince, and in a manner so 
 mournful that the latter felt himself blush beneath the 
 strange glance, at which, however, it was impossible 
 to feel angry. Dorsenne had only time to cut short 
 all other explanations by replying to Justus Hafner 
 himself. 
 
 "Would you like the meeting at my house? We 
 shall have more chance to escape remarks." 
 
 "You have done well to change the place," said 
 Montfanon, five minutes later, on entering the carriage 
 with his young friend. 
 
 They had descended the staircase without speaking, 
 for the brave and unreasonable Marquis regretted his 
 strangely provoking attitude of the moment before. 
 
 "What would you have?" he added. "The pro- 
 faned palace, the insolent luxury of that thief, the 
 Prince who has sold his family, the Baron whose part 
 is so sinister. I could no longer contain myself! 
 That Baron, above all, with his directives ! Words to 
 repeal when one is German, to a French soldier who 
 fought in 1870, like those words of Monsieur de Moltke.' 
 His terms, too, applied to honor and that abominable 
 politeness in which there is servility and insolence! 
 
 [226]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 . . . Still, I am not satisfied with myself. I am not 
 at all satisfied." 
 
 There was in his voice so much good-nature, such 
 evident remorse at not having controlled himself in so 
 grave a situation, that Dorscnne pressed his hand in- 
 stead of reproaching him, as he said: 
 
 "It will do to-morrow. . . . We will arrange all; 
 it has only been postponed." 
 
 "You say that to console me," said the Marquis, 
 "but I know it was very badly managed. And it is 
 my fault! Perhaps we shall have no other service to 
 render our brave Chapron than to arrange a duel for 
 him under the most dangerous conditions. Ah, but I 
 became inopportunely angry! . . . But why the deuce 
 did Gorka select such a second? It is incompre- 
 hensible! . . . Did you see what the cabalistic word 
 gentleman means to those rascals: Steal, cheat, assas- 
 sinate, but have carriages perfectly appointed, a mag- 
 nificent mansion, well-served dinners, and fine clothes! 
 . . . No, I have suffered too much! Ah, it is not 
 right; and on what a day, too? God! That the old 
 man might die!" ... he added, in a voice so low 
 that his companion did not hear his words. 
 
 [227]
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A LITTLE RELATIVE OF IAGO 
 
 HE remorse which Montfanon ex- 
 pressed so naively, once acknowledged 
 to himself, increased rapidly in the 
 honest man's heart. He had reason 
 to say from the beginning that the 
 affair looked bad. A quarrel, to- 
 gether with assault, or an attempt at 
 assault, would not be easily set right. 
 It required a diplomatic miracle. The slightest lack of 
 self-possession on the part of the seconds is equivalent 
 to a catastrophe. As happens in such circumstances, 
 events are hurried, and the pessimistic anticipations of 
 the irritable Marquis were verified almost as soon as he 
 uttered them. Dorsenne and he had barely left the Pa- 
 lais Savorelli when Gorka arrived. The energy with 
 which he repulsed the proposition of an arrangement 
 which would admit of excuses on his part, served pru- 
 dent Hafner, and the not less prudent Ardea, as a signal 
 for withdrawal. It was too evident to the two men that 
 no reconciliation would result from a collision of such a 
 madman with a personage so difficult as the most au- 
 thorized of Florent's proxies had shown himself to be. 
 They then asked (lorka to relieve them from their 
 duly. They had loo plausible an excuse in Fanny's 
 
 [228]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 betrothal for Boleslas to refuse to release them. That 
 retirement was a second catastrophe. In his impa- 
 tience to find other seconds who would be firm, Gorka 
 hastened to the Cercle de la Chasse. Chance willed that 
 he should meet with two of his comrades — a Marquis 
 Cibo, Roman, and a Prince Pietrapertoso, Neapolitan, 
 who were assuredly the best he could have chosen to 
 hasten the simplest affair to its worst consequences. 
 
 Those two young men of the best Italian families, 
 both very intelligent, very loyal and very good, belonged 
 to that particular class which is to be met with in 
 Vienna, Madrid, St. Petersburg, as in Milan and in 
 Rome, of foreign clubmen hypnotized by Paris. And 
 what a Paris! That of showy and noisy fetes, that 
 which passes the morning in practising the sports in 
 fashion, the afternoons in racing, in frequenting fenc- 
 ing-schools, the evening at the theatre and the night 
 at the gaming-table! That Paris which emigrates by 
 turns, according to the season, to Monte Carlo for the 
 Tir mix Pigeons, to Deauville for the race week, to 
 Aix-les-Bains for the baccarat season; that Paris which 
 has its own customs, its own language, its own history, 
 even its own cosmopolitanism, for it exercises over cer- 
 tain minds, throughout Europe, so despotic a rule that 
 Cibo, for example, and his friend Pietrapertoso never 
 opened a French journal that was not Parisian. 
 
 They sought the short paragraphs in which were re- 
 lated, in detail, the doings of the demi-monde, the last 
 supper given by some well-known viveur, the details of 
 some large party in such and such a fashionable club, 
 the result of a shooting match, or of a fencing match be- 
 
 [229]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 tween celebrated fencers! There were between them 
 subjects of conversation of which they never wearied; 
 to know if spirituelle Gladys Harvey was more elegant 
 than Leona d'Astri, if Machault made "counters" as 
 rapid as those of General Gamier, if little Lautrec 
 would adhere or would not adhere to the game he was 
 playing. Imprisoned in Rome by the scantiness of 
 their means, and also by the wishes, the one of his un- 
 cle, the other of his grandfather, whose heirs they were, 
 their entire year was summed up in the months which 
 they spent at Nice in the winter, and in the trip they 
 took to Paris at the time of the Grand Prix for six 
 weeks. Jealous one of the other, with the most comical 
 rivalry, of the least occurrence at the Cercle des Champs- 
 Elysees or of the Rite Royale in the Eternal City, they 
 affected, in the presence of their colleagues of la chasse, 
 the impassive manner of augurs when the telegraph 
 brought them the news of some Parisian scandal. That 
 inoffensive mania which had made of stout, ruddy Cibo, 
 and of thin, pale Pietrapertoso two delightful studies 
 for Dorsenne during his Roman winter, made of them 
 terrible proxies in the service of Gorka's vengeance. 
 With what joy and what gravity they accepted that 
 mission all those who have studied swordsmen will 
 understand after this simple sketch, and with what 
 promptness they presented themselves to confer at 
 nine o'clock in the morning with their client's adver- 
 sary! In short, at half-past twelve the duel was ar- 
 ranged in its slightesl detail. The energy employed by 
 Montfanon had only ended in somewhat tempering the 
 conditions- four balls to be exchanged at twenty-five 
 
 [230}
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 paces at the word of command. The duel was fixed for 
 the following morning, in the inclosure which Cibo 
 owned, with an inn adjoining, not very far distant from 
 the classical tomb of Concilia Metella. To obtain that 
 distance and the use of new weapons it required the 
 prestige with which the Marquis suddenly clothed him- 
 self in the eyes of Gorka's seconds by pronouncing the 
 name, still legendary in the provinces and to the for- 
 eigner, of Gramont-Caderousse — Sic transit gloria 
 mundi! On leaving that rendezvous the excellent man 
 really had tears in his eyes. 
 
 "It is my fault," he moaned, "it is my fault." With 
 that Hafner we should have obtained such a fine official 
 plan by mixing in a little of ours. He offered it to 
 us himself. . . . Brave Chapron! It is I who have 
 brought him into this dilemma! ... I owe it to him 
 not to abandon him, but to follow him to the end. . . . 
 Here I shall be assisting at a duel, at my age! . . . Did 
 you see how those young snobs lowered their voices 
 when I mentioned my encounter with poor Cade- 
 rousse? . . . Fifty-two years and a month, and not to 
 know yet how to conduct one's self ! Let us go to the Rue 
 Leopardi. I wish to ask pardon of our client, and to 
 give him some advice. We will take him to one of my 
 old friends who has a garden near the Villa Pamphili, 
 very secluded. We will spend the rest of the afternoon 
 practising. . . . Ah! Accursed choler! Yes, it would 
 have been so simple to accept the other's plan yes- 
 terday. By the exchange of two or three words, I am 
 sure it could have been arranged." 
 
 "Console yourself, Marquis," replied Florent, when 
 
 [231]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 the unhappy nobleman had described to him the de- 
 plorable result of his negotiations. "I like that better. 
 Monsieur Gorka needs correction. I have only one re- 
 gret, that of not having given it to him more thor- 
 oughly. . . . Since I shall have to fight a duel, I would 
 at least have had my money's worth!" 
 
 "And you have never used a pistol?" asked Mont- 
 fanon. 
 
 "Bah! I have hunted a great deal and I believe I 
 can shoot." 
 
 "That is like night and day," interrupted the Mar- 
 quis. "Hold yourself in readiness. At three o'clock 
 come for me and I will give you a lesson. And remem- 
 ber there is a merciful God for the brave!" 
 
 Although Florent deserved praise for the cheerfulness 
 of which his reply was proof, the first moments which he 
 spent alone after the departure of his two witnesses were* 
 very painful. 
 
 That which Chapron experienced during those few 
 moments was simply very natural anxiety, the enerva- 
 tion caused by looking at the clock, and saying: 
 
 "In twenty-four hours the hand will be on this 
 point of the dial. And shall I still be living?" . . . He 
 was, however, manly, and knew how to control him- 
 self, lie struggled against the feeling of weakness, 
 and, while awaiting the time to rejoin his friends, he 
 resolved to write his last wishes. For years his inten- 
 tion had been to leave his entire fortune to his brother 
 in-law. He, therefore, made a rough draft of his will 
 in that sense, with a pen at first rather unsteady, then 
 quite firm. His will completed, he had courage enough 
 
 [232]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 to write two letters, addressed the one to that brother- 
 in-law, the other to his sister. When he had finished 
 his work the hands of the clock pointed to ten minutes 
 of three. 
 
 "Still seventeen hours and a half to wait," said he, 
 "but I think I have conquered my nerves. A short 
 walk, too, will benefit me." 
 
 So he decided to go on foot to the rendezvous named 
 by Montfanon. He carefully locked the three envel- 
 opes in the drawer of his desk. He saw, on passing, 
 that Lincoln was not in his studio. He asked the foot- 
 man if Madame Maitland was at home. The reply 
 received was that she was dressing, and that she had 
 ordered her carriage for three o'clock. 
 
 "Good," said he, "neither of them will have the 
 slightest suspicion; I am saved." 
 
 How astonished he would have been could he, while 
 walking leisurely toward his destination, have returned 
 in thought to the smoking-room he had just left! He 
 would have seen a woman glide noiselessly through the 
 open door, with the precaution of a malefactor! He 
 would have seen her examine, without disarranging, all 
 the papers on the table. She frowned on seeing Dor- 
 senne's and the Marquis's cards. She took from the 
 blotting-case some loose leaves and held them in front of 
 the glass, trying to read there the imprint left upon them. 
 He would have seen finally the woman draw from her 
 pocket a bunch of keys. She inserted one of them in 
 the lock of the drawer which Florent had so carefully 
 turned, and took from that drawer the three unsealed 
 envelopes he had placed within it. And the woman 
 
 [233]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 who thus read, with a face contracted by anguish, 
 the papers discovered in such a manner, thanks to a 
 ruse the abominable indelicacy of which gave proof of 
 shameful habits of espionage, was his own sister, the 
 Lydia whom he believed so gentle and so simple, to 
 whom he had penned an adieu so tender in case he 
 should be killed — the Lydia who would have terrified 
 him had he seen her thus, with passion distorting the 
 face which was considered insignificant! She herself, 
 the audacious spy, trembled as if she would fall, her 
 eyes dilated, her bosom heaved, her teeth chattered, so 
 greatly was she unnerved by what she had discovered, 
 by the terrible consequences which she had brought 
 about. 
 
 Had she not written the anonymous letters to Gorka, 
 denouncing to him the intrigue between Maitland and 
 Madame Steno? Was it not she who had chosen, the 
 better to poison those terrible letters, phrases the most 
 likely to strike the betrayed lover in the most sensitive 
 part of his amour pro pre? Was it not she who had 
 hastened the return of the jealous man with the certain 
 hope of drawing thus a tragical vengeance upon the 
 hated heads of her husband and the Venetian? That 
 vengeance, indeed, had broken. But upon whom? 
 Upon the only person Lydia Loved in the world, upon 
 the brother whom she saw endangered through her 
 fault: and that thought was to her so overwhelming that 
 she sank into the armchair in which Florent had been 
 seated fifteen minutes before, repeating, with an accent 
 of despair: " He is going to fight a duel. lie is going to 
 tight instead of the other!" 
 
 [234 J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 All the moral history of that obscure and violent soul 
 was summed up in the cry in which passionate anxiety 
 for her brother was coupled with a fierce hatred of her 
 husband. That hatred was the result of a youth and a 
 childhood without the story of which a duplicity so 
 criminal in a being so young would be unintelligible. 
 That youth and that childhood had presaged what 
 Lydia would one day be. But who was there to train the 
 nature in which the heredity of an oppressed race mani- 
 fested itself, as has been already remarked, by the two 
 most detestable characteristics — hypocrisy and per- 
 fidy? Who, moreover, observes in children the truth, 
 as much neglected in practise as it is common in the- 
 ory, that the defects of the tenth year become vices in 
 the thirtieth? When quite a child Lydia invented 
 falsehoods as naturally as her brother spoke the truth. 
 . . . Whosoever observed her would have perceived 
 that those lies were all told to paint herself in a favor- 
 able light. The germ, too, of another defect was 
 springing up within her — a jealousy instinctive, irra- 
 tional, almost wicked. She could not see a new play- 
 thing in Florent's hands without sulking immediately. 
 She could not bear to see her brother embrace her 
 father without casting herself between them, nor could 
 she see him amuse himself with other comrades. 
 
 Had Napoleon Chapron been interested in the study 
 of character as deeply as he was in his cotton and his 
 sugar-cane, he would have perceived, with affright, the 
 early traces of a sinful nature. But, on that point, like 
 his son, he was one of those trustful men who did not 
 judge when they loved. Moreover, Lydia and Florent, 
 
 [ *35 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 to his wounded sensibility of a demi-pariah, formed the 
 only pleasant corner in his life — were the fresh and 
 youthful comforters of his widowerhood and of his mis- 
 anthropy. He cherished them with the idolatry which 
 all great workers entertain for their children, which is 
 one of the most dangerous forms of paternal tender- 
 ness; Lydia's incipient vices were to the planter de- 
 lightful fancies ! Did she lie ? The excellent man ex- 
 claimed: What an imagination she has ! Was she jeal- 
 ous? He would sigh, pressing to his broad breast the 
 tiny form: How sensitive she is! ... The result of 
 that selfish blindness — for to love children thus is to love 
 them for one's self and not for them — was that the girl, 
 at the time of her entrance at Roehampton, was spoiled 
 in the essential traits of her character. But she was so 
 pretty, she owed to the singular mixture of three races 
 an originality of grace so seductive that only the keen 
 glance of a governess of genius could have discerned, 
 beneath that exquisite exterior, the already marked 
 lines of her character. Such governesses are rare, still 
 more so at convents than elsewhere. There was none 
 at Roehampton when Lydia entered that pious haven 
 which was to prove fatal to her, for a reason precisely 
 contrary to that which transformed for Florcnt the 
 lawns of peaceful Beaumont into a radiant paradise of 
 friendship. 
 
 Among the pupils with whom Lydia was to be 
 educated were four young girls from Philadelphia, 
 older than the Qewcomer by two years, and who, also, 
 had left America for the first time. They brought with 
 them the unconquerable aversion to negro blood and 
 
 [ 236 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 that wonderful keenness in discovering it, even in the 
 most infinitesimal degree, which distinguishes real 
 Yankees. Little Lydia Chapron, having been entered 
 as French, they at first hesitated in the face of a sus- 
 picion speedily converted into a certainty and that cer- 
 tainty into an aversion, which they could not conceal. 
 They would not have been children had they not been 
 unfeeling. They, therefore, began to offer poor Lydia 
 petty affronts. Convents and colleges resemble other 
 society. There, too, unjust contempt is like that 
 "ferret of the woods," which runs from hand to hand 
 and which always returns to its point of setting out. 
 All the scornful are themselves scorned by some one — 
 a merited punishment, which does not correct our 
 pride any more than the other punishments which 
 abound in life cure our other faults. Lydia's persecu- 
 tors were themselves the objects of outrages practised 
 by their comrades born in England, on account of cer- 
 tain peculiarities in their language and for the nasal 
 quality of their voices. The drama was limited, as we 
 can imagine, to a series of insignificant episodes and of 
 which the superintendents only surprised a demi-echo. 
 Children nurse passions as strong as ours, but so 
 much interrupted by playfulness that it is impossible 
 to measure their exact strength. Lydia's amour propre 
 was wounded in an incurable manner by that revela- 
 tion of her own peculiarity. Certain incidents of her 
 American life recurred to her, which she compre- 
 hended more clearly. She recalled the portrait of her 
 grandmother, the complexion, the hands, the hair of 
 her father, and she experienced that shame of her birth 
 
 [237]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 and of her family much more common with children 
 than our optimism imagines. Parents of humble origin 
 give their sons a liberal education, expose them to the 
 demoralization which it brings with it in their positions, 
 and what social hatreds date from the moment when 
 the boy of twelve blushes in secret at the condition of 
 his relatives! With Lydia, so instinctively jealous and 
 untruthful, those first wounds induced falsehood and 
 jealousy. The slightest superiority even, noticed in 
 one of her companions, became to her a cause for suffer- 
 ing, and she undertook to compensate by personal 
 triumphs the difference of blood, which, once discov- 
 ered, wounds a vain nature. In order to assure her- 
 self those triumphs she tried to win all the persons 
 who approached her, mistresses and comrades, and 
 she began to practise that continued comedy of atti- 
 tude and of sentiment to which the fatal desire to 
 please, so quickly leads— that charming and dangerous 
 tendency which borders much less on goodness than 
 falseness. At eighteen, submitted to a sort of contin- 
 ual cabotinage, Lydia was, beneath the most attractive 
 exterior, a being profoundly, though unconsciously, 
 wicked, capable of very little affection — she loved no 
 one truly but her brother — open to the invasion of the 
 passions of hatred which are the natural products of 
 proud and false minds. It was one of these passions, 
 Hie mosl fatal of all, which marriage was to develop 
 within her envy. 
 
 Thai hideous vice, one of those which govern the 
 world, has been SO little studied by moralists, as all too 
 dishonorable for the heart of man, no doubt, that this 
 
 [ 238 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 statement may appear improbable. Madame Mait- 
 land, for years, had been envious of her husband, but 
 envious as one of the rivals of an artist would be, 
 envious as one pretty woman is of another, as one 
 banker is of his opponent, as a politician of his adver- 
 sary, with the fierce, implacable envy which writhes 
 with physical pain in the face of success, which is 
 transported with a sensual joy in the face of disaster. 
 It is a great mistake to limit the ravages of that guilty 
 passion to the domain of professional emulation. 
 When it is deep, it does not alone attack the qualities 
 of the person, but the person himself, and it was thus 
 that Lydia envied Lincoln. Perhaps the analysis of 
 this sentiment, very subtle in its ugliness, will explain 
 to some a few of the antipathies against which they 
 have struck in their relatives. For it is not only be- 
 tween husband and wife that these unavowed envies 
 are met, it is between lover and mistress, friend and 
 friend, brother and brother, sometimes, alas, father 
 and son, mother and daughter! Lydia had married 
 Lincoln Maitland partly out of obedience to her 
 brother's wishes, partly from vanity, because the 
 young man was an American, and because it was a 
 sort of victory over the prejudices of race, of which 
 she thought constantly, but of which she never spoke. 
 It required only three months of married life to per- 
 ceive that Maitland could not forgive himself for that 
 marriage. Although he affected to scorn his compat- 
 riots, and although at heart he did not share any of the 
 views of the country in which he had not set foot since 
 his fifth year, he could not hear remarks made in New 
 
 [239]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 York upon that marriage without a pang. He disliked 
 Lydia for the humiliation, and she felt it. The birth 
 of a child would no doubt have modified that feeling, 
 and, if it would not have removed it, would at least 
 have softened the embittered heart of the young wife. 
 But no child was born to them. They had not returned 
 from their wedding tour, upon which Florent accom- 
 panied them, before their lives rolled along in that 
 silence which forms the base of all those households 
 in which husband and wife, according to a simple and 
 grand expression of the people, do not live heart against 
 heart. 
 
