villa loomed vaguely before them like
some phantom palace of fairyland. With the Tzigana clinging to his arm,
he had seen those fountains, with their singing waters, that broad lawn
between the two long lines of trees, those winding paths through the
shrubbery; and, in the emotion aroused by these well-remembered places,
there was a sensation of bitter pain at the thought of the happiness
that might have been his had fate fulfilled her promises, which
increased, rather than appeased, the Prince's anger.

As his steps led him mechanically nearer and nearer to the house where
she lived, all the details of his wedding-day rose in his memory, and he
turned aside to see again the little church, the threshold of which they
had crossed together--she exquisitely lovely in her white draperies, and
he overflowing with happiness.

The square in front of the sanctuary was now deserted and the leaves
were beginning to fall from the trees. A man was lying asleep upon the
steps before the bolted door. Zilah stood gazing at the Gothic portal,
with a statue of the Virgin Mother above it, and wondered whether it
were he who had once led there a lovely girl, about to become his wife;
and the sad, closed church produced upon him the effect of a tomb.

He dragged himself away from the contemplation of the stone threshold,
where slept the tired man--drunk perhaps, at all events happier than the
Prince--and proceeded on his way through the woods to the abode of Marsa
Laszlo.

There was, Zilah remembered well, quite near there, a sort of narrow
valley (where the Mayor of Maisons was said to have royally entertained
Louis XIV and his courtiers, as they were returning from Marly), a
lovely spot, surrounded by grassy slopes covered with violets, a little
shady, Virgilian wood, where he and Marsa had dreamed away many happy
hours. They had christened it The Vale o f Violets. How many memories
were in that sweet name, each one of which stabbed and exasperated
Zilah, rising before him like so many spectres.

He hastened his steps, repeating:

"He is there! She is waiting for him! Her lover is there!"

At the end of the road, before the villa, closed and silent like the
old church, he stopped. He had reached his destination; but what was he
about to do, he who--who up to this time had protected his name from the
poisonous breath of scandal?

He was about to kill Menko, or to be killed himself. A duel! But what
was the need of proposing a du