e all the sight of an
interior garden so arranged, so designed that the red flowers, the
regularity of the green shrubs, the neat lines of the graveled walks
resemble the features of a face. The idea of the Latin garden, opposed to
the Germanic or Anglo-Saxon, the latter respecting the irregularity of
nature, the other all in order, humanizing and administering even to the
flower-garden."
"Subject the complexity of life to a thought harmonious and clear, a
constant mark of the Latin genus, for a group of trees as well as an
entire nation, an entire religion--Catholicism. It is the contrary in the
races of the North. Significance of the word: the forests have taught man
liberty."
He had hardly finished writing that oddly interpreted memorandum, and was
closing his note-book, when the sound of a familiar voice caused him to
turn suddenly. He had not heard ascend the stairs a personage who waited
until he finished writing, and who was no other than one of the actors in
his "troupe" to use his expression, one of the persons of the party of
that morning organized the day before at Madame Steno's, and just the one
whom the intolerable marquis had defamed with so much ardor, the father
of beautiful Fanny Hafner, Baron Justus himself. The renowned founder of
the 'Credit Austro-Dalmate' was a small, thin man, with blue eyes of an
acuteness almost insupportable, in a face of neutral color. His
ever-courteous manner, his attire, simple and neat, his speech serious
and discreet, gave to him that species of distinction so common to old
diplomatists. But the dangerous adventurer was betrayed by the glance
which Hafner could not succeed in veiling with indifferent amiability.
The man-of-the-world, which he prided himself upon having become, was
visible through all by certain indefinable trifles, and above all by
those eyes, of a restlessness so singular in so wealthy a man, indicating
an enigmatical and obscure past of dark and contrasting struggles, of
covetous sharpness, of cold calculation and indomitable energy. Fanatical
Montfanon, who abused the daughter with such unjustness, judged the
father justly. The son of a Jew of Berlin and of a Dutch Protestant,
Justus Hafner was inscribed on the civil state registers as belonging to
his mother's faith. But the latter died when Justus was very young, and
he was not reared in any other liturgy than that of money. From his
father, a persevering and skilful jeweller, but too prudent to
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