 After the journey through Spain, which should have 
 been one continued enchantment, the wife became 
 jealous of the evident preference which Florent showed 
 for Maitland. For the first time she perceived the 
 hold which that impassioned friendship had taken upon 
 her brother's heart. He loved her, too, but with a 
 secondary love. The comparison annoyed her daily, 
 hourly, and it did not fail to become a real wound. 
 Returned to Paris, where they spent almost three 
 years, that wound was increased by the sole fact that 
 the puissant individuality of the painter speedily rele- 
 gated to the shade the individuality of his wife, simply, 
 almost mechanically, like a large tree which pushes 
 a smaller one into the background. The composite 
 society of artists, amateurs, and writers who visited 
 Lincoln came there only for him. The house they 
 had rented was rented only for him. The journeys 
 they made were for him. In short, Lydia was borne 
 away, like Florent, in the orbit of the most despotic 
 
 [240]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 force in the world — that of a celebrated talent. An 
 entire book would be required to paint in their daily 
 truth the continued humiliations which brought the 
 young wife to detest that talent and that celebrity 
 with as much ardor as Florent worshipped them. She 
 remained, however, an honest woman, in the sense in 
 which the word is construed by the world, which sums 
 up woman's entire dishonor in errors of love. 
 
 But within Lydia's breast grew a rooted aversion 
 toward Lincoln. She detested him for the pure blood 
 which made of that large, fair, and robust man so ad- 
 mirable a type of Anglo-Saxon beauty, by the side of 
 her, so thin, so insignificant indeed, in spite of the 
 grace of her pretty, dark face. She detested him for 
 his taste, for the original elegance with which he under- 
 stood how to adorn the places in which he lived, while 
 she maintained within her a barbarous lack of taste for 
 the least arrangement of materials and of colors. When 
 she was forced to acknowledge progress in the painter, 
 bitter hatred entered her heart. When he lamented 
 over his work, and when she saw him a prey to the 
 dolorous anxiety of an artist who doubts himself, she 
 experienced a profound joy, marred only by the evident 
 sadness into which Lincoln's struggles plunged Florent. 
 Never had she met the eyes of Chapron fixed upon 
 Maitland with that look of a faithful dog which re- 
 joices in the joy of its master, or which suffers in his 
 sadness, without enduring, like Alba Steno, the sensa- 
 tion of a " needle in the heart." 
 
 The idolatrous worship of her brother for the painter 
 caused her to suffer still more as she comprehended, 
 16 [ 241 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 with the infallible perspicacity of antipathy, the im- 
 mense dupery. She read the very depths of the souls 
 of the two old comrades of Beaumont. She knew that 
 in that friendship, as is almost always the case, one 
 alone gave all to receive in exchange only the most 
 brutal recognition, that with which a huntsman or a 
 master gratifies a faithful dog! As for enlightening 
 Florent with regard to Lincoln's character, she had 
 vainly tried to do so by those fine and perfidious insin- 
 uations in which women excel. She only recognized 
 her impotence, and myriads of hateful impressions 
 were thus accumulated in her heart, to be summed up 
 in one of those frenzies of taciturn rancor which bursts 
 on the first opportunity with terrifying energy. Crime 
 itself has its laws of development. Between the pretty 
 little girl who wept on seeing a new toy in her brother's 
 hand and the Lydia Maitland, forcer of locks, author 
 of anonymous letters, driven by the thirst for vengeance, 
 even to villainy, no dramatic revolution of character 
 had taken place. The logical succession of days had 
 sufficed. 
 
 The occasion to gratify that deep and mortal long- 
 ing to touch Lincoln on some point truly sensitive, 
 how often Lydia had sought it in vain, before Madame 
 Steno obtained an ascendancy over the painter. She 
 had been reduced by it to those meannesses of feminine 
 animosity to manage, as if accidentally, that her hus- 
 band might read all the disagreeable articles written 
 about his paintings, innocently to praise before him 
 the rivals who had given him offense, to repeat to him 
 with an air of embarrassment the slightest criticisms 
 
 [242]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 pronounced on one of his exhibits — all the unpleasant 
 nesses which had the result of irritating Florent, above 
 all, for Maitland was one of those artists too well satis- 
 fied with the results of his own work for the opinion of 
 others to annoy him very much. On the other hand, 
 before the passion for the dogaresse had possessed him, 
 he had never loved. Many painters are thus, satisfying 
 with magnificent models an impetuosity of tempera- 
 ment which does not mount from the senses to the 
 heart. Accustomed to regard the human form from 
 a certain point, they find in beauty, which would ap- 
 pear to us simply animal, principles of plastic emotion 
 which at times suffice for their amorous requirements. 
 They are only more deeply touched by it, when to that 
 rather coarse intoxication is joined, in the woman who 
 inspires them, the refined graces of mind, the delicacy 
 of elegance and the subtleties of sentiment. 
 
 Such was Madame Steno, who at once inspired the 
 painter with a passion as complete as a first love. It 
 was really such. The Countess, who was possessed 
 of the penetration of voluptuousness, was not mistaken 
 there. Lydia, who was possessed of the penetration of 
 hatred, was not mistaken either. She knew from the 
 first day how matters stood in the beginning, because 
 she was as observing as she was dissimulating; then, 
 thanks to means less hypothetic, she had always had 
 the habit of making those abominable inquiries which 
 are natural, we venture to avow, to nine women out of 
 ten! And how many men are women, too, on this 
 point, as said the fabulist. At school Lydia was one 
 of those who ascended to the dormitory, or who re- 
 
 [243]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 entered the study to rummage in the cupboards and open 
 trunks of her companions. When mature, never had 
 a sealed letter passed through her hands without her 
 having ingeniously managed to read through the 
 envelope, or at least to guess from the postmark, the 
 seal, the handwriting of the address, who was the 
 author of it. The instinct of curiosity was so strong 
 that she could not refrain, at a telegraph office, from 
 glancing over the shoulders of the persons before her, 
 to learn the contents of their despatches. She never 
 had her hair dressed or made her toilette without mi- 
 nutely questioning her maid as to the goings-on in the 
 pantry and the antechamber. It was through a story 
 of that kind that she learned the altercation between 
 Florent and Gorka in the vestibule, which proves, be- 
 tween parentheses, that these espionages by the aid of 
 servants are often efficacious. But they reveal a native 
 baseness, which will not recoil before any piece of vil- 
 lainy. 
 
 When Madame Maitland suspected the liaison of 
 Madame Steno and her husband, she no more hesitated 
 to open the latter's secretary than she later hesitated to 
 open the desk of her brother. The correspondence 
 which she read in that way was of a nature which ex- 
 asperated her desire for vengeance almost to frenzy. 
 For not only did she acquire the evidence of a happi- 
 ness shared by them which humiliated in her the woman 
 barren in all senses of the word, a stranger to voluptu- 
 ousness as well as to maternity, but she gathered from 
 it numerous proofs that the Countess cherished, with 
 regard to her, a scorn of race as absolute as if Venice 
 
 [244 J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 had been a city of the United States. . . . That part 
 of the Adriatic abounds in prejudices of blood, as do 
 all countries which serve as confluents for every nation. 
 It is sufficient to convince one's self of it, to have heard 
 a Venetian treat of the Slavs as Cziavoni, and the 
 Levantines as Gregugni. 
 
 Madame Steno, in those letters she had written with 
 all the familiarity and all the liberty of passion, never 
 called Lydia anything but La Morcttina, and by a very 
 strange illogicalness never was the name of the brother 
 of La Morettina mentioned without a formula of friend- 
 ship. As the mistress treated Florent in that manner, 
 it must be that she apprehended no hostility on the 
 part of her lover's brother-in-law. Lydia understood 
 it only too well, as well as the fresh proof of Florent's 
 sentiments for Lincoln. Once more he gave prece- 
 dence to the friend over the sister, and on what an oc- 
 casion! The most secret wounds in her inmost being 
 bled as she read. The success of Alba's portrait, 
 which promised to be a masterpiece, ended by precip- 
 itating her into a fierce and abominable action. She 
 resolved to denounce Madame Steno's new love to the 
 betrayed lover, and she wrote the twelve letters, wisely 
 calculated and graduated, which had indeed determined 
 Gorka's return. His return had even been delayed too 
 long to suit the relative of Iago, who had decided to aim 
 at Madame Steno through Alba by a still more criminal 
 denunciation. Lydia was in that state of exasperation 
 in which the vilest weapons seem the best, and she in- 
 cluded innocent Alba in her hatred for Maitland, on 
 account of the portrait, a turn of sentiment which will 
 
 [245]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 show that it was envy by which that soul was poisoned 
 above all. Ah, what bitter delight the simultaneous 
 success of that double infamy had procured for her! 
 What savage joy, mingled with bitterness and ecstacy, 
 had been hers the day before, on witnessing the nervous- 
 ness of poor Alba and the suppressed fury of Boleslas! 
 
 In her mind she had seen Maitland provoked by 
 the rival whom she knew to be as adroit with the 
 sword as with the pistol. She would not have been the 
 great-grandchild of a slave of Louisiana, if she had not 
 combined with the natural energy of her hatreds a con- 
 siderable amount of superstition. A fortune-teller had 
 once foretold, from the lines in her palm, that she 
 would cause the violent death of some person. "It 
 will be he," she had thought, glancing at her husband 
 with a horrible tremor of hope. . . . And now she had 
 the proof, the indisputable proof, that her plot for ven- 
 geance was to terminate in the danger of another. Of 
 what other? 
 
 The letter and will made by Florent disclosed to her 
 the threat of a fatal duel suspended over the head 
 which was the dearest to her. So she had driven to a 
 tragical encounter the only being whom she loved. . . . 
 The disappointment of the heart in which palpitated 
 the wild energies of a bestial atavism was so sudden, 
 SO acute, so dolorous, that she uttered an inarticulate 
 cry, leaning upon her brother's desk, and, in the face 
 of those sheets of paper which had revealed so much, 
 she repeated: 
 
 "He is going to light a duel! lie! . . . And T am 
 the cause!" . . . Then, returning the letters and the 
 
 f. 24'> I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 will to the drawer, she closed it and rose, saying aloud : 
 "No. It shall not be. I will prevent it, if I have to 
 cast myself between them. I do not wish it ! I do not 
 wish it!" 
 
 It was easy to utter such words. But the execution 
 of them was less easy. Lydia knew it, for she had no 
 sooner uttered that vow than she wrung her hands in 
 despair — those weak hands which Madame Steno com- 
 pared in one of her letters to the paws of a monkey, 
 the fingers were so supple and so long — and she uttered 
 this despairing cry: "But how?" . . . which so many 
 criminals have uttered before the issue, unexpected 
 and fatal to them, of their shrewdest calculations. The 
 poet has sung it in the words which relate the story of 
 all our faults, great and small: 
 
 "The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
 Make instruments to plague us." 
 
 (Les Dieux sont pistes, et des vices oil nous nous 
 plaisons, Us font des outils a nous torturer.) ... It is 
 necessary that the belief in the equity of an incompre- 
 hensible judge be well grounded in us, for the strongest 
 minds are struck by a sinister apprehension when they 
 have to brave the chance of a misfortune absolutely 
 merited. The remembrance of the soothsayer's predic- 
 tion suddenly occurred to Lydia. She uttered another 
 cry, rubbing her hands like a somnambulist. She saw 
 her brother's blood flowing. . . . No, the duel should 
 not take place ! But how to prevent it ? How — how? 
 she repeated. Florent was not at home. She could, 
 therefore, not implore him. If he should return, would 
 
 [247]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 there still be time ? Lincoln was not at home. Where 
 was he ? Perhaps at a rendezvous with Madame Steno. 
 The image of that handsome idol of love clasped in 
 the painter's arms, plunged in the abyss of intoxica- 
 tion which her ardent letters described, was presented 
 to the mind of the jealous wife. What irony to per- 
 ceive thus those two lovers, whom she had wished to 
 strike, with the ecstacy of bliss in their eyes! Lydia 
 would have liked to tear out their eyes, his as well 
 as hers, and to trample them beneath her heel. A 
 fresh flood of hatred filled her heart. God! how she 
 hated them, and with what a powerless hatred! But 
 her time would come; another need pressed sorely — 
 to prevent the meeting of the following day, to save 
 her brother. To whom should she turn, however? 
 To Dorsenne? To Montfanon? To Baron Hafner? 
 To Peppino Ardea? She thought by turns of the 
 four personages whose almost simultaneous visits had 
 caused her to believe that they were the seconds of the 
 two champions. She rejected them, one after the 
 other, comprehending that none of them possessed 
 enough authority to arrange the affair. Her thoughts 
 finally reverted to Florent's adversary, to Boleslas 
 Gorka, whose wife was her friend and whom she had 
 always found so courteous. What if she should ask 
 him to spare her brother? It was not Florent against 
 whom the discarded lover bore a grudge. Would he 
 not be touched by her tears? Would he not tell her 
 what had led to the quarrel and what she should ask 
 of her brother thai the quarrel might be conciliated? 
 Could she not obtain from him the promise to dis- 
 
 [248]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 charge his weapon in the air, if the duel was with 
 pistols, or, if it was with swords, simply to disarm his 
 enemy ? 
 
 Like nearly all persons unversed in the art, she be- 
 lieved in infallible fencers, in marksmen who never 
 missed their aim, and she had also ideas profoundly, 
 absolutely inexact on the relations of one man with 
 another in the matter of an insult. But how can 
 women admit that inflexible rigor in certain cases, 
 which forms the foundation of manly relations, when 
 they themselves allow of a similar rigor neither in their 
 arguments with men, nor in their discussions among 
 themselves? Accustomed always to appeal from con- 
 vention to instinct and from reason to sentiment, they 
 are, in the face of certain laws, be they those of justice 
 or of honor, in a state of incomprehension worse than 
 ignorance. A duel, for example, appears to them like 
 an arbitrary drama, which the wish of one of those con- 
 cerned can change at his fancy. Ninety-nine women 
 out of a hundred would think like Lydia Maitland of 
 hastening to the adversary of the man they love, to 
 demand, to beg for his life. Let us add, however, 
 that the majority would not carry out that thought. 
 They would confine themselves to sewing in the vest 
 of their beloved some blessed medal, in recommending 
 him to the Providence, which, for them, is still the 
 favoritism of heaven. Lydia felt that if ever Florent 
 should learn of her step with regard to Gorka, he 
 would be very indignant. But who would tell him? 
 She was agitated by one of those fevers of fear and of 
 remorse which are too acute not to act, cost what it 
 
 [249]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 might. Her carriage was announced, and she entered 
 it, giving the address of the Palazzetto Doria. In what 
 terms should she approach the man to whom she was 
 about to pay that audacious and absurd visit? Ah, 
 what mattered it ? The circumstances would inspire 
 her. Her desire to cut short the duel was so strong 
 that she did not doubt of success. 
 
 She was greatly disappointed when the footman at 
 the palace told her that the Count had gone out, while 
 at the same moment a voice interrupted him with a 
 gay laugh. It was Countess Maud Gorka, who, re- 
 turning from her walk with her little boy, recognized 
 Lydia's coupe, and who said to her: 
 
 "What a lucky idea I had of returning a little sooner. 
 I see you were afraid of a storm, as you drove out in a 
 closed carriage. Will you come upstairs a moment?" 
 And, perceiving that the young woman, whose hand 
 she had taken, was trembling: "What ails you? I 
 should think you were ill! You do not feel well? 
 My God, what ails her! She is ill, Luc," she added, 
 turning to her son; "run to my room and bring me the 
 large bottle of English salts; Rose knows which one. 
 Go, go quickly." 
 
 "It is nothing," replied Lydia, who had indeed 
 closed her eyes as if on the point of swooning. "See, 
 I am belter already. I think I will return home; it 
 will be wiser." 
 
 "I shall not leave you," said Maud, seating herself, 
 too, in the carriage; and, as they handed her the bottle 
 of salts, she made Madame Maitland inhale it, talking 
 to her the while as to a sick child: " Poor little thing! 
 
 [250]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 How her checks burn! And you pay visits in this 
 state. It is very venturesome! Rue Leopardi," she 
 called to the coachman, "quickly." 
 
 The carriage rolled away, and Madame Gorka con- 
 tinued to press the tiny hands of Lydia, to whom she 
 gave the tender name, so ironical under the circum- 
 stances, of "Poor little one!" Maud was one of 
 those women like whom England produces many, for 
 the honor of that healthy and robust British civiliza- 
 tion, who are at once all energy and all goodness. As 
 large and stout as Lydia was slender, she would rather 
 have borne her to her bed in her vigorous arms than to 
 have abandoned her in the troubled state in which she 
 had surprised her. Not less practical and, as her com- 
 patriots say, as matter-of-fact as she was charitable, 
 she began to question her friend on the symptoms 
 which had preceded that attack, when with astonish- 
 ment she saw that altered face contract, tears gush- 
 ing from the closed eyes, and the fragile form con- 
 vulsed by sobs. Lydia had a nervous attack caused 
 by anxiety, by the fresh disappointment of Boleslas's 
 absence from home, and no doubt, too, by the gentle- 
 ness with which Maud addressed her, and tearing her 
 handkerchief with her white teeth, she moaned: 
 
 "No, I am not ill. But it is that thought which I 
 can not bear. No, I cannot. Ah, it is maddening!" 
 And turning toward her companion, she in her turn 
 pressed her hands, saying: "But you know nothing! 
 You suspect nothing! It is that which maddens me, 
 when I see you tranquil, calm, happy, as if the minutes 
 were not valuable, every one, to-day, to you as well as 
 
 [251]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 to me. For if one is my brother, the other is your 
 husband; and you love him. You must love him, to 
 have pardoned him for what you have pardoned him." 
 
 She had spoken in a sort of delirium, brought about 
 by her extreme nervous excitement, and she had ut- 
 tered, she, usually so dissembling, her very deepest 
 thought. She did not think she was giving Madame 
 Gorka any information by that allusion, so direct, to 
 the liaison of Boleslas with Madame Steno. She was 
 persuaded, as was entire Rome, that Maud knew of 
 her husband's infidelities, and that she tolerated them 
 by one of those heroic sacrifices which maternity justi- 
 fies. How many women have immolated thus their 
 wifely pride to maintain the domestic relation which 
 the father shall at least not desert officially! All Rome 
 was mistaken, and Lydia Maitland was to have an un- 
 expected proof. Not a suspicion that such an intrigue 
 could unite her husband with the mother of her best 
 friend had ever entered the thoughts of Boleslas's wife. 
 But to account for that, it is necessary to admit, as well, 
 and to comprehend the depth of innocence of which, 
 notwithstanding her twenty-six years, the beautiful 
 and healthy Englishwoman, with her eyes so clear, so 
 frank, was possessed. 
 
 She was one of those persons who command the 
 respect of the boldest of men, and before whom the 
 most dissolute women exercised care. She might have 
 seen the freedom of Madame Steno without being dis- 
 illusioned. She had only a liking for acquaintances 
 and positive conversation. She was very intellectual, 
 but without any desire to study character. 
 
 [252]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 Dorsennc said of her, with more justness than he 
 thought: "Madame Boleslas Gorka is married to a 
 man who has never been presented to her," meaning by 
 that, that first of all she had no idea of her husband's 
 character, and then of the treason of which she was 
 the victim. However, the novelist was not altogether 
 right. Boleslas's infidelity was of too long standing 
 for the woman passionately, religiously loyal, who was 
 his wife, not to have suffered by it. But there was an 
 abyss between such sufferings and the intuition of a 
 determined fact such as that which Lydia had just 
 mentioned, and such a suspicion was so far from 
 Maud's thoughts that her companion's words only 
 aroused in her astonishment at the mysterious danger 
 of which Lydia's troubles was a proof more eloquent 
 still than her words. 
 
 "Your brother? My husband?" she said. "I do 
 not understand you." 
 
 "Naturally," replied Lydia, "he has hidden all from 
 you, as Florent hid all from me. Well! They are go- 
 ing to fight a duel, and to-morrow morning. ... Do 
 not tremble, in your turn," she continued, twining her 
 arms around Maud Gorka. "We shall be two to pre- 
 vent the terrible affair, and we shall prevent it." 
 
 "A duel? To-morrow morning ? " repeated Maud, 
 in affright. "Boleslas fights to-morrow with your 
 brother? No, it is impossible. Who told you so? 
 How do you know it?" 
 
 "I read the proof of it with my eyes," replied Lydia. 
 "I read Florent's will. I read the letter which he pre- 
 pared for Maitland and for me in case of accident. . . . 
 
 [253]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 Should I be in the state in which you see me if it were 
 not true?" 
 
 "Oh, I believe you!" cried Maud, pressing her hands 
 to her eyelids, as if to shut out a horrible sight. " But 
 where can they be seen? Boleslas has been here 
 scarcely any of the time for two days. What is there 
 between them ? What have they said to one another ? 
 One does not risk one's life for nothing when he has, 
 like Boleslas, a wife and a son. Answer me, I conjure 
 you. Tell me all. I desire to know all. What is there 
 at the bottom of this duel?" 
 
 "What could there be but a woman?" interrupted 
 Lydia, who put into the two last words more savage 
 scorn than if she had publicly spit in Caterina Steno's 
 face. But that fresh access of anger fell before the 
 surprise caused her by Madame Gorka's reply. 
 
