e love of this incomparable maiden, exquisite
in her combined gentleness and pride. The folly of love mounted to his
brain like intoxication, and communicated itself to the poor girl who
believed in him as if he were the living faith; and, in the madness
of his passion, Michel, without being a coward, committed a cowardly
action.

No: a coward he certainly was not. He was one of those nervous natures,
as prompt to hope as to despair, going to all extremes, at times
foolishly gay, and at others as grave and melancholy as Hamlet. There
were days when Menko did not value his life at a penny, and when he
asked himself seriously if suicide were not the simplest means to reach
the end; and again, at the least ray of sunshine, he became sanguine and
hopeful to excess. Of undoubted courage, he would have faced the muzzle
of a loaded cannon out of mere bravado, at the same time wondering, with
a sarcastic smile upon his lips, 'Cui bono'?

He sometimes called heroism a trick; and yet, in everyday life, he had
not much regard for tricksters. Excessively fond of movement, activity,
and excitement, he yet counted among his happiest days those spent in
long meditations and inactive dreams. He was a strange combination of
faults and good qualities, without egregious vices, but all his virtues
capable of being annihilated by passion, anger, jealousy, or grief. With
such a nature, everything was possible: the sublimity of devotion, or
a fall into the lowest infamy. He often said, in self-analysis: "I am
afraid of myself." In short, his strength was like a house built upon
sand; all, in a day, might crumble.

"If I had to choose the man I should prefer to be," he said once,
"I would be Prince Andras Zilah, because he knows neither my useless
discouragements, apropos of everything and nothing, nor my childish
delights, nor my hesitations, nor my confidence, which at times
approaches folly as my misanthropy approaches injustice; and because, in
my opinion, the supreme virtue in a man is firmness."

The Zilahs were connected by blood with the Menkos, and Prince Andras
was very fond of this young man, who promised to Hungary one of those
diplomats capable of wielding at once the pen and the sword, and who
in case of war, before drawing up a protocol, would have dictated its
terms, sabre in hand. Michel indeed stood high with his chief in the
embassy, and he was very much sought after in society. Before the day he
met Marsa, he had, to te