ew days to his
room, and which would force him to submit for several weeks to the
annoyance of a sling. When he was taken home and his personal physician,
hastily summoned, made him a bandage and prescribed for the first few
days bed and rest, he experienced a new access of rage, which exceeded
the paroxysms of the day before and of that morning. All parts of his
soul, the noblest as well as the meanest, bled at once and caused him to
suffer with another agony than that occasioned by his wounded arm. Was he
satisfied in the desire, almost morbid, to figure in the eyes of those
who knew him as an extraordinary personage? He had hastened from Poland
through Europe as an avenger of his betrayed love, and he had begun by
missing his rival. Instead of provoking him immediately in the salon of
Villa Steno, he had waited, and another had had time to substitute
himself for the one he had wished to chastise. The other, whose death
would at least have given a tragical issue to the adventure, Boleslas had
scarcely touched. He had hoped in striking Dorsenne to execute at least
one traitor whom he considered as having trifled with the most sacred of
confidences. He had simply succeeded in giving that false friend occasion
to humiliate him bitterly, leaving out of the question that he had
rendered it impossible to fight again for many days. None of the persons
who had wronged him would be punished for some time, neither his coarse
and cowardly rival, nor his perfidious mistress, nor monstrous Lydia
Maitland, whose infamy he had just discovered. They were all happy and
triumphant, on that lovely, radiant May day, while he tossed on a bed of
pain, and it was proven too clearly to him that very afternoon by his two
seconds, the only visitors whom he had not denied admission, and who came
to see him about five o'clock. They came from the races of Tor di Quinto,
which had taken place that day.

"All is well," began Cibo, "I will guarantee that no one has talked.... I
have told you before, I am sure of my innkeeper, and we have paid the
witnesses and the coachman."

"Were Madame Steno and her daughter at the races?" interrupted Boleslas.

"Yes," replied the Roman, whom the abruptness of the question surprised
too much for him to evade it with his habitual diplomacy.

"With whom?" asked the wounded man.

"Alone, that time," replied Cibo, with an eagerness in which Boleslas
distinguished an intention to deceive him.

"And Madame Maitla