 "What woman? I understand you still less than I 
 did just now." 
 
 "When we are at home I will speak," . . . replied 
 Lydia, after having looked at Maud with a surprised 
 glance, which was in itself the most terrible reply. 
 The two women were silent. It was Maud who now 
 required the sympathy of friendship, so greatly had 
 the words uttered by Lydia startled her. The com- 
 panion whose arm rested upon hers in that carnage, 
 and who had inspired her with such pity fifteen min- 
 utes before, now rendered her fearful. She seemed to 
 be scaled by the side of another person. In the 
 creature whose thin nostrils were dilated with passion, 
 whose mouth was distorted with bitterness, whose eyes 
 sparkled with anger, she no longer recognized little 
 
 [251 I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 Madame Maitland, so taciturn, so reserved that she 
 was looked upon as insignificant. What had that 
 voice, usually so musical, told her; that voice so sud- 
 denly become harsh, and which had already revealed 
 to her the great danger suspended over Boleslas? To 
 what woman had that voice alluded, and what meant 
 that sudden reticence? 
 
 Lydia was fully aware of the grief into which she 
 would plunge Maud without the slightest premedita- 
 tion. For a moment she thought it almost a crime to 
 say more to a woman thus deluded. But at the same 
 time she saw in the revelation two certain results. In 
 undeceiving Madame Gorka she made a mortal enemy 
 for Madame Steno, and, on the other hand, never 
 would the woman so deeply in love with her husband 
 allow him to fight for a former mistress. So, when 
 they both entered the small salon of the Moorish 
 mansion, Lydia's resolution was taken. She was de- 
 termined to conceal nothing of what she knew from 
 unhappy Maud, who asked her, with a beating heart, 
 and in a voice choked by emotion : 
 
 "Now, will you explain to me what you want to say ? " 
 
 "Question me," replied the other; "I will answer 
 you. I have gone too far to draw back." 
 
 "You claimed that a woman was the cause of the 
 duel between your brother and my husband?" 
 
 "I am sure of it," replied Lydia. 
 
 "What is that woman's name?" 
 
 "Madame Steno." 
 
 "Madame Steno?" repeated Maud. "Catherine 
 Steno is the cause of that duel ? How?" 
 
 [255]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "Because she is my husband's mistress," replied 
 Lydia, brutally; "because she has been your hus- 
 band's, because Gorka came here, mad with jealousy, 
 to provoke Lincoln, and because he met my brother, 
 who prevented him from entering. . . . They quar- 
 relled, I know not in what manner. But I know the 
 cause of the duel. . . . Am I right, yes or no, in tell- 
 ing you they are to fight about that woman?" 
 
 "My husband's mistress?" cried Maud. "You say 
 Madame Steno has been my husband's mistress? It 
 is not true. You lie! You lie! You lie! I do not 
 believe it." 
 
 "You do not believe me?" said Lydia, shrugging 
 her shoulders. "As if I had the least interest in de- 
 ceiving you ; as if one would lie when the life of the only 
 being one loves in the world is in the balance! For I 
 have only my brother, and perhaps to-morrow I shall 
 no longer have him. . . . But you shall believe me. 
 I desire that we both hate that woman, that we both 
 be avenged upon her, as we both do not wish the duel 
 to take place — the duel of which, I repeat, she is the 
 cause, the sole cause. . . . You do not believe me? 
 Do you know what caused your husband to return? 
 You did not expect him; confess! It was I — I, do 
 you hear — who wrote him what Steno and Lincoln 
 were doing; day after flay I wrote about their love, 
 their meetings, their bliss. Ah, I was sure it would 
 not be in vain, and he returned, [s thai a proof?" 
 
 "You did nol do that?" cried Madame Gorka, re- 
 coiling with horror. "It was infamous." 
 
 "Yes, I did it," replied Lydia, with savage pride, 
 
 I 256]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "and why not? It was my right when she took my 
 husband from me. You have only to return and to 
 look in the place where Gorka keeps his letters. You 
 will certainly find those I wrote, and others, I assure 
 you, from that woman. For she has a mania for letter- 
 writing. . . . Do you believe me now, or will you re- 
 peat that I have lied?" 
 
 " Never," returned Maud, with sorrowful indigna- 
 tion upon her lovely, loyal face, "no, never will I 
 descend to such baseness." 
 
 "Well, I will descend for you," said Lydia. "What 
 you do not dare to do, I will dare, and you will ask 
 me to aid you in being avenged. Come," and, seizing 
 the hand of her stupefied companion, she drew her into 
 Lincoln's studio, at that moment unoccupied. She 
 approached one of those Spanish desks, called bar- 
 genos, and she touched two small panels, which dis- 
 closed, on opening, a secret drawer, in which were a 
 package of letters, which she seized. Maud Gorka 
 watched her with the same terrified horror with which 
 she would have seen some one killed and robbed. 
 That honorable soul revolted at the scene in which her 
 mere presence made of her an accomplice. But at 
 the same time she was a prey, as had been her husband 
 several days before, to that maddening appetite to 
 know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of 
 doubt, a physical need, as imperious as hunger and 
 thirst, and she listened to Florent's sister, who con- 
 tinued : 
 
 "Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair 
 written in her own hand? Yes," she continued, with 
 17 [ 2 57]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 cruel irony, "she loves correspondence, our fortunate 
 rival. Justice must be rendered her that she may 
 make no more avowals. She writes as she feels. It 
 seems that the successor was jealous of his predecessor. 
 . . . See, is this a proof this time?" . . . And, after 
 having glanced at the first letters as a person familiar 
 with them, she handed one of those papers to Maud, 
 who had not the courage to avert her eyes. What she 
 saw written upon that sheet drew from her a cry of 
 anguish. She had, however, only read ten lines, which 
 proved how much mistaken psychological Dorsenne 
 was in thinking that Maitland was ignorant of the for- 
 mer relations between his mistress and Gorka. Coun- 
 tess Steno's grandeur, that which made a courageous 
 woman almost a heroine in her passions, was an abso- 
 lute sincerity and disgust for the usual pettiness of 
 flirtations. She would have disdained to deny to a 
 new lover the knowledge of her past, and the semi- 
 avowals, so common to women, would have seemed 
 to her a cowardice still worse. She had not essayed 
 to hide from Maitland what connection she had broken 
 off for him, and it was upon one of those phrases, in 
 which she spoke of it openly, that Madame Gorka's 
 cms fell: 
 
 "You will be pleased with me," she wrote, "and I 
 shall no longer see in your dear blue eves which I kiss, 
 as 1 love them, that gleam of mistrust which troubles 
 me. I have stopped the correspondence with (lorka. 
 If you require it, I will even break with Maud, not- 
 withstanding the reason you know of and which will 
 render it difficult for me. But how can you be jealous 
 
 1 258]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 yet? ... Is not my frankness with regard to that 
 liaison the surest guarantee that it is ended? Come, 
 do not be jealous. Listen to what I know so well, 
 that I felt I loved, and that my life began only on the 
 day when you took me in your arms. The woman 
 you have awakened in me, no one has known- 
 
 "She writes well, does she not?" said Lydia, with a 
 gleam of savage triumph in her eyes. "Do you be- 
 lieve me, now ? . . . Do you see that we have the same 
 interest to-day, a common affront to avenge? And 
 we will avenge it. ... Do you understand that you 
 can not allow your husband to fight a duel with my 
 brother? You owe that to me who have given you 
 this weapon by which you hold him. . . . Threaten 
 him with a divorce. Fortune is with you. The law 
 will give you your child. I repeat, you hold him firmly. 
 You will prevent the duel, will you not?" 
 
 "Ah! What do you think it matters to me now if 
 they fight or not?" said Maud. "From the moment 
 he deceived me was I not widowed? Do not approach 
 me," she added, looking at Lydia with wild eyes, while 
 a shudder of repulsion shook her entire frame. . . . 
 "Do not speak to me. ... I have as much horror of 
 you as of him. . . . Let me go, let me leave here. . . . 
 Even to feel myself in the same room with you fills me 
 with horror. . . . Ah, what disgrace!" 
 
 She retreated to the door, fixing upon her informant 
 a gaze which the other sustained, notwithstanding the 
 scorn in it, with the gloomy pride of defiance. She 
 went out repeating: "Ah, what disgrace!" without 
 Lydia having addressed her, so greatly had surprise at 
 
 [259]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 the unexpected result of all her attempts paralyzed 
 her. But the formidable creature lost no time in re- 
 gret and repentance. She paused a few moments to 
 think. Then, crushing in her nervous hand the letter 
 she had shown Maud, at the risk of being discovered 
 by her husband later, she said aloud : 
 
 " Coward! Lord, what a coward she is! She 
 loves. She will pardon. Will there, then, be no one 
 to aid me? No one to smite them in their insolent 
 happiness." After meditating awhile, her face still 
 more contracted, she placed the letter in the drawer, 
 which she closed again, and half an hour later she sum- 
 moned a commissionaire, to whom she intrusted a let- 
 ter, with the order to deliver it immediately, and that 
 letter was addressed to the inspector of police of the 
 district. She informed him of the intended duel, giv- 
 ing him the names of the two adversaries and of the 
 four seconds. If she had not been afraid of her 
 brother, she would even that time have signed her 
 name. 
 
 "I should have gone to work that way at first," said 
 she to herself, when the door of the small salon closed 
 behind the messenger to whom she had given her order 
 personally. "The police know how to prevent them 
 from fighting, even if I do not succeed with Florent. 
 . . . As for him?" . . . and she looked at a port rail 
 of Maitland upon the desk at which she had just been 
 writing. "Were I to tell him what is taking place. 
 . . . No, I will ask nothing of him. ... I hate him 
 too much.". . . And she concluded with a fierce smile, 
 which disclosed her teeth at the corners of her mouth: 
 
 [260]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "It is all the same. It is necessary that Maud Gorka 
 work with me against her. There is some one whom 
 she will not pardon, and that is . . . Madame Steno." 
 And, in spite of her uneasiness, the wicked woman trem- 
 bled with delight at the thought of her work. 
 
 [261]
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ON THE GROUND 
 
 HEN Maud Gorka left the house on the 
 Rue Leopardi she walked on at first 
 rapidly, blindly, without seeing, with- 
 out hearing anything, like a wounded 
 animal which runs through the thicket 
 to escape danger, to escape its wounds, 
 to escape itself. It was a little more 
 than half-past three o'clock when the 
 unhappy woman hastened from the studio, unable to 
 bear near her the presence of Lydia Maitland, of that 
 sinister worker of vengeance who had so cruelly re- 
 vealed to her, with such indisputable proofs, the 
 atrocious affair, the long, the infamous, the inexpiable 
 treason. 
 
 It was almost six o'clock before Maud Gorka really 
 regained consciousness. A very common occurrence 
 aroused her from the somnambulism of suffering in 
 which she had wandered for two hours. The storm 
 which had threatened since noon at length broke. 
 Maud, who had scarcely heeded the firsl large drops, 
 
 was forced to seek shelter when the clouds suddenly 
 burst, and she took refuge at the right extremity of the 
 colonnade of Si. Peter's. How had she gone that far? 
 She did not know herself precisely. She remembered 
 
 [2(U |
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 vaguely that she had wandered through a labyrinth of 
 small streets, had crossed the Tiber — no doubt by the 
 Garibaldi bridge — had passed through a large garden 
 — doubtless the Janicule, since she had walked along 
 a portion of the ramparts. She had left the city by the 
 Porte de Saint-Pancrace, to follow by that of Caval- 
 legieri the sinuous line of the Urban walls. 
 
 That corner of Rome, with a view of the pines of the 
 Villa Pamfili on one side, and on the other the back part 
 of the Vatican, serves as a promenade during the win- 
 ter for the few cardinals who go in search of the after- 
 noon sun, certain there of meeting only a few strangers. 
 In the month of May it is a desert, scorched by the sun, 
 which glows upon the brick, discolored by two centuries 
 of that implacable heat which caresses the scales of the 
 green and gray lizards about to crawl between the 
 bees of Pope Urbain VIIFs escutcheon of the Barberini 
 family. Madame Gorka's instinct had at least served 
 her in leading her upon a route on which she met no 
 one. Now the sense of reality returned. She recog- 
 nized the objects around her, and that framework, so 
 familiar to her piety of fervent Catholicism, the enor- 
 mous square, the obelisk of Sixte-Quint in the centre, 
 the fountains, the circular portico crowned with bishops 
 and martyrs, the palace of the Vatican at the corner, 
 and yonder the facade of the large papal cathedral, 
 with the Saviour and the apostles erect upon the august 
 pediment. 
 
 On any other occasion in life the pious young 
 woman would have seen in the chance which led her 
 thither, almost unconsciously, an influence from above, 
 
 [263]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 an invitation to enter the church, there to ask the 
 strength to suffer of the God who said: "Let him who 
 wishes follow me, let him renounce all, let him take 
 up his cross and follow me!" But she was passing 
 through that first bitter paroxysm of grief in which it 
 is impossible to pray, so greatly does the revolt of 
 nature cry out within us. Later, we may recognize the 
 hand of Providence in the trial imposed upon us. 
 We see at first only the terrible injustice of fate, and 
 we tremble in the deepest recesses of our souls with 
 rebellion at the blow from which we bleed. That 
 which rendered the rebellion more invincible and more 
 fierce in Maud, was the suddenness of the mortal 
 blow. 
 
 Daily some pure, honest woman, like her, acquires 
 the proof of the treason of a husband whom she has 
 not ceased to love. Ordinarily, the indisputable proof 
 is preceded by a long period of suspicion. The faith- 
 less one neglects his hearth. A change takes- place in 
 his daily habits. Various hints reveal to the outraged 
 wife the trace of a rival, which woman's jealousy dis- 
 tinguishes with a scent as certain as that of a dog 
 which finds a stranger in the house. And, finally, 
 although there is in the transition from doubt to cer- 
 tainty a laceration of the heart, it is at least the lacera- 
 tion of a heart prepared. That preparation, that 
 adaptation, so to speak, of her soul to the truth, Maud 
 had been deprived of. The care taken by Madame 
 Steno to strengthen the friendship between her and 
 Alba had suppressed the slightest signs. Boleslas had 
 no need to change his domestic life in order to see his 
 
 [26, I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 mistress at his convenience and in an intimacy enter- 
 tained, provoked, by his wife herself. The wife, too, 
 had been totally, absolutely deceived. She had as- 
 sisted in her husband's adultery with one of those 
 illusions so complete that it seemed improbable to the 
 indifferent and to strangers. The awakening from 
 such illusions is the most terrible. That man whom 
 society considered a complaisant husband, that woman 
 who seemed so indulgent a wife, suddenly find that 
 they have committed a murder or a suicide, to the great 
 astonishment of the world which, even then, hesitates 
 to recognize in that access of folly the proof, the blow, 
 more formidable, more instantaneous in its ravages, 
 than those of love — sudden disillusion. When the dis- 
 aster is not interrupted by acts of violence, it causes an 
 irreparable destruction of the youthfulness of the soul, 
 it is the idea instilled in us forever that all can betray, 
 since we have been betrayed in that manner. It is 
 for years, for life, sometimes, that powerlessness to be 
 affected, to hope, to believe, which caused Maud 
 Gorka to remain, on that afternoon, leaning against 
 the pedestal of a column, watching the rain fall, instead 
 of ascending to the Basilica, where the confessional of- 
 fers pardon for all sins and the remedy for all sorrows. 
 Alas! It was consolation simply to kneel there, and 
 the poor woman was only in the first stage of Calvary. 
 She watched the rain fall, and she found a savage 
 comfort in the formidable character of the storm, which 
 seemed like a cataclysm of nature, to such degree did 
 the flash of the lightning and the roar of the thunder 
 mingle with the echoes of the vast palace beneath the 
 
 [265]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 lash of the wind. Forms began to take shape in her 
 mind, after the whirlwind of blind suffering in which 
 she felt herself borne away after the first glance cast 
 upon that fatal letter. Each word rose before her 
 eyes, so feverish that she closed them with pain. The 
 last two years of her life, those which had bound her 
 to Countess Steno, returned to her thoughts, illumi- 
 nated by a brilliance which drew from her constantly 
 these words, uttered with a moan: How could he? 
 She saw Venice and their sojourn in the villa to which 
 Boleslas had conducted her after the death of their 
 little girl, in order that there, in the restful atmosphere 
 of the lagoon, she might overcome the keen paroxysm 
 of pain. 
 
 How very kind and delicate Madame Steno had 
 been at that time; at least how kind she had seemed, 
 and how delicate likewise, comprehending her grief 
 and sympathizing with it. . . . Their superficial rela- 
 tions had gradually ripened into friendship. Then, no 
 doubt, the treason had begun. The purloiner of love 
 had introduced herself under cover of the pity in which 
 Maud had believed. Seeing the Countess so generous, 
 she had treated as calumny the slander of the world 
 relative to a person capable of such touching kindness 
 of heart. And it was at that moment that the false 
 woman took Boleslas from her! A thousand details 
 recurred to her which at the time she had not under- 
 stood; the sails of the two lovers in the gondola, 
 which she had not even thought of suspecting; a visit 
 which Boleslas had made to Piove and from which he 
 only returned the following day, giving as a pretext a 
 
 I ■'''' I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 missed train ; words uttered aside on the balcony of the 
 Palais Steno at night, while she talked with Alba. Yes, 
 it was at Venice that their adultery began, before her 
 who had divined nothing, her whose heart was filled 
 with inconsolable regret for her lost darling! Ah, how 
 could he? she moaned again, and the visions multiplied. 
 
 In her mind were then opened all the windows 
 which Gorka's perfldity and the Countess's as well, 
 had sealed with such care. She saw again the months 
 which followed their return to Rome, and that mode 
 of life so convenient for both. How often had she 
 walked out with Alba, thus freeing the mother and 
 the husband from the only surveillance annoying to 
 them. What did the lovers do during those hours? 
 How many times on returning to the Palazzetto Doria 
 had she found Catherine Steno in the library, seated on 
 the divan beside Boleslas, and she had not mistrusted 
 that the woman had come, during her absence, to em- 
 brace that man, to talk to him of love, to give herself 
 to him, without doubt, with the charm of villainy and of 
 danger! She remembered the episode of their meeting 
 at Bayreuth the previous summer, when she went to 
 England alone with her son, and when her husband 
 undertook to conduct Alba and the Countess from 
 Rome to Bavaria. They had all met at Nuremberg. 
 The apartments of the hotel in which the meeting took 
 place became again very vivid in Maud's memory, with 
 Madame Steno's bedroom adjoining that of Boleslas's. 
 
 The vision of their caresses, enjoyed in the liberty of 
 the night, while innocent Alba slept near by, and when 
 she rolled away in a carriage with little Luc, drew 
 
 [267]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 from her this cry once more: "Ah, how could he! 11 . . . 
 And immediately that vision awoke in her the re- 
 membrance of her husband's recent return. She saw 
 him traversing Europe on the receipt of an anonymous 
 letter, to reach that woman's side twenty-four hours 
 sooner. What a proof of passion was the frenzy 
 which had not allowed him any longer to bear doubt 
 and absence! . . . Did he love the mistress who did 
 not even love him, since she had deceived him with 
 Maitland? And he was going to fight a duel on her 
 account! . . . Jealousy, at that moment, wrung the 
 wife's heart with a pang still stronger than that of in- 
 dignation. She, the strong Englishwoman, so large, so 
 robust, almost masculine in form, mentally compared 
 herself with the supple Italian with her form so round, 
 with her gestures so graceful, her hands so delicate, her 
 feet so dainty; compared herself with the creature of 
 desire, whose every movement implied a secret wave of 
 passion, and she ceased her cry — "Ah, how could he?" 
 — at once. She had a clear knowledge of the power of 
 her rival. 
 
 It is indeed a supreme agony for an honorable 
 woman, who loves, to feel herself thus degraded by the 
 mere thought of the intoxication her husband has 
 tasted in arms more beautiful, more caressing, more 
 entwining than hers. It was, too, a signal for the 
 return of will to the tortured but proud soul. Dis- 
 gust possessed her, so violent, so complete, for the 
 atmosphere of falsehood and of sensuality in which 
 Boleslas had lived two years, that she drew herself up, 
 becoming again strong and implacable. Braving the 
 
 [ 268 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 storm, she turned in the direction of her home, with 
 this resolution as firmly rooted in her mind as if she 
 had deliberated for months and months. 
 
 "I will not remain with that man another day. To- 
 morrow I will leave for England with my son." 
 
