demoiselle Hafner!" That cry which the news
brought by Julien wrested from Montfanon was so dolorous that the young
man did not think of laughing. He had thought it wiser to prepare his
irascible friend, lest the Baron might make some allusion to the grand
event during the course of the conversation, and that the other might not
make some impulsive remark.

"Did I not tell you that the girl's Catholicism was a farce? Did I not
tell Monseigneur Guerillot? This was what she aimed at all those years,
with such perfect hypocrisy? It was the Palais Castagna. And she will
enter there as mistress!.... She will bring there the dishonor of that
pirated gold on which there are stains of blood! Warn them, that they do
not speak to me of it, or I will not answer for myself.... The second of
a Gorka, the father-in-law of an Ardea, he triumphs, the thief who should
by rights be a convict!.... But we shall see. Will not all the other
Roman princes who have no blots upon their escutcheons, the Orsinis, the
Colonnas, the Odeschalchis, the Borgheses, the Rospigliosis, not combine
to prevent this monstrosity? Nobility is like love, those who buy those
sacred things degrade them in paying for them, and those to whom they are
given are no better than mire.... Princess d'Ardea! That creature! Ah,
what a disgrace!.... But we must remember our engagement relative to that
brave young Chapron. The boy pleases me; first, because very probably he
is going to fight for some one else and out of a devotion which I can not
very well understand! It is devotion all the same, and it is
chivalry!.... He desires to prevent that miserable Gorka from calling
forth a scandal which would have warned his sister.... And then, as I
told him, he respects the dead.... Let us.... I have my wits no longer
about me, that intelligence has so greatly disturbed me.... Princess
d'Ardea!.... Well, write that we will be at Monsieur Hafner's at nine
o'clock.... I do not want any of those people at my house.... At yours it
would not be proper; you are too young. And I prefer going to the
father-in-law's rather than to the son-inlaw's. The rascal has made a
good bargain in buying what he has bought with his stolen millions. But
the other.... And his great-great-uncle might have been Jules Second, Pie
Fifth, Hildebrand; he would have sold all just the same!.... He can not
deceive himself! He has heard the suit against that man spoken of! He
knows whence come those millions! He h