me, to the
vision of her loveliness in this scene of so grand a past. And this is a
sensation which is enjoyable; to visit the Palais Castagna with the
adorable creature upon whom rests the menace of a drama. To enjoy the
Countess Steno's kindness, otherwise the house would not have that tone
and I would never have obtained the little one's friendship. To rejoice
that Ardea is a fool, that he has lost his fortune on the Bourse, and
that the syndicate of his creditors, presided over by Monsieur Ancona,
has laid hands upon his palace. For, otherwise, I should not have
ascended the steps of this papal staircase, nor have seen this debris of
Grecian sarcophagi fitted into the walls, and this garden of so intense a
green. As for Gorka, he may have returned for thirty-six other reasons
than jealousy, and Montfanon is right: Caterina is cunning enough to
inveigle both the painter and him. She will make Maitland believe that
she received Gorka for the sake of Madame Gorka, and to prevent him from
ruining that excellent woman at gaming. She will tell Boleslas that there
was nothing more between her and Maitland than Platonic discussions on
the merits of Raphael and Perugino.... And I should be more of a dupe
than the other two for missing the visit. It is not every day that one
has a chance to see auctioned, like a simple Bohemian, the grand-nephew
of a pope."

The second suite of reflections resembled more than the first the real
Dorsenne, who was often incomprehensible even to his best friends. The
young man with the large, black eyes, the face with delicate features,
the olive complexion of a Spanish monk, had never had but one passion,
too exceptional not to baffle the ordinary observer, and developed in a
sense so singular that to the most charitable it assumed either an
attitude almost outrageous or else that of an abominable egotism and
profound corruption.

Dorsenne had spoken truly, he loved to comprehend--to comprehend as the
gamester loves to game, the miser to accumulate money, the ambitious to
obtain position--there was within him that appetite, that taste, that
mania for ideas which makes the scholar and the philosopher. But a
philosopher united by a caprice of nature to an artist, and by that of
fortune and of education to a worldly man and a traveller. The abstract
speculations of the metaphysician would not have sufficed for him, nor
would the continuous and simple creation of the narrator who narrates to
amus