 How many, in a similar situation, have uttered such 
 vows, to abjure them when they find themselves face 
 to face with the man who has betrayed them, and 
 whom they love. Maud was not of that order. Cer- 
 tainly she loved dearly the seductive Boleslas, wedded 
 against her parents' will the perfidious one for whom 
 she had sacrificed all, living far from her native land 
 and her family for years, because it pleased him, breath- 
 ing, living, only for him and for their boy. But there 
 was within her — as her long, square chin, her short 
 nose and the strength of her brow revealed — the force 
 of inflexibility — which is met with in characters of an 
 absolute uprightness. Love, with her, could be stifled 
 by disgust, or, rather, she considered it degrading to 
 continue to love one whom she scorned, and, at that 
 moment, it was supreme scorn which reigned in her 
 heart. She had, in the highest degree, the great virtue 
 which is found wherever there is nobility, and of which 
 the English have made the basis of their moral educa- 
 tion — the religion, the fanaticism of loyalty. She had 
 always grieved on discovering the wavering nature of 
 Boleslas. But if she had observed in him, with sor- 
 row, any exaggerations of language, any artificial senti- 
 ment, a dangerous suppleness of mind, she had par- 
 doned him those defects with the magnanimity of love, 
 attributing them to a defective training. Gorka at a 
 
 [269]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 very early age had witnessed a stirring family drama — 
 his mother and his father lived apart, while neither the 
 one nor the other had the exclusive guidance of the 
 child. How could she find indulgence for the shame- 
 ful hypocrisy of two years' standing, for the villainy of 
 that treachery practised at the domestic hearth, for 
 the continued, voluntary disloyalty of every day, every 
 hour? Though Maud experienced, in the midst of her 
 despair, the sort of calmness which proves a firm and 
 just resolution, when she reentered the Palazzetto Doria 
 — what a drama had been enacted in her heart since 
 her going out ! — and it was in a voice almost as calm as 
 usual that she asked: "Is the Count at home?" 
 
 What did she experience when the servant, after 
 answering her in the affirmative, added: "Madame 
 and Mademoiselle Steno, too, are awaiting Madame in 
 the salon." At the thought that the woman who had 
 stolen from her her husband was there, the betrayed 
 wife felt her blood boil, to use a common but expressive 
 phrase. It was very natural that Alba's mother should 
 call upon her, as was her custom. It was still more 
 natural for her to come there that day. For very 
 probably a report of the duel the following day had 
 reached her. Her presence, however, and at that mo- 
 ment, aroused in Maud a feeling of indignation so 
 impassioned that her first impulse was to enter, to 
 drive out Boleslas's mistress as one would drive out a 
 servant surprised thieving. Suddenly the thought of 
 Alba presented itself to her mind, of that sweet and 
 pure Alba, of that soul as pure as her name, of her 
 whose dearest friend she was. Since the dread revela- 
 
 [270]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 tion she had thought several times of the young girl. 
 But her deep sorrow having absorbed all the power of 
 her soul, she had not been able to feel such friend ship 
 for the delicate and pretty child. At the thought of 
 ejecting her rival, as she had the right to do, that sen- 
 timent stirred within her. A strange pity flooded her 
 soul, which caused her to pause in the centre of the 
 large hall, ornamented with statues and columns, 
 which she was in the act of crossing. She called the 
 servant just as he was about to put his hand on the 
 knob of the door. The analogy between her situation 
 and that of Alba struck her very forcibly. She ex- 
 perienced the sensation which Alba had so often ex- 
 perienced in connection with Fanny, sympathy with a 
 sorrow so like her own. She could not give her hand 
 to Madame Steno after what she had discovered, nor 
 could she speak to her otherwise than to order her 
 from her house. And to utter before Alba one single 
 phrase, to make one single gesture which would arouse 
 her suspicions, would be too implacable, too iniquitous 
 a vengeance! She turned toward the door which led 
 to her own room, bidding the servant ask his master 
 to come thither. She had devised a means of satisfy- 
 ing her just indignation without wounding her dear 
 friend, who was not responsible for the fact that the 
 two culprits had taken shelter behind her innocence. 
 Having entered the small, pretty boudoir which led 
 into her bedroom, she seated herself at her desk, on 
 which was a photograph of Madame Steno, in a group 
 consisting of Boleslas, Alba, and herself. The photo- 
 graph smiled with a smile of superb insolence, which 
 
 [271]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 suddenly reawakened in the outraged woman her 
 frenzy of rancor, interrupted or rather suspended for 
 several moments by pity. She took the frame in her 
 hands, she cast it upon the ground, trampling the glass 
 beneath her feet, then she began to write, on the first 
 blank sheet, one of those notes which passion alone 
 dares to pen, which does not draw back at every word : 
 
 "I know all. For two years you have been my 
 husband's mistress. Do not deny it. I have read the 
 confession written by your own hand. I do not wish 
 to see nor to speak to you again. Never again set foot 
 in my house. On account of your daughter I have not 
 driven you out to-day. A second time I shall not 
 hesitate." 
 
 She was just about to sign Maud Gorka, when the 
 sound of the door opening and shutting caused her 
 to turn. Boleslas was before her. Upon his face was 
 an ambiguous expression, which exasperated the un- 
 happy wife still more. Having returned more than an 
 hour before, he had learned that Maud had accompa- 
 nied to the Rue Leopardi Madame Maitland, who was 
 ill, and he awaited her return with impatience, agitated 
 by the thought that Florent's sister was no doubt ill 
 owing to the duel of the morrow, and in that case, 
 Maud, too, would know all. There are conversations 
 and, above all, adieux which a man who is about to 
 fulil a duel always likes to avoid. Although he forced 
 a smile, he no longer doubted. His wife's evident 
 agitation could not be explained by any other cause. 
 Could he divine that she had learned not only of the 
 duel, but, too, of an intrigue that day ended and of 
 
 [272]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 which she had known nothing for two years? As she 
 was silent, and as that silence embarrassed him, he 
 tried, in order to keep him in countenance, to take her 
 hand and kiss it, as was his custom. She repelled him 
 with a look which he had never seen upon her face and 
 said to him, handing him the sheet of paper lying be- 
 fore her: 
 
 "Do you wish to read this note before I send it to 
 Madame Steno, who is in the salon with her daughter?" 
 
 Boleslas took the letter. He read the terrible lines, 
 and he became livid. His agitation was so great that 
 he returned the paper to his wife without replying, 
 without attempting to prevent, as was his duty, the 
 insult offered to his former mistress, whom he still 
 loved to the point of risking his life for her. That 
 man, so brave and so yielding at once, was over- 
 whelmed by one of those surprises which put to flight 
 all the powers of the mind, and he watched Maud slip 
 the note into an envelope, write the address and ring. 
 He heard her say to the servant : 
 
 "You will take this note to Countess Steno and you 
 will excuse me to the ladies. ... I feel too indisposed 
 to receive any one. If they insist, you will reply that 
 I have forbidden you to admit any one. You under- 
 stand — any one." 
 
 The man took the note. He left the room and he 
 had no doubt fulfilled his errand while the husband 
 and wife stood there, face to face, neither of them 
 breaking the formidable silence. They felt that the 
 hour was a solemn one. 
 
 Never, since the day on which Cardinal Manning 
 
 18 t 2 73]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 had united their destinies in the chapel of Ardrahan 
 Castle, had they been engaged in a crisis so tragical. 
 Such moments lay bare the very depths of the charac- 
 ter. Courageous and noble, Maud did not think of 
 weighing her words. She did not try to feed her jeal- 
 ousy, nor to accentuate the cruelty of the cause of the 
 insult which she had the right to launch at the man 
 toward whom that very morning she had been so con- 
 fiding, so tender. The baseness and the cruelty were 
 to remain forever unknown to the woman who no longer 
 hesitated as to the bold resolution she had made. No. 
 That which she expected of the man whom she had 
 loved so dearly, of whom she had entertained so ex- 
 alted an opinion, whom she had just seen fall so low, 
 was a cry of truth, an avowal in which she would find 
 the throb of a last remnant of honor. If he were silent 
 it was not because he was preparing a denial. The 
 tenor of Maud's letter left no doubt as to the nature of 
 the proofs she had in her hand, which she had there 
 no doubt. How? He did not ask himself that ques- 
 tion, governed as he was by a phenomenon in which 
 was revealed to the full the singular complexity of his 
 nature. The Slav's especial characteristic is a pro- 
 digious, instantaneous nervousness. It seems that 
 those beings with the uncertain hearts have a faculty of 
 amplifying in themselves, to the point of absorbing the 
 heart altogether, states of partial, passing, and yet sin- 
 cere emotion. The intensity of their momentary ex- 
 citement thus makes of them sincere comedians, who 
 speak to you as if they felt certain sentiments of an 
 exclusive on lei-, to feel contradictory ones the day 
 
 I 274]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 after, with the same ardor, with the same untruthful- 
 ness, unjustly say the victims of those natures, so much 
 the more deceitful as they are more vibrating. 
 
 He suffered, indeed, on discovering that Maud had 
 been initiated into his criminal intrigue, but he suf- 
 fered more for her than for himself. It was sufficient 
 for that suffering to occupy a few moments, a few 
 hours. It reinvested the personality of the impas- 
 sioned and weak husband who loved his wife while 
 betraying her. There was, indeed, a shade of it in his 
 adventure, but a very slight shade. And yet, he did 
 not think he was telling an untruth, when he finally 
 broke the silence to say to her whom he had so long 
 deceived: 
 
 "You have avenged yourself with much severity, 
 Maud, but you had the right. ... I do not know who 
 has informed you of an error which was very culpable, 
 very wrong, very unfortunate, too. ... I know that I 
 have in Rome enemies bent upon my ruin, and I am 
 sure they have left me no means of defending myself. 
 ... I have deceived you, and I have suffered." 
 
 He paused after those words, uttered with a tremor 
 of conviction which was not assumed. He had forgot- 
 ten that ten minutes before he had entered the room 
 with the firm determination to hide his duel and its 
 cause from the woman for whose pardon he would at 
 that moment have sacrificed his life without hesitation. 
 He continued, in a voice softened by affection: "What- 
 ever they have told you, whatever you have read, I 
 swear to you, you do not know all." 
 
 "I know enough," interrupted Maud, "since I know 
 
 [275]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 that you have been the lover of that woman, of the 
 mother of my intimate friend, at my side, under my 
 very eyes. ... If you had suffered by that deception, 
 as you say, you would not have waited to avow all to 
 me until I held in my hands the undeniable proof of 
 your infamy. . . . You have cast aside the mask, or, 
 rather, I have wrested it from you. ... I desire no 
 more. ... As for the details of the shameful story, 
 spare me them. It was not to hear them that I re- 
 entered a house every corner of which reminds me that 
 I believed in you implicitly, and that you have betrayed 
 me, not one day, but every day; that you betrayed me 
 the day before yesterday, yesterday, this morning, an 
 hour ago. ... I repeat, that is sufficient." 
 
 "But it is not sufficient for me!" exclaimed Boleslas. 
 "Yes, all you have just said is true, and I deserve to 
 have you tell it to me. But that which you could not 
 read in those letters shown to you, that which I have 
 kept for two years in the depths of my heart, and which 
 must now be told — is that, through all these fatal im- 
 pulses, I have never ceased to love you. . . . Ah, do 
 not recoil from me, do not look at me thus. ... I feel 
 it once more in the agony I have suffered since you are 
 speaking to me; there is something within me that has 
 never ceased being yours. That woman has been my 
 aberration. She has had my madness, my senses, my 
 passion, all the evil instincts of my being. . . . You 
 have remained my idol, my affection, my religion. . . . 
 If I lied to you it was because I knew that the day on 
 which you would find out my fault I should see you 
 before me, despairing and implacable as you now are, 
 
 [276]
 
 Boleslas confesses. 
 
 [From the Original Drawing by Edward King.}

 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 as I can not bear to have you be. Ah, judge me, con- 
 demn me, curse me ; but know, but feel, that in spite of 
 all I have loved you, I still love you." 
 
 Again he spoke with an enthusiasm which was not 
 feigned. Though he had deceived her, he recognized 
 only too well the value of the loyal creature before him, 
 whom he feared he should lose. If he could not 
 move her at the moment when he was about to fight a 
 duel, when could he move her? So he approached 
 her with the same gesture of suppliant and impassioned 
 adoration which he employed in the early days of their 
 marriage, and before his treason, when he had told her 
 of his love. No doubt that remembrance thrust itself 
 upon Maud and disgusted her, for it was with veritable 
 horror that she again recoiled, replying: 
 
 "Be silent! That lie is the worst of all. It pains 
 me. I blush for you, in seeing that you have not even 
 the courage to acknowledge your fault. God is my 
 witness, I should have respected you more, had you 
 said: 'I have ceased loving you. I have taken a mis- 
 tress. It was convenient for me to lie to you. I have 
 lied. I have sacrificed all to my passion, my honor, 
 my duties, my vows and you.' . . . Ah, speak to me 
 like that, that I may have with you the sentiment of 
 truth. . . . But that you dare to repeat to me words 
 of tenderness after what you have done to me, inspires 
 me with repulsion. It is too bitter." 
 
 "Yes," said Boleslas, "you think thus. True and 
 simple as you are, how could you have learned to un- 
 derstand what a weak will is — a will which wishes and 
 which does not, which rises and which falls ? . . . And 
 
 [277]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 yet, if I had not loved you, what interest would I have 
 in lying to you? Have I anything to conceal now? 
 Ah, if you knew in what a position I am, on the eve of 
 what day, I beseech you to believe that at least the best 
 part of my being has never ceased to be yours!" 
 
 It was the strongest effort he could make to bring 
 back the heart of his wife so deeply wounded — the 
 allusion to his duel. For since she had not mentioned 
 it to him, it was no doubt because she was still ignorant 
 of it. He was once more startled by the reply she 
 made, and which proved to him to what a degree in- 
 dignation had paralyzed even her love. He resumed: 
 
 "Do you know it?" 
 
 "I know that you fight a duel to-morrow," said she, 
 "and for your mistress, I know, too." 
 
 "It is not true," he exclaimed; "it is not for 
 her." 
 
 "What ? " asked Maud, energetically. " Was it not on 
 her account that you went to the Rue Leopardi to pro- 
 voke your rival ? For she is not even true to you, and 
 it is justice. W'as it not on her account that you 
 wished to enter the house, in spite of that rival's brother- 
 in-law, and that a dispute arose between you, followed 
 by this challenge ? Was it not on her account, and to 
 revenge yourself, that you returned from Poland, be- 
 cause you had received anonymous letters which told 
 you all ? And to know all has not disgusted you for- 
 ever with that creature? . . . But if she had deigned 
 to lie to you, she would have you still at her feet, and 
 you dare to tell me that you love me when you have 
 not even cared to spare me the affront of learning all 
 
 [278]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 that villainy — all that baseness, all that disgrace- 
 through some one else?" 
 
 "Who was it?" he asked. "Name that Judas to 
 me, at least?" 
 
 "Do not speak thus," interrupted Maud, bitterly; 
 "you have lost the right. . . . And then do not seek 
 too far. ... I have seen Madame Maitland to-day." 
 
 "Madame Maitland?" repeated Boleslas. "Did 
 Madame Maitland denounce me to you? Did Ma- 
 dame Maitland write those anonymous letters?" 
 
 "She desired to be avenged," replied Maud, adding: 
 "She has the right, since your mistress robbed her of 
 her husband." 
 
 "Well, I, too, will be avenged!" exclaimed the 
 young man. "I will kill that husband for her, after 
 I have killed her brother. I will kill them both, one 
 after the other.". . . His mobile countenance, which 
 had just expressed the most impassioned of supplica- 
 tions, now expressed only hatred and rage, and the 
 same change took place in his immoderate sensibility. 
 "Of what use is it to try to settle matters?" he con- 
 tinued. "I see only too well all is ended between us. 
 Your pride and your rancor are stronger than your 
 love. If it had been otherwise, you would have begged 
 me not to fight, and you would only have reproached 
 me, as you have the right to do, I do not deny. . . . 
 But from the moment that you no longer love me, woe 
 to him whom I find in my path! Woe to Madame 
 Maitland and to those she loves!" 
 
 "This time at least you are sincere," replied Maud, 
 with renewed bitterness. "Do you think I have not 
 
 [279]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 suffered sufficient humiliation ? Would you like me to 
 supplicate you not to fight for that creature? And do 
 you not feel the supreme outrage which that encoun- 
 ter is to me? Moreover," she continued with tragical 
 solemnity, "I did not summon you to have with you a 
 conversation as sad as it is useless, but to tell you my 
 resolution. ... I hope that you will not oblige me to 
 resort for its execution to the means which the law puts 
 in my power?" 
 
 "I don't deserve to be spoken to thus," said Boles- 
 las, haughtily. 
 
 "I will remain here to-night," resumed Maud, with- 
 out heeding that reply, "for the last time. To-morrow 
 evening I shall leave for England." 
 
 "You are free," said he, with a bow. 
 
 "And I shall take my son with me," she added. 
 
 "Our son!" he replied, with the composure of a man 
 overcome by an access of tenderness and who controls 
 himself. "That? No. I forbid it." 
 
 "You forbid it?" said she. "Very well, we will 
 appeal it. I knew that you would force me," she con- 
 tinued, haughtily, in her turn, "to have recourse to the 
 law. . . . But I shall not recoil before anything. In 
 betraying me as you have done, you have also betrayed 
 our child. I will not leave him to you. You are not 
 worthy of him." 
 
 "Listen, Maud," said Bolcslas, sadly, after a pause, 
 "remember that it is perhaps the last time we shall 
 meet. . . . To-morrow, if I am killed, you shall do 
 as you like. ... If I live, T promise to consent to any 
 arrangement that will be just. . . . What I ask of you 
 
 [280]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 is — and I have the right, notwithstanding my faults — in 
 the name of our early years of wedded life, in the name 
 of that son himself, to leave me in a different way, to 
 have a feeling, I don't say of pardon, but of pity." 
 
 "Did you have it for me," she replied, "when you 
 were following your passion by way of my heart? 
 No!". . . And she walked before him in order to 
 reach the door, fixing upon him eyes so haughty that 
 he involuntarily lowered his. "You have no longer a 
 wife and I have no longer a husband. ... I am no 
 Madame Maitland; I do not avenge myself by means 
 of anonymous letters nor by denunciation. . . . But 
 to pardon you? . . . Never, do you hear, never ! " 
 
 With those words she left the room, with those words 
 into which she put all the indomitable energy of her 
 character. . . . Boleslas did not essay to detain her. 
 When, an hour after that horrible conversation, his 
 valet came to inform him that dinner was served, the 
 wretched man was still in the same place, his elbow 
 on the mantelpiece and his forehead in his hand. 
 He knew Maud too well to hope that she would change 
 her determination, and there was in him, in spite of 
 his faults, his folly and his complications, too much of 
 the real gentleman to employ means of violence and 
 to detain her forcibly, when he had erred so gravely. 
 So she went thus. If, just before, he had exaggerated 
 the expression of his feelings in saying, in thinking 
 rather, that he had never ceased loving her, it was true 
 that amid all his errors he had maintained for her an 
 affection composed particularly of gratitude, remorse, 
 esteem and, it must be said, of selfishness. 
 
 [281]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 He loved for the devotion of which he was abso- 
 lutely sure, and then, like many husbands who deceive 
 an irreproachable wife, he was proud of her, while un- 
 faithful to her. She seemed to him at once the dignity 
 and the charity of his life. She had remained in his 
 eyes the one to whom he could always return, the as- 
 sured friend of moments of trial, the haven after the 
 tempest, the moral peace when he was weary of the 
 troubles of passion. What life would he lead when 
 she was gone? For she would go! Her resolution 
 was irrevocable. All dropped from his side at once. 
 The mistress, to whom he had sacrificed the noblest 
 and most loving heart, he had lost under circumstances 
 as abject as their two years of passion had been dis- 
 honorable. His wife was about to leave him, and 
 would he succeed in keeping his son ? He had returned 
 to be avenged, and he had not even succeeded in meet- 
 ing his rival. That being so impressionable had ex- 
 perienced, in the face of so many repeated blows, a dis- 
 appointment so absolute that he gladly looked forward 
 to the prospect of exposing himself to death on the 
 following day, while at the same time a bitter flood 
 of rancor possessed him at the thought of all the per- 
 sons concerned in his adventure. He would have 
 liked to crush Madame Steno and Maitland, Lydia and 
 Florent — Dorsenne, too — for having given him the 
 false word of honor, which had strengthened still more 
 his thirst for vengeance by calming it for a few hours. 
 
 His confusion of thoughts was only greater when he 
 was seated alone with his son at dinner. That morning 
 he had seen before him his wife's smiling face. The 
 
 [282]
 
 COSMOrOLLS 
 
 absence of her whom at that moment he valued above 
 all else was so sad to him that he ventured one last 
 attempt, and after the meal he sent little Luc to see if 
 his mother would receive him. The child returned 
 with a reply in the negative. " Mamma is resting. . . . 
 She does not wish to be disturbed." So the matter 
 was irremissible. She would not see her husband 
 until the morrow — if he lived. For vainly did Boleslas 
 convince himself that afternoon that he had lost none 
 of his skill in practising before his admiring seconds; 
 a duel is always a lottery. He might be killed, and 
 if the possibility of an eternal separation had not 
 moved the injured woman, what prayer would move 
 her? He saw her in his thoughts — her who at that 
 moment, with blinds drawn, all lights subdued, en- 
 dured in the semi-darkness that suffering which curses 
 but does not pardon. Ah, but that sight was painful 
 to him! And, in order that she might at least know 
 how he felt, he took their son in his arms, and, pressing 
 him to his breast, said: "If you see your mother be- 
 fore I do, you will tell her that we spent a very lonesome 
 evening without her, will you not?" 
 
