with his coarse boots, his
immense form enveloped in a somewhat shabby redingote, exhibited a face
so contracted that one would have thought him devoured by remorse. A
dishonest intendant, forced to expose his accounts to generous and
confiding masters, could not have had a face more gloomy or more anxious.
He had, moreover, put his one arm behind his back in a manner so formal
that neither of the two men who entered offered him their hands. That
appearance was without doubt little in keeping with what the father and
the fiance of Fanny had expected; for there was, when the four men were
seated, a pause which the Baron was the first to break. He began in his
measured tones, in a voice which handles words as the weight of a usurer
weighs gold pieces to the milligramme:

"Gentlemen, I believe I shall express our common sentiment in first of
all establishing a point which shall govern our meeting.... We are here,
it is understood, to bring about the work of reconciliation between two
men, two gentlemen whom we know, whom we esteem--I might better say, whom
we all love.".... He turned, in pronouncing those words, successively to
each of his three listeners, who all bowed, with the exception of the
Marquis. Hafner examined the nobleman, with his glance accustomed to read
the depths of the mind in order to divine the intentions. He saw that
Chapron's first witness was a troublesome customer, and he continued:
"That done, I beg to read to you this little paper." He drew from his
pocket a sheet of folded paper and placed upon the end of his nose his
famous gold 'lorgnon': "It is very trifling, one of those directives, as
Monsieur de Moltke says, which serve to guide operations, a plan of
action which we will modify after discussion. In short, it is a landmark
that we may not launch into space."

"Pardon, sir," interrupted Montfanon, whose brows contracted still more
at the mention of the celebrated field-marshal, and, stopping by a
gesture the reader, who, in his surprise, dropped his lorgnon upon the
table on which his elbow rested. "I regret very much," he continued, "to
be obliged to tell you that Monsieur Dorsenne and I"--here he turned to
Dorsenne, who made an equivocal gesture of vexation--"can not admit the
point of view in which you place yourself.... You claim that we are here
to arrange a reconciliation. That is possible.... I concede that it is
desirable.... But I know nothing of it and, permit me to say, you do not