vague word race sums up. Again,
taking this book as an example, you and I, my dear Primoli, know a number
of Venetians and of English women, of Poles and of Romans, of Americans
and of French who have nothing in common with Madame Steno, Maud and
Boleslas Gorka, Prince d'Ardea, Marquis Cibo, Lincoln Maitland, his
brother-in-law, and the Marquis de Montfanon, while Justus Hafner only
represents one phase out of twenty of the European adventurer, of whom
one knows neither his religion, his family, his education, his point of
setting out, nor his point of arriving, for he has been through various
ways and means. My ambition would be satisfied were I to succeed in
creating here a group of individuals not representative of the entire
race to which they belong, but only as possibly existing in that race--or
those races. For several of them, Justus Hafner and his daughter Fanny,
Alba Steno, Florent Chapron, Lydia Maitland, have mixed blood in their
veins. May these personages interest you, my dear friend, and become to
you as real as they have been to me for some time, and may you receive
them in your palace of Tor di Nona as faithful messengers of the grateful
affection felt for you by your companion of last winter.

PAUL BOURGET.

PARIS, November 16, 1892.

COSMOPOLIS

BOOK 1.

CHAPTER I

A DILETTANTE AND A BELIEVER

Although the narrow stall, flooded with heaped-up books and papers, left
the visitor just room enough to stir, and although that visitor was one
of his regular customers, the old bookseller did not deign to move from
the stool upon which he was seated, while writing on an unsteady desk.
His odd head, with its long, white hair, peeping from beneath a once
black felt hat with a broad brim, was hardly raised at the sound of the
opening and shutting of the door. The newcomer saw an emaciated,
shriveled face, in which, from behind spectacles, two brown eyes twinkled
slyly. Then the hat again shaded the paper, which the knotty fingers,
with their dirty nails, covered with uneven lines traced in a handwriting
belonging to another age, and from the thin, tall form, enveloped in a
greenish, worn-out coat, came a faint voice, the voice of a man afflicted
with chronic laryngitis, uttering as an apology, with a strong Italian
accent, this phrase in French:

"One moment, Marquis, the muse will not wait."

"Very well, I will; I am no muse. Listen to your inspiration comfort