 "Why, what ails you?" exclaimed the child. "You 
 have wet my cheeks with tears — you are weeping! " 
 
 "You will tell her that, too, promise me," replied the 
 father, "so that she will take good care of herself, see- 
 ing how we love her." 
 
 "But," said the little boy, "she was not ill when we 
 walked together after breakfast. She was so gay." 
 
 "I think, too, it will be nothing serious," replied 
 Gorka. He was obliged to dismiss his son and to go 
 
 [283]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 out. He felt so horribly sad that he was physically 
 afraid to remain alone in the house. But whither 
 should he go? Mechanically he repaired to the club, 
 although it was too early to meet many of the members 
 there. He came upon Pietrapertosa and Cibo, who 
 had dined there, and who, seated on one of the divans, 
 were conferring in whispers with the gravity of two 
 ambassadors discussing the Bulgarian or Egyptian 
 question. 
 
 "You have a very nervous air," they said to Boles- 
 las, "you who were in such good form this after- 
 noon." 
 
 "Yes," said Cibo, "you should have dined with us 
 as we asked you to." 
 
 "When one is to fight a duel," continued Pietraper- 
 tosa, sententiously, "one should see neither one's wife 
 nor one's mistress. Madame Gorka suspects nothing, 
 I hope?" 
 
 "Absolutely nothing," replied Boleslas; "you are 
 right. I should have done better not to have left you. 
 But, here I am. We will exorcise dismal thoughts by 
 playing cards and supping!" 
 
 "By playing cards and supping!" exclaimed Pietra- 
 pertosa. And your hand ? Think of your hand. . . . 
 You will tremble, and you will miss your man." 
 
 "A light dinner," said Cibo, "to bed at ten o'clock, 
 up at six thirty, and two eggs with a glass of old port 
 is the recipe Machault gives." 
 
 "And which I shall not follow," said Boleslas, add- 
 ing: " 1 give you my word that if I had no other cause 
 for care than this duel, you would not see me in this 
 
 I 28 i 1
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 condition." He uttered that phrase in a tragical voice, 
 the sincerity of which the two Italians felt. They 
 looked at each other without speaking. They were 
 too shrewd and too well aware of the simplest scandals 
 of Rome not to have divined the veritable cause of 
 the encounter between Florent and Boleslas. On the 
 other hand, they knew the latter too well not to mis- 
 trust somewhat his attitudes. However, there was such 
 simple emotion in his accent that they spontaneously 
 pitied him, and, without another word, they no longer 
 opposed the caprices of their strange client, whom they 
 did not leave until two o'clock in the morning — and 
 fortune favored them. For they found themselves at 
 the end of a game, recklessly played, each the richer 
 by two or three hundred louis apiece. That meant a 
 few days more in Paris on the next visit. They, too, 
 truly regretted their friend's luck, saying, on separat- 
 ing: 
 
 "I very much fear for him," said Cibo. "Such luck 
 at gaming, the night before a duel — bad sign, very bad 
 sign." 
 
 "So much the more so that some one was there," 
 replied Pietrapertosa, making with his fingers the sign 
 which conjures the jettiitura. For nothing in the 
 world would he have named- the personages against 
 whose evil eye he provided in that manner. But Cibo 
 understood him, and, drawing from his trousers pocket 
 his watch, which he fastened a Vanglaise by a safety 
 chain to his belt, he pointed out among the charms a 
 golden horn: 
 
 "I have not let it go this evening," said he. "The 
 
 [ 285 1
 
 PAUL BGURGET 
 
 worst is, that Gorka will not sleep, and then, his 
 hand!" 
 
 Only the first of those two prognostics was to be 
 verified. Returning home at that late hour, Boleslas 
 did not even retire. He employed the remainder of 
 the night in writing a long letter to his wife, one to 
 his son, to be given to him on his eighteenth birthday, 
 all in case of an accident. Then he examined his 
 papers and he came upon the package of letters he 
 had received from Madame Steno. Merely to re-read 
 a few of them, and to glance at the portraits of that 
 faithless mistress again, heightened his anger to such 
 a degree that he enclosed the whole in a large envelope, 
 which he addressed to Lincoln Maitland. He had no 
 sooner sealed it than he shrugged his shoulders, say- 
 ing: "Of what use?" He raised the piece of material 
 which stopped up the chimney, and, placing the en- 
 velope on the fire-dogs, he set it on fire. He shook 
 with the tongs the remains of that which had been the 
 most ardent, the most complete passion of his life, 
 and he relighted the flames under the pieces of paper 
 still intact. The unreasonable employment of a night 
 which might be his last had scarcely paled his face. 
 But his friends, who knew him well, started on seeing 
 him with that impassively sinister countenance when 
 he alighted from bis phaeton, at about eight o'clock, 
 at the inn selected for the meeting. He had ordered 
 the carriage the day before to allay his wife's suspicions 
 by the pretense of taking one of his usual morning 
 drives. In his mental confusion he had forgotten to 
 give a counter order, and that accident caused him to 
 
 [286]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 escape the two policemen charged by the questorship 
 to watch the Palazzetto Doria, on Lydia Maitland's 
 denunciation. The hired victoria, which those agents 
 took, soon lost track of the swift English horses, 
 driven as a man of his character and of his mental 
 condition could drive. 
 
 The precaution of Chapron's sister was, therefore, 
 baffled in that direction, and she succeeded no better 
 with regard to her brother, who, to avoid all explana- 
 tion with Lincoln, had gone, under the pretext of a 
 visit to the country, to dine and sleep at the hotel. It 
 was there that Montfanon and Dorsenne met him to 
 conduct him to the rendezvous in the classical landau. 
 Hardly had they reached the eminence of the circus of 
 Maxence, on the Appian Way, when they were passed 
 by Boleslas's phaeton. 
 
 "You can rest very easy," said Montfanon to Flo- 
 rent. "How can one aim correctly when one tires 
 one's arm in that way?" 
 
 That had been the only allusion to the duel made 
 between the three men during the journey, which had 
 taken about an hour. Florent talked as he usually 
 did, asking all sorts of questions which attested his care 
 for minute information — the most of which might be 
 utilized by his brother-in-law — and the Marquis had 
 replied by evoking, with his habitual erudition, several 
 of the souvenirs which peopled that vast country, 
 strewn with tombs, aqueducts, ruined villas, with the 
 line of the Monts Albains enclosing them beyond. 
 
 Dorsenne was silent. It was the first affair at which 
 he had assisted, and his nervous anxiety was extreme. 
 
 [287]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 Tragical presentiments oppressed him, and at the 
 same time he apprehended momentarily that, Mont- 
 fanon's religious scruples reawakening, he would not 
 only have to seek another second, but would have to 
 defer a solution so near. However, the struggle which 
 was taking place in the heart of the "old leaguer" be- 
 tween the gentleman and the Christian, was display- 
 ed during the drive only by an almost imperceptible 
 gesture. As the carriage passed the entrance to the 
 catacomb of St. Calixtus, the former soldier of the 
 Pope turned away his head. Then he resumed the 
 conversation with redoubled energy, to pause in his 
 turn, however, when the landau took, a little beyond 
 the Tomb of Caecilia, a transverse road in the direc- 
 tion of the Ardeatine Way. It was there that VOsteria 
 del tempo per so was built, upon the ground belonging 
 to Cibo, on which the duel was to take place. 
 
 Before VOsteria, whose signboard was surmounted 
 by the arms of Pope Innocent VIII, three carriages 
 were already waiting — Gorka's phaeton, a landau 
 which had brought Cibo, Pietrapertosa and the doc- 
 tor, and a simple botte, in which a porter had come. 
 That unusual number of vehicles seemed likely to 
 attract the attention of riflemen out for a stroll, but 
 Cibo answered for the discretion of the innkeeper, who 
 indeed cherished for his master the devotion of vassal 
 to lord, still common in Italy. The three newcomers 
 had no need to make the slightest explanation. Hardly 
 had they alighted from the carriage, when the maid con- 
 ducted them through the hall, where at that moment 
 two huntsmen were breakfasting, their guns between 
 
 [288]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 their knees, and who, like true Romans, scarcely deigned 
 to glance at the strangers, who passed from the com- 
 mon hall into a small court, from that court, through a 
 shed, into a large field enclosed by boards, with here 
 and there a few pine-trees. 
 
 That rather odd duelling-ground had formerly served 
 Cibo as a paddock. He had essayed to increase his 
 slender income by buying at a bargain some jaded 
 horses, which he intended fattening by means of rest 
 and good fodder, and then selling to cabmen, averag- 
 ing a small profit. The speculation having miscar- 
 ried, the place was neglected and unused, save under 
 circumstances similar to those of this particular morning. 
 
 "We have arrived last," said Montfanon, looking at 
 his watch; "we are, however, five minutes ahead of 
 time. Remember," he added in a low voice, turning 
 to Florent, "to keep the body well in the background," 
 these words being followed by other directions. 
 
 "Thanks," replied Florent, who looked at the 
 Marquis and Dorsenne with a glance which he ordi- 
 narily had only for Lincoln, "and you know that, what- 
 ever may come, I thank you for all from the depths of 
 my heart." 
 
 The young man put so much grace in that adieu, 
 his courage was so simple, his sacrifice for his brother- 
 in-law so magnanimous and natural — in fact, for two 
 days both seconds had so fully appreciated the charm 
 of that disposition, absolutely free from thoughts of 
 self — that they pressed his hand with the emotion of 
 true friends. They were themselves, moreover, inter- 
 ested, and at once began the series of preparations 
 19 [ 289 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 without which the role of assistant would be physically 
 insupportable to persons endowed with a little sensi- 
 bility. In experienced hands like those of Montfanon, 
 Cibo and Pietrapertosa, such preliminaries are speedily 
 arranged. The code is as exact as the step of a ballet. 
 Twenty minutes after the entrance of the last arrivals, 
 the two adversaries were face to face. The signal was 
 given. The two shots were fired simultaneously, and 
 Florent sank upon the grass which covered the en- 
 closure. He had a bullet in his thigh. 
 . Dorsenne has often related since, as a singular trait 
 of literary mania, that at the moment the wounded 
 man fell he, himself, notwithstanding the anxiety 
 which possessed him, had watched Montfanon, to 
 study him. He adds that never had he seen a face 
 express such sorrowful piety as that of the man who, 
 scorning all human respect, made the sign of the 
 cross. It was the devotee of the catacombs, who had 
 left the altar of the martyrs to accomplish a work of 
 charity, then carried away by anger so far as to place 
 himself under the necessity of participating in a duel, 
 who was, no doubt, asking pardon of God. What re- 
 morse was stirring within the heart of the fervent, 
 almost mystical Christian, so strangely mixed up in an 
 adventure of that kind? He had at least this com 
 fort, that after the first examination, and when they 
 had borne Florent into a room prepared hastily by the 
 (arc of Cibo, the doctor declared himself satisfied. 
 The ball could even be removed at once, and as neither 
 the bone nor the muscles had been injured it was a 
 matter of a few weeks at the most.
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "All that now remains for us," concluded Cibo, who 
 had brought back the news, "is to draw up our official 
 report." 
 
 At that instant, and as the witnesses were preparing 
 to reenter the house for the last formality, an incident 
 occurred, very unexpected, which was to transform the 
 encounter, up to that time so simple, into one of those 
 memorable duels which are talked over at clubs and in 
 armories. If Pietrapertosa and Cibo had ceased since 
 morning to believe in the jettatura of the "some one" 
 whom neither had named, it must be acknowledged 
 that they were very unjust, for the good fortune of 
 having gained something wherewith to swell their 
 Parisian purses was surely naught by the side of this 
 — to have to discuss with the Cavals, the Machaults 
 and other professionals the case, almost unprecedented, 
 in which they were participants. 
 
 Boleslas Gorka, who, when once his adversary had 
 fallen, paced to and fro without seeming to care as to 
 the gravity of the w r ound, suddenly approached the 
 group formed by the four men, and in a tone of voice 
 which did not predict the terrible aggression in which 
 he was about to indulge, he said: 
 
 "One moment, gentlemen. I desire to say a few 
 words in your presence to Monsieur Dorsenne." 
 
 "I am at your service, Gorka," replied Julien, who 
 did not suspect the hostile intention of his old friend. 
 He did not divine the form which that hostility was 
 about to take, but he had always upon his mind his 
 word of honor falsely given, and he was prepared to 
 answer for it. 
 
 [291]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "It will not take much time, sir," continued Bo- 
 leslas, still with the same insolently formal politeness, 
 "you know we have an account to settle. . . . But as 
 I have some cause not to believe in the validity of your 
 honor, I should like to remove all cause of evasion." 
 And before any one could interfere in the unheard-of 
 proceedings he had raised his glove and struck Dor- 
 senne in the face. As Gorka spoke, the writer turned 
 pale. He had not the time to reply to the audacious 
 insult offered him by a similar one, for the three wit- 
 nesses of the scene cast themselves between him and 
 his aggressor. He, however, pushed them aside with 
 a resolute air. 
 
 "Remember, sirs," said he, "that by preventing me 
 from inflicting on Monsieur Gorka the punishment he 
 deserves, you force me to obtain another reparation. 
 And I demand it immediately. ... I will not leave 
 this place," he continued, "without having obtained 
 it." 
 
 "Nor I, without having given it to you," replied 
 Boleslas. "It is all I ask." 
 
 "No, Dorsenne," cried Montfanon, who had been 
 the first to seize the raised arm of the writer, "you 
 shall not fight thus. First, you have no right. It 
 requires at least twenty-four hours between the provo- 
 cation and the encounter. . . . And you, sirs, must 
 not agree to serve as seconds for Monsieur Gorka, 
 after lie has failed in a manner so grave in all the rules 
 of the ground. ... If you lend yourselves to it, it is 
 barbarous, it is madness, whatsoever you like. It is 
 no longer a duel." 
 
 [ 292 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "I repeat, Montfanon," replied Dorsenne, "that I 
 will not leave here and that I will not allow Monsieur 
 Gorka to leave until I have obtained the reparation to 
 which I feel I have the right." 
 
 "And I repeat that I am at Monsieur Dorsenne's 
 service," replied Boleslas. 
 
 "Very well, sirs," said Montfanon. "There only 
 remains for us to leave you to arrange it one with the 
 other as you wish, and for us to withdraw. ... Is not 
 that your opinion?" he continued, addressing Cibo 
 and Pietrapertosa, who did not reply immediately. 
 
 "Certainly," finally said one; "the case is difficult." 
 
 "There are, however, precedents," insinuated the 
 other. 
 
 "Yes," resumed Cibo, "if it were only the two suc- 
 cessive duels of Henry de Pene." 
 
 "Which furnish authority," concluded Pietraper- 
 tosa. 
 
 "Authority has nothing to do with it," again ex- 
 claimed Montfanon. "I know, for my part, that I 
 am not here to assist at a butchery, and that I will not 
 assist at it. ... I am going, sirs, and I expect you will 
 do the same, for I do not suppose you would select 
 coachmen to play the part of seconds. . . . Adieu, 
 Dorsenne. . . . You do not doubt my friendship for 
 you. ... I think I am giving you a veritable proof 
 of it by not permitting you to fight under such condi- 
 tions." 
 
 When the old nobleman reentered the inn, he 
 waited ten minutes, persuaded that his departure 
 would determine that of Cibo and of Pietrapertosa, 
 
 [293]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 and that the new affair, following so strangely upon 
 the other, would be deferred until the next day. He 
 had not told an untruth. It was his strong friendship 
 for Julien which had made him apprehend a duel or- 
 ganized in that way, under the influence of a righteous 
 indignation. Gorka's unjustifiable violence would cer- 
 tainly not permit a second encounter to be avoided. 
 But as the insult had been outrageous, it was the more 
 essential that the conditions should be fixed calmly and 
 after grave consideration. To divert his impatience, 
 Montfanon bade the innkeeper point out to him 
 whither they had carried Florent, and he ascended to 
 the tiny room, where the doctor was dressing the 
 wounded man's leg. 
 
 "You see," said the latter, with a smile, "I shall 
 have to limp a little for a month. . . . And Dorsenne ?" 
 
 "He is all right, I hope," replied Montfanon, adding, 
 with ill-humor: "Dorsenne is a fool; that is what 
 Dorsenne is. And Gorka is a wild beast; that is 
 what Gorka is." And he related the episode which 
 had just taken place to the two men, who were so sur- 
 prised that the doctor, bandage in hand, paused in his 
 work. "And they wish to fight there at once, like 
 redskins. Why not scalp one another? . . . And that 
 Cibo and that Pietrapertosa would have consented to 
 the duel if I had not opposed it! Fortunately they 
 lack two seconds, and it is not easy to find in this 
 <listri< t two men who can sign an official report, for it 
 is the mode nowadays to have those paltry scraps of 
 paper. One of my friends and myself had two such 
 witnesses at twenty francs apiece. But that was in 
 
 [ 294 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 Paris in 'sixty-two." And he entered upon the recital 
 of the old-time duel, to calm his anxiety, which burst 
 forth again in these words: "It seems they do not 
 decide to separate so quickly. It is not, however, pos- 
 sible that they will fight. . . . Can we see them from 
 here?" He approached the window, which indeed 
 looked upon the enclosure. The sight which met his 
 eyes caused the excellent man to stammer. . . . "The 
 miserable men! ... It is monstrous. . . . They are 
 mad. . . . They have found seconds. . . . Whom have 
 they taken? . . . Those two huntsmen! . . . Ah, my 
 God! My God!". . . He could say no more. The 
 doctor had hastened to the window to see what was 
 passing, regardless of the fact that Florent dragged 
 himself thither as well. Did they remain there a few 
 seconds, fifteen minutes or longer? They could never 
 tell, so greatly were they terrified. 
 
 As Montfanon had anticipated, the conditions of 
 the duel were terrible. For Pietrapertosa, w T ho seemed 
 to direct the combat, after having measured a space 
 sufficiently long, of about fifty feet, was in the act of 
 tracing in the centre two lines scarcely ten or twelve 
 metres apart. 
 
 "They have chosen the duel a mar die interrompue," 
 groaned the veteran duellist, whose knowledge of the 
 ground did not deceive him. Dorsenne and Gorka, 
 once placed, face to face, commenced indeed to ad- 
 vance, now raising, now lowering their weapons with 
 the terrible slowness of two adversaries resolved not 
 to miss their mark. 
 
 A shot was fired. It was by Boleslas- Dorsenne 
 
 [ 295 1
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 was unharmed. Several steps had still to be taken 
 in order to reach the limit. He took them, and he 
 paused to aim at his opponent with so evident an inten- 
 tion of killing him that they could distinctly hear Cibo 
 cry: 
 
 "Fire! For God's sake, fire!" 
 
 Julien pressed the trigger, as if in obedience to that 
 order, incorrect, but too natural to be even noticed. 
 The weapon was discharged, and the three spectators 
 at the window of the bedroom uttered three simultane- 
 ous exclamations on seeing Gorka's arm fall and his 
 hand drop the pistol. 
 
 "It is nothing," cried the doctor, "but a broken 
 arm." 
 
 "The good Lord has been better to us than we de- 
 serve," said the Marquis. 
 
 "Now, at least, the madman will be quieted. . . . 
 Brave Dorsenne!" cried Florent, who thought of his 
 brother-in-law and who added gayly, leaning on Mont- 
 fanon and the doctor in order to reach the couch: 
 "Finish quickly, doctor, they will need you below im- 
 mediately." 
 
