t 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 Montluc, 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 Dorsenne.

"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. I suppose your Slav and your Anglo-Saxon have no
prejudices, and that they share their Venetian with a dilettanteism quite
modern. It is cosmopolitan, indeed.... Well, once more, adieu.... Deliver
my message to him if you see him, and," his face again expressed a
childish malice, "do not fail to tell Mademoiselle 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!"

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING OF A DRAMA

"There 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 wornout machine!" And for a
brief moment he watched, with a glance in which there was at least as
much admiration as pity, the Marquis, who was disappearing down the Rue
de la Propagande, and who walked at the rapid pace characteristic of
monomaniacs. They follow their thoughts instead of heeding objects.
However, 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, meritorious 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 acquainted with that
original personage to know that he had never been able to say "no" to any
one who asked charity, great or small, of him. Thanks to that system, the
enemy of beautiful Fanny Hafner was always short of cash with forty
thousand francs' income and leading a simple existence.