nt, 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 establishes 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 suit of the 'Credit Austro-Dalmate', in 1880, he would be in the
galleys, instead of in Rome. The facts were these: there were innumerable
failures. I know something 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 certain 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 unconvinced 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 passing
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 prevent his daughter from being an
angel, for another. As for that cosmopolitanism 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 poo