 [ 296 ]
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 LUCID ALBA 
 
 "HE doctor had diagnosed the case 
 correctly. Dorsenne's ball had struck 
 Gorka below the wrist. Two centi- 
 metres more to the right or to the 
 left, and undoubtedly Boleslas would 
 have been killed. He escaped with 
 a fracture of the forearm, which 
 would confine him for a few days 
 to his room, and which would force him to submit for 
 several weeks to the annoyance of a sling. When he 
 was taken home and his personal physician, hastily 
 summoned, made him a bandage and prescribed for 
 the first few days bed and rest, he experienced a new 
 access of rage, which exceeded the paroxysms of the 
 day before and of that morning. All parts of his soul, 
 the noblest as well as the meanest, bled at once and 
 caused him to suffer with another agony than that 
 occasioned by his wounded arm. Was he satisfied in 
 the desire, almost morbid, to figure in the eyes of 
 those who knew him as an extraordinary personage? 
 He had hastened from Poland through Europe as an 
 avenger of his betrayed love, and he had begun by 
 missing his rival. Instead of provoking him imme- 
 diately in the salon of Villa Steno, he had waited, and 
 
 [297]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 another had had time to substitute himself for the 
 one he had wished to chastise. The other, whose death 
 would at least have given a tragical issue to the ad- 
 venture, Boleslas had scarcely touched. He had hoped 
 in striking Dorsenne to execute at least one traitor 
 whom he considered as having trifled with the most 
 sacred of confidences. He had simply succeeded in 
 giving that false friend occasion to humiliate him bit- 
 terly, leaving out of the question that he had rendered 
 it impossible to fight again for many days. None of 
 the persons who had wronged him would be punished 
 for some time, neither his coarse and cowardly rival, 
 nor his perfidious mistress, nor monstrous Lydia Mait- 
 land, whose infamy he had just discovered. They 
 were all happy and triumphant, on that lovely, radiant 
 May day, while he tossed on a bed of pain, and it was 
 proven too clearly to him that very afternoon by his 
 two seconds, the only visitors whom he had not denied 
 admission, and who came to see him about five o'clock. 
 They came from the races of Tor di Quinto, which had 
 taken place that day. 
 
 "All is well," began Cibo, "I will guarantee that 
 no one has talked. ... I have told you before, I am 
 sure of my innkeeper, and we have paid the witnesses 
 and the coachman. 
 
 "Were Madame Steno and her daughter at the 
 races?" interrupted Boleslas. 
 
 "Yes," replied the Roman, whom the abruptness of 
 the question surprised too much for him lo evade it 
 with his habitual diplomacy. 
 
 "With whom?" asked the wounded man. 
 
 [ 298 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "Alone, that time," replied Cibo, with an eagerness 
 in which Boleslas distinguished an intention to deceive 
 him. 
 
 "And Madame Maitland?" 
 
 "She was there, too, with her husband," said Pietra- 
 pertosa, heedless of Cibo's warning glances, "and all 
 Rome besides," adding: "Do you know the engage- 
 ment of Ardea and little Hafner is public ? They were 
 all three there, the betrothed and the father, and so 
 happy! I vow, it was fine. Cardinal Guerillot bap- 
 tized pretty Fanny." 
 
 "And Dorsenne?" again questioned the invalid. 
 
 "He was there," said Cibo. "You will be vexed 
 when I tell you of the reply he dared to make us. We 
 asked him how he had managed — nervous as he is— 
 to aim at you as he aimed, without trembling. For 
 he did not tremble. And guess what he replied? 
 That he thought of a recipe of Stendhal's — to recite 
 from memory four Latin verses, before firing. 'And 
 might one know what you chose?' I asked of him. 
 Thereupon he repeated: ' Tityre, til patulce recubans ."' 
 
 "It is a case which recalls the word of Casal," 
 interrupted Pietrapertosa, "when that snob of a Figon 
 recommended to us at the club his varnish manu- 
 factured from a recipe of a valet of the Prince of Wales. 
 If the young man is not settled by us, I shall be sorry 
 for him." 
 
 Although the two confreres had repeated that medi- 
 ocre pleasantry a hundred times, they laughed at the 
 top of their sonorous voices and succeeded in entirely 
 unnerving the injured man. He gave as a pretext his 
 
 [ 2 99 3
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 need of rest to dismiss the fine fellows, of whose sym- 
 pathy he was assured, whom he had just found loyal 
 and devoted, but who caused him pain in conjuring 
 up, in answer to his question, the images of all his 
 enemies. When one is suffering from a certain sort 
 of pain, remarks like those naively exchanged between 
 the two Roman imitators of Casal are intolerable to 
 the hearer. One desires to be alone to feed upon, at 
 least in peace, the bitter food, the exasperating and 
 inefficacious rancor against people and against fate, 
 with which Gorka at that moment felt his heart to be 
 so full. The presence of his former mistress at the 
 races, and on that afternoon, wounded him more 
 cruelly than the rest. He did not doubt that she 
 knew through Maitland, himself, certainly informed by 
 Chapron, of the two duels and of his injury. It was 
 on her account that he had fought, and that very 
 day she appeared in public, smiling, coquetting, as if 
 two years of passion had not united their lives, as if 
 he were to her merely a social acquaintance, a guest 
 at her dinners and her soirees. He knew her habits 
 so well, and how eagerly, when she loved, she drank 
 in the presence of him she loved. No doubt she had 
 an appointment on the race-course with Maitland, as 
 she had formerly had with him, and the painter had 
 gone thither when he should have cared for his coura- 
 geous, his noble brother-in-law, whom he had allowed 
 to fight for him! What a worthy lover the selfish and 
 brutal American was of that vile creature! The image 
 of the happy couple tortured Bolcslas with the bitter- 
 est jealousy intermingled with disgust, and, by con-
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 trast, he thought of his own wife, the proud and tender 
 Maud whom he had lost. 
 
 He pictured to himself other illnesses when he had 
 seen that beautiful nurse by his bedside. He saw again 
 the true glance with which that wife, so shamefully 
 betrayed, looked at him, the movements of her loyal 
 hands, which yielded to no one the care of waiting 
 upon him. To-day she had allowed him to go to a 
 duel without seeing him. He had returned. She had 
 not even inquired as to his wound. The doctor had 
 dressed it without her presence, and all that he knew 
 of her was what he learned from their child. For he 
 sent for Luc. He explained to him his broken arm, 
 as had been agreed upon with his friends, by a fall 
 on the staircase, and little Luc replied: 
 
 "When will you join us, then? Mamma says we 
 leave for England this evening or in the morning. 
 All the trunks are almost ready." 
 
 That evening or to-morrow? So Maud was going 
 to execute her threat. She was going away forever, 
 and without an explanation. He could not even plead 
 his cause once more to the woman who certainly would 
 not respond to another appeal, since she had found, 
 in her outraged pride, the strength to be severe, when 
 he was in danger of death. In the face of that evi- 
 dence of the desertion of all connected with him, 
 Boleslas suffered one of those accesses of discourage- 
 ment, deep, absolute, irremediable, in which one longs 
 to sleep forever. He asked himself: "Were I to try 
 one more step?" and he replied: "She will not /" when 
 his valet entered with word that the Countess desired 
 
 [3°!]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 to speak with him. His agitation was so extreme 
 that, for a second, he fancied it was with regard to 
 Madame Steno, and he was almost afraid to see his 
 wife enter. 
 
 Without any doubt, the emotions undergone during 
 the past few days had been very great. He had, how- 
 ever, experienced none more violent, even beneath the 
 pistol raised by Dorsenne, than that of seeing advance 
 to his bed the embodiment of his remorse. Maud's 
 face, in which ordinarily glowed the beauty of a blood 
 quickened by the English habits of fresh air and daily 
 exercise, showed undeniable traces of tears, of sadness, 
 and of insomnia. The pallor of the cheeks, the dark 
 circles beneath the eyes, the dryness of the lips and 
 their bitter expression, the feverish glitter, above all, 
 in the eyes, related more eloquently than words the 
 terrible agony of which she was the victim. The past 
 twenty-four hours had acted upon her like certain 
 long illnesses, in which it seems that the very essence 
 of the organism is altered. She was another person. 
 The rapid metamorphosis, so tragical and so striking, 
 caused Boleslas to forget his own anguish. He ex- 
 perienced nothing but one great regret when the wom- 
 an, so visibly bowed down by grief, was seated, and 
 whin he saw in her eyes the look of implacable cold- 
 ness, even through the fever, before which he had 
 reeoiled the day before. But she was there, and her 
 unhoped for presence was to the young man, even 
 under the circumstances, an infinite consolation. He, 
 therefore, said, with an almost childish grace, which 
 he could assume when he desired to please: 
 
 l3° 2 1
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "You recognized the fact that it would be too cruel 
 of you to go away without seeing me again. I should 
 not have dared to ask it of you, and yet it was the 
 only pleasure I could have. ... I thank you for hav- 
 ing given it to me." 
 
 "Do not thank me," replied Maud, shaking her 
 head, "it is not on your account that I am here. It 
 is from duty. . . . Let me speak," she continued, 
 stopping by a gesture her husband's reply, "you can 
 answer me afterward. . . . Had it only been a ques- 
 tion of you and of me, I repeat, I should not have 
 seen you again. . . . But, as I told you yesterday, 
 we have a son." 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed Boleslas, sadly. "It is to make 
 me still more wretched that you have come. . . . 
 You should remember, however, that I am in no con- 
 dition to discuss with you so cruel a question. ... I 
 thought I had already said that I would not disregard 
 your rights on condition that you did not disregard 
 mine." 
 
 "It is not of my rights that I wish to speak, nor of 
 yours," interrupted Maud, "but of his, the only ones 
 of importance. When I left you yesterday, I was 
 suffering too severely to feel anything but my pain. 
 It was then that, in my mental agony, I recalled words 
 repeated to me by my father: 'When one suffers, he 
 should look his grief in the face, and it will always 
 teach him something.'' I was ashamed of my weakness, 
 and I looked my grief in the face. It taught me, 
 first, to accept it as a just punishment for having 
 married against the advice and wishes of my father." 
 
 [3°3]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "Ah, do not abjure our past!" cried the young 
 man; "the past which has remained so dear to me 
 through all." 
 
 "No, I do not abjure it," replied Maud, "for it was 
 on recurring to it— it was on returning to my early 
 impressions — that I could find not an excuse, but an 
 explanation of your conduct. I remembered what 
 you related to me of the misfortunes of your child- 
 hood and of your youth, and how you had grown up 
 between your father and your mother, passing six 
 months with one, six months with the other — not car- 
 ing for, not being able to judge either of them — forced 
 to hide from one your feelings for the other. I saw 
 for the first time that your parents' separation had 
 the effect of saddening your heart at that epoch. It 
 is that which perverted your character. . . . And I 
 read in advance Luc's history in yours. . . . Listen, 
 Bolcslas! I speak to you as I would speak before 
 God! My first feeling when that thought presented 
 itself to my mind was not to resume life with you; 
 such a life would be henceforth too bitter. No, it was 
 to say to myself, I will have my son to myself. He 
 shall feel my influence alone. I saw you set out this 
 morning — set out to insult me once more, to sacrifice 
 me once more! Tf you had been truly repentant would 
 you have offered me that last affront? And when 
 you returned when they informed me that you had 
 a broken arm — I wished to tell the little one myself 
 that you were ill. ... I saw how much he loved you, 
 I discovered what a place you already occupied in his 
 heart, and I comprehended that, even if the law gave 
 
 [304]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 him to me, as I know it would, his childhood would 
 be like yours, his youth like your youth. 
 
 "Then," she went on, with an accent in which emo- 
 tion struggled through her pride, "I did not feel justi- 
 fied in destroying the respect so deep, the love so true, 
 he bears you, and I have come to say to you: You 
 have wronged me greatly. You have killed within 
 me something that will never come to life again. I 
 feel that for years I shall carry a weight on my mind 
 and on my heart at the thought that you could have 
 betrayed me as you have. But I feel that for our 
 boy this separation on which I had resolved is too 
 perilous. I feel that I shall find in the certainty of 
 avoiding a moral danger for him the strength to con- 
 tinue a common existence, and I will continue it. 
 But human nature is human nature, and that strength 
 I can have only on one condition." 
 
 "And that is?" asked Boleslas. Maud's speech, 
 for it was a speech carefully reflected upon, every 
 phrase of which had been weighed by that scrupulous 
 conscience, contrasted strongly in its lucid reasoning 
 with the state of nervous excitement in which he had 
 lived for several days. He had been more pained by 
 it than he would have been by passionate reproaches. 
 At the same time he had been moved by the reference 
 to his son's love for him, and he felt that if he did 
 not become reconciled with Maud at that moment his 
 future domestic life would be ended. There was a 
 little of each sentiment in the few words he added to 
 the anxiety of his question. "Although you have 
 spoken to me very severely, and although you might 
 20 [ 305 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 have said the same thing in other terms, although, 
 above all, it is very painful to me to have you condemn 
 my entire character on one single error, I love you, I 
 love my son, and I agree in advance to your con- 
 ditions. I esteem your character too much to doubt 
 that they will be reconcilable with my dignity. As 
 for the duel of this morning, " he added, "you know very 
 well that it was too late to withdraw without dishonor. " 
 
 "I should like your promise, first of all," replied 
 Madame Gorka, who did not answer his last remark, 
 "that during the time in which you are obliged to 
 keep your room no one shall be admitted. ... I 
 could not bear that creature in my house, nor any one 
 who would speak to me or to you of her." 
 
 "I promise," said the young man, who felt a flood 
 of warmth enter his soul at the first proof that the 
 jealousy of the loving woman still existed beneath the 
 indignation of the wife. And he added, with a smile, 
 "That will not be a great sacrifice. And then?" 
 
 "Then? . . . That the doctor will permit us to go 
 to England. We will leave orders for the manage- 
 ment of things during our absence. We will go this 
 winter wherever you like, but not to this house; never 
 again to this city." 
 
 "That is a promise, too," said Boleslas, "and thai 
 will be no great sacrifice either; and then?" 
 
 "And then," said she in a low voice, as if ashamed 
 of herself. "You must never write to her, you must 
 never try to find out what has become of her. " 
 
 "I give you my word," replied Boleslas, taking her 
 hand, and adding: "And then?" 
 
 [ 3o<> I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "There is no then" said she, withdrawing her hand, 
 but gently. And she began to realize herself her prom- 
 ise of pardon, for she rearranged the pillows under 
 the wounded man's head, while he resumed: 
 
 "Yes, my noble Maud, there is a then. It is that I 
 shall prove to you how much truth there was in my 
 words of yesterday, in my assurance that I love you 
 in spite of my faults. It is the mother who returns 
 to me to-day. But I want my wife, my dear wife, 
 and I shall win her back." 
 
 She made no reply. She experienced, on hearing 
 him pronounce those last words with a transfigured 
 face, an emotion which did not vanish. She had 
 acquired, beneath the shock of her great sorrow, an 
 intuition too deep of her husband's nature, and that 
 facility, which formerly charmed her by rendering her 
 anxious, now inspired her with horror. That man 
 with the mobile and complaisant conscience had al- 
 ready forgiven himself. It sufficed him to conceive 
 the plan of a reparation of years, and to respect himself 
 for it — as if that was really sufficient— for the difficult 
 task. At least during the eight days which lapsed 
 between that conversation and their departure he 
 strictly observed the promise he had given his wife. 
 In vain did Cibo, Pietrapertosa, Hafnor, Ardea try to 
 see him. When the train which bore them away 
 steamed out he asked his wife, with a pride that time 
 justified by deeds: 
 
 "Are you satisfied with me?" 
 
 "I am satisfied that we have left Rome," said she, 
 evasively, and it was true in two senses of the word: 
 
 [307]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 First of all, because she did not delude herself with 
 regard to the return of the moral energy of which 
 Boleslas was so proud. She knew that his variable 
 will was at the mercy of the first sensation. Then, 
 what she had not confessed to her husband, the sorrow 
 of a broken friendship was joined in her to the sorrows 
 of a betrayed wife. The sudden discovery of the 
 infamy of Alba's mother had not destroyed her strong 
 affection for the young girl, and during the entire week, 
 busy with her preparations for a final departure, she 
 had not ceased to wonder anxiously: "What will she 
 think of my silence? . . . What has her mother told 
 her? . . . What has she divined ? " 
 
 She had loved the "poor little soul," as she called 
 the Contessina in her pretty English term. She had 
 devoted to her the friendship peculiar to young wom- 
 en for young girls — a sentiment — very strong and yet 
 very delicate, which resembles, in its tenderness, the 
 devotion of an elder sister for a younger. There is 
 in it a little naive protection and also a little romantic 
 and gracious melancholy. The elder friend is severe 
 and critical. She tries to assuage, while envying them, 
 the excessive enthusiasms of the younger. She re- 
 ceives, she provokes her confidence with the touching 
 gravity of a counsellor. The younger friend is curious 
 and admiring. She shows herself in all the truth of 
 that graceful awakening of thoughts and emotions 
 which precede her own period before marriage. And 
 when there is, as was the case with Alba Steno, a 
 certain discord of soul between that younger friend 
 and her mother, the affection for the sister chosen 
 
 I 3o8 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 becomes so deep that it can not be broken without 
 wounds on both sides. It was for that reason that, 
 on leaving Rome, faithful and noble Maud experienced 
 at once a sense of relief and of pain — of relief, because 
 she was no longer exposed to the danger of an ex- 
 planation with Alba; of pain, because it was so bitter 
 a thought for her that she could never justify her 
 heart to her friend, could never aid her in emerging 
 from the difficulties of her life, could, finally, never 
 love her openly as she had loved her secretly. She 
 said to herself as she saw the city disappear in the 
 night with its curves and its lights: 
 
 "If she thinks badly of me, may she divine nothing! 
 Who will now prevent her from yielding herself up to 
 her sentiment for that dangerous and perfidious Dor- 
 senne ? Who will console her when she is sad ? Who 
 will defend her against her mother? I was perhaps 
 wrong in writing to the woman, as I did, the letter, 
 which might have been delivered to her in her daugh- 
 ter's presence. . . . i\h, poor little soul! . . . May 
 God watch over her!" 
 
 She turned, then, toward her son, whose hair she 
 stroked, as if to exorcise, by the evidence of present 
 duty, the nostalgia which possessed her at the thought 
 of an affection sacrificed forever. Hers was a nature 
 too active, too habituated to the British virtue of self- 
 control to submit to the languor of vain emotions. 
 
 The two persons of whom her friendship, now im- 
 potent, had thought, were, for various reasons, the 
 two fatal instruments of the fate of the "poor little 
 soul," and the vague remorse which Maud herself 
 
 [3°9]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 felt with regard to the terrible note sent to Madame 
 Steno in the presence of the young girl, was only too 
 true. When the servant had given that letter to the 
 Countess, saying that Madame Gorka excused herself 
 on account of indisposition, Alba Steno's first impulse 
 had been to enter her friend's room. 
 
 "I will go to embrace her and to see if she has need 
 of anything," she said. 
 
 "Madame has forbidden any one to enter her room," 
 replied the footman, with embarrassment, and, at the 
 same moment, Madame Steno, who had just opened 
 the note, said, in a voice which struck the young girl 
 by its change: 
 
 "Let us go; I do not feel well, either." 
 
 The woman, so haughty, so accustomed to bend all 
 to her will, was indeed trembling in a very pitiful man- 
 ner beneath the insult of those phrases which drove 
 her, Caterina Steno, away with such ignominy. She 
 paled to the roots of her fair hair, her face was dis- 
 torted, and for the first and last time Alba saw her 
 form tremble. It was only for a few moments. At 
 the foot of the staircase energy gained the mastery in 
 that courageous character, created for the shock of 
 strong emotions and for instantaneous action. But 
 rapid as had been that passage, it had sufficed to dis- 
 concert the young girl. For not a moment did she 
 doubt thai the note was the cause of that extraordinary 
 metamorphosis in the Countess's aspect and attitude. 
 The fact thai Maud would not receive her, her friend, 
 in her room was not less strange. What was happen- 
 ing? What did the letter contain? What were they 
 
 [.Vol
 
 COSMOPOLLS 
 
 hiding from her? If she had, the day before, felt the 
 "needle in the heart" only on divining a scene of vio- 
 lent explanation between her mother and Boleslas 
 Gorka, how would she have been agonized to ascertain 
 the state into which the few lines of Boleslas's wife 
 had cast that mother! The anonymous denunciation 
 recurred to her, and with it all the suspicion she had 
 in vain rejected. The mother was unaware that for 
 months there was taking place in her daughter a moral 
 drama of which that scene formed a decisive episode, 
 she was too shrewd not to understand that her emotion 
 had been very imprudent, and that she must explain 
 it. Moreover, the rupture with Maud was irrepar- 
 able, and it was necessary that Alba should be in- 
 cluded in it. 
 
 The mother, at once so guilty and so loving, so 
 blind and so considerate, had no sooner foreseen the 
 necessity than her decision was made, and a false ex- 
 planation invented: 
 
 "Guess what Maud has just written me?" said 
 she, brusquely, to her daughter, when they were 
 seated side by side in their carriage. God, what balm 
 the simple phrase introduced into Alba's heart! Her 
 mother was about to show her the note ! Her joy was 
 short-lived! The note remained where the Countess 
 had slipped it, after having nervously folded it, in the 
 opening in her glove. And she continued: "She 
 accuses me of being the cause of a duel between her 
 husband and Florent Chapron, and she quarrels with 
 me by letter, without seeing me, without speaking to 
 me!" 
 
 [3ii]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "Boleslas Gorka has fought a duel with Florent 
 Chapron?" repeated the young girl. 
 
