. He was acquitted, but with such damage to his financial integrity
and in the face of such public indignation that he abandoned Austria for
Italy and Vienna for Rome. There, heedless of first rebuffs, he undertook
to realize the third great object of his life, the gaining of social
position. To the period of avidity had succeeded, as it frequently does
with those formidable handlers of money, the period of vanity. Being now
a widower, he aimed at his daughter's marriage with a strength of will
and a complication of combinations equal to his former efforts, and that
struggle for connection with high life was disguised beneath the cloak of
the most systematically adopted politeness of deportment. How had he
found the means, in the midst of struggles and hardships, to refine
himself so that the primitive broker and speculator were almost
unrecognizable in the baron of fifty-four, decorated with several orders,
installed in a magnificent palace, the father of a charming daughter, and
himself an agreeable conversationalist, a courteous gentleman, an ardent
sportsman? It is the secret of those natures created for social conquest,
like a Napoleon for war and a Talleyrand for diplomacy. Dorsenne asked
himself the question frequently, and he could not solve it. Although he
boasted of watching the Baron with an intellectual curiosity, he could
not restrain a shudder of antipathy each time he met the eyes of the man.

And on this particular morning it was especially disagreeable to him that
those eyes had seen him making his unoffending notes, although there was
scarcely a shade of gentle condescension--that of a great lord who
patronizes a great artist--in the manner in which Hafner addressed him.

"Do not inconvenience yourself for me, dear sir," said he to Dorsenne.
"You work from nature, and you are right. I see that your next novel will
touch upon the ruin of our poor Prince d'Ardea. Do not be too hard on
him, nor on us."

The artist could not help coloring at that benign pleasantry. It was all
the more painful to him because it was at once true and untrue. How
should he explain the sort of literary alchemy, thanks to which he was
enabled to affirm that he never drew portraits, although not a line of
his fifteen volumes was traced without a living model? He replied,
therefore, with a touch of ill-humor:

"You are mistaken, my dear Baron. I do not make notes on persons."

"All authors say that," answered the Baron, shruggi