 "Yes," replied her mother. "I knew that through 
 Hafner. I did not speak of it to you in order not to 
 worry you with regard to Maud, and I have only 
 awaited her so long to cheer her up in case I should 
 have found her uneasy, and this is how she rewards 
 me for my friendship! It seems that Gorka took 
 offence at some remark of Chapron 's about Poles, 
 one of those innocent remarks made daily on any 
 nation — the Italians, the French, the English, the Ger- 
 mans, the Jews — and which mean nothing. ... I re- 
 peated the remark in jest to Gorka! ... I leave you 
 to judge. ... Is it my fault if, instead of laughing at 
 it, he insulted poor Florent, and if the absurd en- 
 counter resulted from it? And Maud, who writes 
 me that she will never pardon me, that I am a false 
 friend, that I did it expressly to exasperate her hus- 
 band. . . . Ah, let her watch her husband, let her 
 lock him up, if he is mad! And I, who have received 
 them as I have, I, who have made their position for 
 them in Rome, I, who had no other thought than for 
 her just now! . . . You hear," she added, pressing 
 her daughter's hand with a fervor which was at least 
 sincere, if her words were untruthful, "I forbid you 
 :i^ r her again or writing to her. If she does not 
 offer me an apology for her insulting note, I no longer 
 wish to know her. One is foolish to be so kind!" 
 
 For the first time, while listening to that speech, 
 Alba Was convinced thai her mother was deceiving 
 her. Since suspicion had entered her heart with re-
 
 COSMO POLIS 
 
 gard to her mother, the object until then of such 
 admiration and affection, she had passed through 
 many stages of mistrust. To talk with the Countess 
 was always to dissipate them. That was because 
 Madame Steno, apart from her amorous immorality, 
 was of a frank and truthful nature. 
 
 It was indeed a customary and known weakness of 
 Florent's to repeat those witticisms which abound in 
 national epigrams, as mediocre as they are iniquit- 
 ous. Alba could recall at least twenty circumstances 
 when the excellent man had uttered such jests at 
 which a sensitive person might take offence. She 
 would not have thought it utterly impossible that a 
 duel between Gorka and Chapron might have been 
 provoked by an incident of that order. But Chapron 
 was the brother-in-law of Maitland, of the new friend 
 with whom Madame Steno had become infatuated 
 during the absence of the Polish Count, and what a 
 brother-in-law! He of whom Dorsenne said: "He 
 would set Rome on fire to cook an egg for his sister's 
 husband." When Madame Steno announced that 
 duel to her daughter, an invincible and immediate 
 deduction possessed the poor child — Florent was fight- 
 ing for his brother-in-law. And on account of whom, 
 if not of Madame Steno? The thought would not, 
 however, have possessed her a second in the face of 
 the very plausible explanation made by the Countess, 
 if Alba had not had in her heart a certain proof that 
 her mother was not telling the truth. The young girl 
 loved Maud as much as she was loved by her. She 
 knew the sensibility of her faithful and delicate friend, 
 
 [3*3]
 
 PAUL BOl RGET 
 
 as that friend knew hers. For Maud to write her 
 mother a letter which produced an immediate rup- 
 ture, there must have been some grave reason. 
 
 Another material proof was soon joined to that 
 moral proof. Granted the character and the habits 
 of the Countess, since she had not shown Maud's letter 
 to her daughter there and then, it was because the 
 letter was not fit to be shown. But she heard on the 
 following day only the description of the duel, related 
 by Maitland to Madame Steno, the savage aggression 
 of Gorka against Dorsenne, the composure of the latter 
 and the issue, relatively harmless, of the two duels. 
 
 "You see," said her mother to her, "I was right in 
 saying that Gorka is mad! ... It seems he has had 
 a fit of insanity since the duel, and that they prevent 
 him from seeing any one. . . . Can you now com- 
 prehend how Maud could blame me for what is hered- 
 itary in the Gorka family?" 
 
 Such was indeed the story which the Venetian and 
 her friends, Hafner, Ardea, and others, circulated 
 throughout Rome in order to diminish the scandal. 
 The accusation of madness is very common to women 
 who have goaded to excess man's passion, and who 
 then wish to avoid all blame for the deeds or words of 
 that man. Tn this case, Boleslas's fury and his two 
 incomprehensible duels, fifteen minutes apart, justified 
 the story. When it became known in the city that the 
 Palazzetto Doria was strictly closed, that Maud Gorka 
 received no one, and finally that she was taking away 
 lur husband in the manner which resembled a flight, 
 no doubt remained of the young man's wrecked reason. 
 
 [314]
 
 ( OSMOPOTJS 
 
 Two persons profited very handsomely by the gos- 
 siping, the origin of which was a mystery. One was 
 the innkeeper of the Tempo Perso, whose simple bcttoki 
 became, during those few days, a veritable place of 
 pilgrimage, and who sold a quantity of wine and num- 
 bers of fresh eggs. The other was Dorsenne's pub- 
 lisher, of whom the Roman booksellers ordered sev- 
 eral hundred volumes. 
 
 "If I had had that duel in Paris," said the novelist 
 to Mademoiselle Steno, relating to her the unforeseen 
 result, "I should perhaps have at length known the 
 intoxication of the thirtieth edition." 
 
 It was a few days after the departure of the Gorkas 
 that he jested thus, at a large dinner of twenty-four 
 covers, given at Villa Steno in honor of Peppino Ardea 
 and Fanny Hafner. Reestablished in the Countess's 
 favor since his duel, he had again become a frequenter 
 of her house, so much the more assiduous as the in- 
 creasing melancholy of Alba interested him greatly. 
 The enigma of the young girl's character redoubled 
 that interest at each visit in such a degree that, not- 
 withstanding the heat, already beginning, of the dan- 
 gerous Roman summer, he constantly deferred his 
 return to Paris until the morrow. What had she 
 guessed in consequence of the encounter, the details 
 of which she had asked of him with an emotion scarcely 
 hidden in her eyes of a blue as clear, as transparent, 
 as impenetrable at the same time, as the water of cer- 
 tain Alpine lakes at the foot of the glaciers. He 
 thought he was doing right in corroborating the story 
 of Boleslas Gorka's madness, which he knew better 
 
 [3i5]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 than any one else to be false. But was it not the 
 surest means of exempting Madame Steno from con- 
 nection with the affair? Why had he seen Alba's 
 beautiful eyes veiled with a sadness inexplicable, as 
 i'f he had just given her another blow? He did not 
 know that since the day on which the word insanity 
 had been uttered before her relative to Maud's husband, 
 the Contessina was the victim of a reasoning as simple 
 as irrefutable. 
 
 "If Boleslas be mad, as they say," said Alba, "why 
 does Maud, whom I know to be so just and who loves 
 me so dearly, attribute to my mother the responsi- 
 bility of this duel, to the point of breaking with me 
 thus, and of leaving without a line of explanation? 
 . . . No. . . . There is something else." . . . The na- 
 ture of the "something else" the young girl compre- 
 hended, on recalling her mother's face during the 
 perusal of Maud's letter. During the ten days follow- 
 ing that scene, she saw constantly before her that face, 
 and the fear imprinted upon those features ordinarily 
 so calm, so haughty! Ah, poor little soul, indeed, 
 who could not succeed in banishing this fixed idea: 
 "My mother is not a good woman." 
 
 Idea! So much the more terrible, as Alba had no 
 longer the ignorance of a young girl, if she had the in- 
 nocence. Accustomed to the conversations, at times 
 very bold, of the Countess's salon, enlightened by the 
 reading of novels chanced upon, the words lover and 
 mistress had for her a signification of physical intimacy 
 such that it was an almost intolerable torture for her 
 to associate them with the relations of her mother, 
 
 [316]
 
 (OSMOPOLIS 
 
 first toward Gorka, then toward Maitland. That tor- 
 ture she had undergone during the entire dinner, at 
 the conclusion of which Dorsenne essayed to chat 
 gayly with her. She sat beside the painter, and the 
 man's very breath, his gestures, the sound of his 
 voice, his manner of eating and of drinking, the knowl- 
 edge of his very proximity, had caused her such keen 
 suffering that it was impossible for her to take anything 
 but large glasses of iced water. Several times during 
 that dinner, prolonged amid the sparkle of magnificent 
 silver and Venetian crystal, amid the perfume of 
 flowers and the gleam of jewels, she had seen Mait- 
 land's eyes fixed upon the Countess with an expres- 
 sion which almost caused her to cry out, so clearly 
 did her instinct divine its impassioned sensuality, 
 and once she thought she saw her mother respond 
 to it. 
 
 She felt with appalling clearness that which be- 
 fore she had uncertainly experienced, the immodest 
 character of that mother's beauty. With the pearls 
 in her fair hair, with neck and arms bare in a corsage 
 the delicate green tint of which showed to advantage 
 the incomparable splendor of her skin, with her dewy 
 lips, with her voluptuous eyes shaded by their long 
 lashes, the dogaresse looked in the centre of that table 
 like an empress and like a courtesan. She resembled 
 the Caterina Cornaro, the gallant queen of the island 
 of Cypress, painted by Titian, and whose name she 
 worthily bore. For years Alba had been so proud of 
 the ray of seduction cast forth by the Countess, so 
 proud of those statuesque arms, of the superb carriage, 
 
 [3i7]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 of the face which defied the passage of time, of the 
 bloom of opulent life the glorious creature displayed. 
 During that dinner she was almost ashamed of it. 
 
 She had been pained to see Madame Maitland 
 seated a few paces farther on, with brow and lips 
 contracted as if by thoughts of bitterness. She won- 
 dered: Does Lydia suspect them, too? But was it 
 possible that her mother, whom she knew to be so 
 generous, so magnanimous, so kind, could have that 
 smile of sovereign tranquillity with such secrets in her 
 heart? Was it possible that she could have betrayed 
 Maud for months and months with the same light of 
 joy in her eyes? 
 
 "Come," said Julien, stopping himself suddenly in 
 the midst of a speech, in which he had related two or 
 three literary anecdotes. "Instead of listening to your 
 friend Dorsenne, little Countess, you are following 
 several blue devils flying through the room." 
 
 "They would fly, in any case," replied Alba, who, 
 pointing to Fanny Hafner and Prince d'Ardea seated on 
 a couch, continued : " Has what I told you a few weeks 
 since been realized? You do not know all the irony 
 <>l" it. You have not assisted, as T did the day before 
 yesterday, at the poor girl's baptism." 
 
 "It is true," replied Julien, "you were godmother. 
 I dreamed of Leo Thirteenth as godfather, with a 
 prince of the house of Bourbon as godmother. Ilaf 
 ncr's triumph would have been complete!" 
 
 "lie had lo content himself with lu's ambassador 
 and your servant," replied Alba with a faint smile, 
 which was speedily converted into an expression of 
 
 [318]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 bitterness. "Are you satisfied with your pupil?" she 
 added. "I am progressing. ... I laugh when I wish 
 to weep. . . . But you yourself would not have laughed 
 had you seen the fervor of charming Fanny. She was 
 the picture of blissful faith. Do not scoff at her. " 
 
 "And where did the ceremony take place?" asked 
 Dorsenne, obeying the almost suppliant injunction. 
 " In the chapel of the Dames du Cenadc. " 
 "I know the place," replied the novelist, "one of 
 the most beautiful corners of Rome! It is in the old 
 Palais Piancini, a large mansion almost opposite the 
 Calcographie Royale, where they sell those fantastic 
 etchings of the great Piranese, those dungeons and 
 those ruins of so intense a poesy! It is the Gaya 
 of stone. There is a garden on the terrace. And 
 to ascend to the chapel one follows a winding stair- 
 case, an incline without steps, and one meets nuns 
 in violet gowns, with faces so delicate in the white 
 framework of their bonnets. In short, an ideal re- 
 treat for one of my heroines. My old friend Mont- 
 fanon took me there. As we ascended to that tower, 
 six weeks ago, we heard the shrill voices of ten little 
 girls, singing: Questo cuor tu lavedrai* ... It was a 
 procession of catechists, going in the opposite direc- 
 tion, with tapers which flickered dimly in the remnant 
 of daylight. ... It was exquisite. . . . But, now per- 
 mit me to laugh at the thought of Montfanon's choler 
 when I relate to him this baptism. If I knew where 
 to find the old leaguer! But he has been hiding since 
 our duel. He is in some retreat doing penance. As 
 
 *That heart of Jesus, thou shalt see it. 
 II 319]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 I have already told you, the world for him has not 
 stirred since Francois de Guise. He only admits the 
 aims of the Protestants and the Jews. When Mon- 
 seigneur Guerillot tells him of Fanny's religious aspira- 
 tions, he raves immoderately. Were she to cast her- 
 self to the lions, like Saint Blandine, he would still cry 
 out ' sacrilege.' " 
 
 "He did not see her the day before yesterday," said 
 Alba, "nor the expression upon her face when she 
 recited the Credo. I do not believe in mysticism, you 
 know, and I have moments of doubt. There are 
 times when I can no longer believe in anything, life 
 seems to me so wretched and sad. . . . But I shall 
 never forget that expression. She saw God! . . . 
 Several women were present with very touching faces, 
 and there were many devotees. . . . The Cardinal is 
 very venerable. . . . All were by Fanny's side, like 
 saints around the Madonna in the early paintings 
 which you have taught me to like, and when the bap- 
 tism had been gone through, guess what she said to 
 me: 'Come, let us pray for my dear father, and for 
 his conversion.' Is not such blindness melancholy." 
 
 "The fact is," said Dorsenne again, jocosely, "that 
 in the father's dictionary the word has another mean- 
 ing: Conversion, feminine substantive, means to him 
 income. . . . But let us reason a little, Countess. 
 Why do you think it sad that the daughter should see 
 her father's character in her own light? . . . You 
 should, on the contrary, rejoice at it. . . . And why 
 do you find it melancholy that this adorable saint 
 should be the daughter of a thief? . . . How I wish 
 
 [3 2 °]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 that you were really my pupil, and that it would not 
 be too absurd to give you here, in this corner of the 
 hall, a lesson in intellectuality! ... I would say to 
 you, when you see one of those anomalies which ren- 
 ders you indignant, think of the causes. It is so easy. 
 "Although Protestant, Fanny is of Jewish origin — that 
 is to say, the descendant of a persecuted race — which 
 in consequence has developed by the side of the in- 
 herent defects of a proscribed people the corresponding 
 virtues, the devotion, the abnegation of the woman 
 who feels that she is the grace of a threatened hearth, 
 the sweet flower which perfumes the sombre prison." 
 
 "It is all beautiful and true," replied Alba, very 
 seriously. She had hung upon Dorsenne's lips while 
 he spoke, with the instinctive taste for ideas of that 
 order which proved her veritable origin. "But you 
 do not mention the sorrow. This is what one can 
 not do — look upon as a tapestry, as a picture, as an ob- 
 ject ; the creature who has not asked to live and who 
 suffers. You, who have feeling, what is your theory 
 when you weep? 
 
 "I can very clearly foresee the day on which Fanny 
 will feel her misfortune, " continued the young girl. "I 
 do not know when she will begin to judge her father, 
 but that she already begins to judge Ardea, alas, I am 
 only too sure. . . . Watch her at this moment, I pray 
 you." 
 
 Dorsenne indeed looked at the couple. Fanny was 
 listening to the Prince, but with a trace of suffering 
 upon her beautiful face, so pure in outline that the 
 nobleness in it was ideal. 
 
 21 [321]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 He was laughing at some anecdote which he thought 
 excellent, and which clashed with the sense of delicacy 
 of the person to whom he was addressing himself. 
 They were no longer the couple who, in the early 
 days of their betrothal, had given to Julien the senti- 
 ment of a complete illusion on the part of the young 
 girl for her future husband. 
 
 "You are right, Contessina," said he, "the decrys- 
 tallization has commenced. It is a little too soon." 
 
 "Yes, it is too soon," replied Alba. "And yet it is 
 too late. Would you believe that there are times when 
 I ask myself if it would not be my duty to tell her the 
 truth about her marriage, such as I know it, with the 
 story of the weak man, the forced sale, and of the bar- 
 gaining of Ardea?" 
 
 "You will not do it," said Dorsenne. "Moreover, 
 why? This one or another, the man who marries 
 her will only want her money, rest assured. It is 
 necessary that the millions be paid for here below, it 
 is one of their ransoms. . . . But I shall cause you 
 to be scolded by your mother, for I am monopolizing 
 you, and I have still two calls to pay this evening." 
 
 "Well, postpone them," said Alba. "I beseech 
 you, do not go." 
 
 "I must," replied Julien. "It is the last Wednes- 
 day of old Duchess Pietrapertosa, and after her grand- 
 son's recent kindness " 
 
 "She is so ugly," said Alba, "will you sacrifice me 
 to her?" 
 
 "Then there is my compatriot, who goes away to- 
 morrow and of whom I must take leave this evening, 
 
 [3 22 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 Madame de Sauvc, with whom you met me at the 
 museum. . . . You will not say she is ugly, will you?" 
 
 "No," responded Alba, dreamily, "she is very 
 pretty." . . . She had another prayer upon her lips, 
 which she did not formulate. Then, with a beseech- 
 ing glance: "Return, at least. Promise me that you 
 will return after your two visits. They will be over 
 in an hour and a half. It will not be midnight. You 
 know some do not ever come before one and some- 
 times two o'clock. You will return?" 
 
 "If possible, yes. But at any rate, we shall meet 
 to-morrow, at the studio, to see the portrait." 
 
 "Then, adieu," said the young girl, in a low voice. 
 
 [3 2 3]
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 COMMON MISERY 
 
 JHE Contessina's disposition was too 
 different from her mother's for the 
 mother to comprehend that heart, the 
 more contracted in proportion as it 
 was touched, while emotion was syno- 
 nymous with expansion in the opulent 
 and impulsive Venetian. That even- 
 ing she had not even observed Alba's 
 dreaminess, Dorsenne once gone, and it required that 
 Hafner should call her attention to it. To the schem- 
 ing Baron, if the novelist was attentive to the young 
 girl it was certainly with the object of capturing a 
 considerable dowry. Julien's income of twenty-five 
 thousand francs meant independence. The two hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand francs which Alba would have 
 at her mother's death was a very large fortune. So 
 Hafner thought he would deserve the name of "old 
 friend," by taking Madame Steno aside and saying 
 to her: 
 
 "Do you not think Alba has been a little strange 
 for several days!" 
 
 "She has always been so," replied the Countess. 
 "Young people are like that nowadays; there is no 
 more youth." 
 
 [3 2 4]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "Do you not think," continued the Baron, "that 
 perhaps there is another cause for that sadness — 
 some interest in some one, for example?" 
 
 "Alba?" exclaimed the mother. "For whom?" 
 
 "For Dorsenne," returned Hafner, lowering his 
 voice; "he just left five minutes ago, and you see she 
 is no longer interested in anything nor in any one." 
 
 "Ah, I should be very much pleased," said Madame 
 Steno, laughing. "He is a handsome fellow; he has 
 talent, fortune. He is the grand-nephew of a hero, 
 which is equivalent to nobility, in my opinion. But 
 Alba has no thought of it, I assure you. She would 
 have told me; she tells me everything. We are two 
 friends, almost two comrades, and she knows I shall 
 leave her perfectly free to choose. . . . No, my old 
 friend, I understand my daughter. Neither Dorsenne 
 nor any one else interests her, unfortunately. I some- 
 times fear she will go into a decline, like her cousin 
 Andryana Navagero, whom she resembles. . . . But 
 I must cheer her up. It will not take long." 
 
 "A Dorsenne for a son-in-law!" said Hafner to him- 
 self, as he watched the Countess walk toward Alba 
 through the scattered groups of her guests, and he 
 shook his head, turning his eyes with satisfaction upon 
 his future son-in-law. "That is what comes of not 
 watching one's children closely. One fancies one 
 understands them until some folly opens one's eyes! 
 . . . And, it is too late! . . . Well, I have warned 
 her, and it is no affair of mine!" 
 
 In spite of Fanny's observed and increasing vexation 
 Ardea amused himself by relating to her anecdotes, 
 
 [325]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 more or less true, of the goings-on in the Vatican. 
 He thus attempted to abate a Catholic enthusiasm at 
 which he was already offended. His sense of the 
 ridiculous and that of his social interest made him per- 
 ceive how absurd it would be to go into clerical society 
 after having taken for a wife a millionaire converted 
 the day before. To be just, it must be added that the 
 Countess's dry champagne was not altogether irre- 
 sponsible for the persistency with which he teased his 
 betrothed. It was not the first time he had indulged 
 in the semi-intoxication which had been one of the 
 sins of his youth, a sin less rare in the southern cli- 
 mates than the modesty of the North imagines. 
 
 "You come opportunely, Contessina, " said he, 
 when Mademoiselle Steno had seated herself upon the 
 couch beside them. "Your friend is scandalized by 
 a little story I have just told her. . . . The one of the 
 noble guard who used the telephone of the Vatican this 
 winter to appoint rendezvous with Guilia Rezzonico 
 without awakening the jealousy of Ugolino. . . . But 
 it is nothing. I have almost quarrelled with Fanny 
 for having revealed to her that the Holy Father re- 
 peated his benediction in Chapel Sixtine, with a sing- 
 ing master, like a prima donna. " 
 
 "I have already told you that I do not like those 
 jests," said Fanny, with visible irritation, which her 
 patience, however, governed. "If you desire to con- 
 tinue them, ! will leave you to converse with Alba." 
 
 "Since you see that you annoy her," said the latter 
 to the Prince, "change the subject." 
 
 "Ah, Contessina," replied Pepp&no, shaking his 
 
 [326]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 head, "you support her already. What will it be 
 later? Well, I apologize for my innocent epigrams 
 on His Holiness in his dressing-gown. And," he con- 
 tinued, laughing, "it is a pity, for I have still two or 
 three entertaining stories, notably one about a coffer 
 filled with gold pieces, which a faithful bequeathed 
 to the Pope. And that poor, dear man was about to 
 count them when the coffer slipped from his hand, 
 and there was the entire treasure on the floor, and the 
 Pope and a cardinal on all fours were scrambling for 
 the napoleons, when a servant entered. . . . Tableau! 
 ... I assure you that good Pius IX would be the 
 first to laugh with us at all the Vatican jokes. He is 
 not so much alia mano. But he is a holy man just 
 the same. Do not think I do not render him justice. 
 Only, the holy man is a man, and a good old man. 
 That is what you do not wish to see." 
 
 "Where are you going?" said Alba to Fanny, who 
 had risen as she had threatened to do. 
 
 "To talk with my father, to whom I have several 
 words to say." 
 
 "I warned you to change the subject," said Alba, 
 when she and the Prince were alone. Ardea, some- 
 what abashed, shrugged his shoulders and laughed: 
 
 "You will confess that the situation is quite piquant, 
 little Countess. . . . You will see she will forbid me 
 to go to the Quirinal. . . . Only one thing will be 
 lacking, and it is that Papa Hafner should discover 
 religious scruples which would prevent him from greet- 
 ing the King. . . . But Fanny must be appeased!" 
 
 "My God!" said Alba to herself, seeing the young 
 
 [327]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 man rise in his turn. "I believe he is intoxicated. 
 What a pity!" 
 
 As have almost all revolutions of that order, the work 
 of Christianity, accomplished for years, in Fanny had 
 for its principle an example. 
 
 The death of a friend, the sublime death of a true 
 believer, ended by determining her faith. She saw 
 the dying woman receive the sacrament, and the in- 
 effable joy of the benediction upon the face of the 
 sufferer of twenty lighted up by ecstasy. She heard 
 her say, with a smile of conviction: 
 
 "I go to ask you of Our Lord, Jesus Christ." 
 
 How could she have resisted such a cry and such a 
 sight ? 
 
 The very day after that death she asked of her father 
 permission to be baptized, which request drew from 
 the Baron a reply too significant not to be repeated 
 here: 
 
 "Undoubtedly," had replied the surprising man, 
 who instead of a heart, had a Bourse list on which all 
 was tariffed, even God, "undoubtedly I am touched, 
 very deeply touched, and very happy to see that re- 
 ligious matters preoccupy you to such a degree. To 
 the people it is a necessary curb, and to us it accords 
 with a certain rank, a certain society, a certain deport- 
 ment. I think that a person called like you to live in 
 Austria and in Italy should be a Catholic. However, 
 it is necessary to remember that you might marry 
 some one of another faith. Do not object. I am your 
 father. I can foresee all. I know you will marry 
 only according to the dictates of your heart. Wait 
 
 [ 328 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 then until it has spoken, to settle the question. ... If 
 you love a Catholic, you will then have occasion to 
 pay a compliment to your betrothed by adopting his 
 faith, of which he will be very sensible. . . . From 
 now until then, I shall not prevent you from following 
 ceremonies which please you. Those of the Roman 
 liturgy are, assuredly, among the best; I myself at- 
 tended Saint Peter's at the time of the pontifical gov- 
 ernment. . . . The taste, the magnificence, the music, 
 all moved me. . . . But to take a definite, irreparable 
 step, I repeat, you must wait. Your actual condition 
 of a Protestant has the grand sentiment of being more 
 neutral, less defined." 
 
 What words to listen to by a heart already touched 
 by the attraction of grace and by the nostalgia of eter- 
 nal life! But the heart was that of a young girl very 
 pure and very tender. To judge her father was 
 to her impossible, and the Baron's firmness had 
 convinced her that she must obey his w r ishes and 
 pray that he be enlightened. She therefore waited, 
 hoping, sustained and directed meanwhile by Cardinal 
 Guerillot, who later on was to baptize her and to ob- 
 tain for her the favor of approaching the holy table 
 for the first time at the Pope's mass. That prelate, 
 one of the noblest figures of which the French bishopric 
 has had cause to be proud, since Monseigneur Pie, was 
 one of those grand Christians for whom the hand of 
 God is as visible in the direction of human beings as 
 it is invisible to doubtful souls. When Fanny, already 
 devoted to her charities, confided in him the serious 
 troubles of her mind and the discord which had arisen 
 
 [ 3 2 9 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 between her and her father on the so essential point 
 of her baptism, the Cardinal replied: 
 
 "Have faith in God. He will give you a sign 
 when your time has come." And he uttered those 
 words with an accent whose conviction had filled 
 the young girl with a certainty which had never 
 left her. 
 
 In spite of his seventy years, and of the experiences 
 of the confession, in spite of the disenchanting struggle 
 with the freemasonry of his French diocese, which 
 had caused his exile to Rome, the venerable man 
 looked at Fanny's marriage from a supernatural stand- 
 point. Many priests are thus capable of a naivete 
 which, on careful analysis, is often in the right. But 
 at the moment the antithesis between the authentic 
 reality and that which they believe, constitutes an 
 irony almost absurd. When he had baptized Fanny, 
 the old Bishop of Clermont was possessed by a joy so 
 deep that he said to her, to express to her the more 
 delicately the tender respect of his friendship: 
 
 "I can now say as did Saint Monica after the bap- 
 tism of Saint Augustine: Cur hie sim, nescio ; jam 
 consumptd spe hujus saeculi. I do not know why I 
 remain here below. All my hope of the age is con- 
 summated. And like her I can add — the only thing 
 which made me desire to remain awhile was to see 
 you a Catholic before dying. The traveller, who has 
 tarried, has now nothing to do but to go. He has 
 gathered the last and the prettiest flower." . . . 
 
 Noble and faithful apostle, who was indeed to go 
 SO shortly after, meriting what they said of him, that 
 
 [33°]
 
 COSMO POL IS 
 
 which the African bishop said of his mother: "That 
 religious soul was at length absolved from her body." 
 . . . He did not anticipate that he would pay dearly 
 for that realization of his last wish! He did not fore- 
 see that she whom he ingenuously termed his most 
 beautiful flower was to become to him the principal 
 cause of bitter sorrow. Poor, grand Cardinal! It 
 was the final trial of his life, the supremely bitter drop 
 in his chalice, to assist at the disenchantment which 
 followed so closely upon the blissful intoxication of 
 his gentle neophyte's first initiation. To whom, if not 
 to him, should she have gone to ask counsel, in all the 
 tormenting doubts which she at once began to have in 
 her feelings with regard to her -fiance? 
 
 It was, therefore, that on the day following the 
 evening on which imprudent Ardca had jested so per- 
 sistently upon a subject sacred to her that she rang at 
 the door of the apartment which Monseigneur Guer- 
 illot occupied in the large mansion on Rue des Quatre- 
 Fontaines. There was no question of incriminating 
 the spirit of those pleasantries, nor of relating her 
 humiliating observations on the Prince's intoxication. 
 No. She wished to ease her mind, on which rested 
 a shade of sorrow. At the time of her betrothal, she 
 had fancied she loved Ardea, for the emotion of her 
 religious life at length freed had inspired her with 
 gratitude for him who was, however, only the pretext 
 of that exemption. She trembled to-day, not only at 
 not loving him any more, but at hating him, and above 
 all she felt herself a prey to that repugnance for the 
 useless cares of the world, to that lassitude of tran- 
 
 [33 l ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 sitory hopes, to that nostalgia of repose in God, un- 
 deniable signs of true vocations. 
 
 At the thought that she might, if she survived her 
 father and she remained free, retire to the Dames du 
 Cenacle, she felt at her approaching marriage an inward 
 repugnance, which augmented still more the proof of 
 her future husband's deplorable character. Had she 
 the right to form such bonds with such feelings? 
 Would it be honorable to break, without further de- 
 velopments, the betrothal which had been between 
 her and her father the condition of her baptism ? She 
 was already there, after so few days! And her wound 
 was deeper after the night on which the Prince had 
 uttered his careless jests. 
 
 "It is permitted you to withdraw," replied Monsieur 
 Guerillot, "but you are not permitted to lack charity 
 in your judgment." 
 
 There was within Fanny too much sincerity, her 
 faith was too simple and too deep for her not to follow 
 out that advice to the letter, and she conformed to it 
 in deeds as well as in intentions. For, before taking 
 a walk in the afternoon with Alba, she took the great- 
 est care to remove all traces which the little scene of 
 the day before could have left in her friend's mind. 
 Her efforts went very far. She would ask pardon of 
 her fiance. . . . Pardon! For what? For having 
 been wounded by him, wounded to the depths of her 
 sensibility? She felt that the charity of judgment 
 recommended by the pious Cardinal was a difficult 
 virtue. It exercises a discipline of the entire heart, 
 sometimes irreconcilable with the clearness of the in- 
 
 [332]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 telligcnce. Alba looked at her friend with a glance 
 full of an astonishment, almost sorrowful, and she 
 embraced her, saying: 
 
 "Peppino is not worthy even to kiss the ground on 
 which you tread, that is my opinion, and if he does 
 not spend his entire life in trying to be worthy of you, 
 it will be a crime." 
 
 As for the Prince himself, the impulses which dic- 
 tated 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 cer- 
 tain 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 ex- 
 cessive 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. 
 
 [333 3
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 I will do my duty toward my husband. I will be so 
 good a wife that I will transform him. He has re- 
 ligion. 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, needle- 
 women 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 t'heir 
 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 pleas- 
 antry <>n 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 
 
 [334]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 
 
 [335]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 every- 
 where?" 
 
 "It was Monsieur Dorsenne, one of Monsieur de 
 Montfanon's friends," said Fanny, in her gentle voice. 
 
 "Sara sara"* replied the merchant with his ha- 
 bitual 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 in- 
 distinct 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. . . . 
 
 •That may be. It is possible. 
 
 [2>&]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 Mon- 
 fanon 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 prayer-book 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 surround- 
 ings, 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 
 22 [337]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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, hold- 
 ing 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 Scan- 
 dalous Acquittal. By a Shareholder. It was a pam- 
 phlet, 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 Eng- 
 lish — 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 Ilafncr has known of it 
 long, and neither she nor her father will give a cen- 
 time." 
 
 "Very well! So much the better, so much the bet- 
 ter," said Ribalta, wrapping up his volume again; 
 "tell your hither I will keep it at his service." 
 
 [338]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "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 of- 
 fer 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 Dor- 
 senne, 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. 
 
 [339]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "As clear as that you are here, Contessina," replied 
 Dorsenne, "if to steal means to plunder one's neigh- 
 bors and to escape justice. But that would be noth- 
 ing. 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 feel- 
 ings 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 ! Hut she had to pay the price. I would have 
 asked the father more. One owes some considera- 
 tion to a young girl." 
 
 [34o]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 "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 Con- 
 tessina, 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 
 
 [ 34i ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 pointblank. The other threatened to relate 
 their little dealing to Ardea, and he did so." 
 
 "And Peppino was angry?" asked Dorsenne, shak- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 citement. Ardea came this morning to see my mother, 
 who has also seen Ilafner. 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 be- 
 seech her to reconsider her resolution. For she has 
 
 [342]
 
 COSMOPOLiS 
 
 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 intel- 
 ligence 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 after- 
 noon, toward six o'clock, that a servant came to 
 announce Mademoiselle Hafner's visit to the Contes- 
 sina, busy at that moment reading for the tenth time 
 the Eglogue Mondaine, that delicate story by Dor- 
 senne. 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 alter- 
 ation 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." 
 
 [ 343 1
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "You are going away?" asked the Contessina. 
 
 "Yes, " said Fanny, "I am going to spend the sum- 
 mer at one of our estates in Styria. " And, in a low 
 voice: "Has your mother told you that my engage- 
 ment 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 suf- 
 fered 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 irre- 
 vocable 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. 
 
 \M\\
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE LAKE DI PORTO 
 
 ER 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 realiz- 
 ing 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 deli- 
 cate, 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 con- 
 centrated fury, which was waiting for another occasion 
 to strike, for weeks, patiently, obscurely. She had 
 
 [345]
 
 PAUL BOIJRGET 
 
 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 suf- 
 fered so that she cried aloud, like an imprisoned ani- 
 mal beating against the bars, when she pictured to her- 
 self the happiness which the two lovers would enjoy in 
 the intimacy of the villa, with the beauties of the Vene- 
 tian 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 
 thai delicate woman, in appearance oblivious of world- 
 linesSj 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 
 
 [346]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 reasonings, Lydia ended by elaborating one of those 
 plans of a simplicity really infernal, in which she re- 
 vealed 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 un- 
 necessary 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 corre- 
 spondence spoke. The snare to be laid was very sim- 
 ple. 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 em- 
 ployed 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 hu- 
 
 [347]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 manity 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 con- 
 versing 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 conver- 
 sation, 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 Flo- 
 renfs 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 
 
 I 348 1
 
 COSMOPOL1S 
 
 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. More- 
 over, 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 proprc ! 
 
 "And I hesitated," said she to herself, "I thought of 
 sparing her!" 
 
 The following morning, toward noon, she found her- 
 self 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 pro- 
 pitious 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. 
 
 [349]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "Come, my little Linco," said she, with the affection- 
 ate 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, how- 
 ever, 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 be- 
 lieved 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 nol passed ere Lydia had put into 
 execution her hideous project, ruder the pretext of 
 reaching the linen room more quickly, she took a ser- 
 
 [35o]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 vant'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 expe- 
 rience 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 
 
 [35i]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 trem- 
 bled 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 daugh- 
 ter? I recognized her voice." 
 
 "Do not alarm yourself," replied Lydia, with atro- 
 cious 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, 
 
 I 352 1
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 in the face of the sinister depths of that dark soul, sud- 
 denly 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 depress- 
 ing still, and which became materially insupportable, 
 
 2 3 [ 353 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 when, toward half-past two, her mother bade her fare- 
 well, 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 pos- 
 sessed by suspicion on certain mysterious disappear- 
 ances 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 ac- 
 count 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 hit 
 arise in her a sudden, instinctive, almost irresistible 
 idea to end the moral suffering by which she was de- 
 voured. It was so simple! ... It was sufficient to 
 end life. ( )ne movement which she could make, one 
 
 [354]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 suffer- 
 ing 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 sep- 
 arated 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 re- 
 
 [355]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 mained 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 senti- 
 mental 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 your- 
 self?" 
 
 "I leaned against a window, which broke and the 
 pieces of glass cut my ringers 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 misfor- 
 tune," replied Alba, shaking her pretty head with an 
 expression so bitter about her mouth that the young 
 man, too, ceased smiling. 
 
 "Do nol speak in that tone," said he, "or I shall 
 think you did it purposely." 
 
 I 356]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 " 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 dif- 
 ferent and indefinable. It must have been that she 
 loved him still more than she herself believed, as for 
 a second she forgot both her own pain and her resolu- 
 tion, 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." 
 
 [357]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "Which means, little Countess, in simple prose, that 
 this is no doubt the last conversation we shall have to- 
 gether 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-senti- 
 mental, 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 ex- 
 ecutioner, 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 T beseech you, in the name of that friend- 
 ship, 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 be- 
 
 [358]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 gan to be terrified by the young girl's sudden excite- 
 ment, "it is not reasonable to agitate yourself thus, 
 because yesterday you had a very sad conversation 
 with Fanny Hafncr! First, it is altogether impossi- 
 ble 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 
 
 [359]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 (he heart of that man, and that heart, to- 
 ward whieli she turned in so immoderate a transport, 
 dr<w back instead of responding. 
 
 [3<>o J
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 " 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 con- 
 tinued with more firmness, " T 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 to- 
 morrow, now, and you will remember that I have 
 spoken to you as a man of honor, who would be miser- 
 able 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. 
 
 [361]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 But your presence is too cruel. I am ashamed of hav- 
 ing 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 with- 
 out 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 tempta- 
 tion 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 
 
 [ 362 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 vegeta- 
 tion which met Alba Steno's eye. But the scene ac- 
 corded 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, aug- 
 mented 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 small- 
 ness by the wildness of its surroundings, and motion- 
 less, 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 volup- 
 tuousness, drinking into her being the feverish fumes 
 of that place — one of the most fatal at that season and 
 
 [ 363 ]
 
 PAUL BOURC.ET 
 
 at that hour of all that dangerous coast — until she shud- 
 dered in her light summer gown. Her shoulders con- 
 tracted, her teeth chattered, and that feeling of dis- 
 comfort 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, manag- 
 ing the heavy oars with her delicate hands, she ad- 
 vanced 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 trans- 
 versal boards of the boat. She had made a great 
 effort to move the heavy oars, so that she was perspir- 
 ing. A second shudder seized her as she was arrang- 
 ing the trifling objects, so keen, so chilly, so intense 
 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 
 
 [ 364 I
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 com- 
 prehended 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 purpose- 
 ly!" 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 car- 
 ried off in a few days by the pernicious fevers con- 
 tracted in similar places, at that hour and in that sea- 
 son, notably one of her friends, one of the Bonapartes 
 living in Rome, who came thither to hunt when over- 
 heated. 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, allow- 
 ing 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 pro- 
 portion as the sun sank? A cry made her rise and 
 again take up the oars. It was the coachman, who, 
 
 [365]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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." 
 
 I 366]
 
 CHAPTER XI L 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 JND it was directly after that conver- 
 sation that the poor child left for 
 the lake, where she caught the per- 
 nicious 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?' " 
 
 [367]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 "At length she began to grow uneasy, and I, seeing 
 that no one returned, took my leave, my heart op- 
 pressed 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 approach- 
 ing 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 in- 
 conceivable, but it is thus. Ah! she is truly the 
 worthy friend of that knave Hafner, whom his daugh- 
 ter'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 con- 
 vert it into a hotel. I laugh," he continued with sin- 
 gular acrimony, "in order not to weep, for I am arriv- 
 ing 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 
 
 [ 368 ]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 after- 
 noon dreaming and sighing like young women! The 
 24 [ 369 ]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 con- 
 science. Yes or no," he insisted, with a return of his 
 usual excitement, "did I leave the catacombs to ar- 
 range that unfortunate duel? Yes or no, did I yield 
 to the paroxysm of choler which possessed me on hear- 
 ing of the engagement of Ardea and on finding that I 
 was in the presence of that equivocal Haf ner ? Yes or 
 no, did that duel help to enlighten Madame Gorka as 
 to her husband's doings, and, in consequence, Made- 
 moiselle 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, 
 
 [37o]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 dilet- 
 tante, 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 in- 
 famous 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 Eng- 
 land. 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 
 
 [37i]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 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 abom- 
 inable 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 intel- 
 
 [372]
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 lectual 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, princi- 
 ple 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 mel- 
 ancholy, deserted garden, and in a manner almost 
 supernatural, so much did his presence form a living 
 commentary to the discourse of the impassioned noble- 
 man, was no other than the Holy Father himself, on 
 the point of entering his carriage for his usual drive. 
 Dorsenne, who only knew Leon XIII from his por- 
 traits, saw an old man, bent, bowed, whose white cas- 
 sock 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 Mont- 
 fanon had advised, in order not to bring a reprimand 
 upon the keepers, he could study at his leisure the deli- 
 cate face of the Sovereign Pontiff, who paused at a 
 
 [373]
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 bed of roses to converse familiarly with a kneeling 
 gardener. He saw the infinitely indulgent smile of 
 that spiritnelle mouth. He saw the light of those eyes 
 which seemed to justify by their brightness the lumen 
 in ccelo applied to the successor of Pie IX by a cele- 
 brated 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 with- 
 out 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 him- 
 self 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 ut- 
 tered a complaint and who has for himself only that 
 
 [ 374 )
 
 COSMOPOLIS 
 
 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 ex- 
 plain his life: Debilricem martyrii fidem — Faith is 
 bound to martyrdom." 
 
 "Debilricem 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 re- 
 turned 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 para- 
 doxical than Florence, Nice, Biarritz, St. Moritz, than 
 such and such otfier 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 re- 
 morse around which revolved the moral life of the 
 superior and incomplete being, exiled from simple 
 humanity by the most invincible pride of mind. Mont- 
 fanon comprehended that every additional word would 
 pain the wounded heart. He was afraid of having 
 already lectured Dorsenne too severely. Hhe 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. 
 
 [375]
 
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