e
Bonapartes are nowhere when it is a question of nobility!.... I await the
time when he will blush."

"And I the time when he will be punished as he deserves," interrupted
Alba Steno, in a mournful voice. "He is insolently triumphant. But no.
....He will succeed.... If it be true that his fortune is one immense
theft, think of those he has ruined. In what can they believe in the face
of his infamous happiness?"

"If they are philosophers," replied Dorsenne, laughing still more gayly,
"this spectacle will cause them to meditate on the words uttered by one
of my friends: 'One can not doubt the hand of God, for it created the
world.' Do you remember a certain prayer-book of Montluc's?"

"The one which your friend Montfanon bought to vex the poor little
thing?"

"Precisely. The old-leaguer has returned it to Ribalta; the latter told
me so yesterday; no doubt in a spirit of mortification. I say no doubt
for I have not seen the poor, dear man since the duel, which his
impatience toward Ardea and Hafner rendered in evitable. He retired, I
know not for how many days, to the convent of Mount Olivet, near Sienna,
where he has a friend, one Abbe de Negro, of whom he always speaks as of
a saint. I learned, through Rebalta, that he has returned, but is
invisible. I tried to force an entrance. In short, the volume is again in
the shop of the curiosity-seeker in the Rue Borgognona, if Mademoiselle
Hafner still wants it!"

"What good fortune!" exclaimed Fanny, with a sparkle of delight in her
eyes. "I did not know what present to offer my dear Cardinal. Shall we
make the purchase at once?"

"Montluc's prayer-book?" repeated old Ribalta, when the two young ladies
had alighted from the carriage before his small book-shop, more dusty,
more littered than ever with pamphlets, in which he still was, with his
face more wrinkled, more wan and more proud, peering from beneath his
broad-brimmed hat, which he did not raise. "How do you know it is here?
Who has told you? Are there spies everywhere?"

"It was Monsieur Dorsenne, one of Monsieur de Montfanon's friends," said
Fanny, in her gentle voice.

"Sara sara," replied the merchant with his habitual insolence, and,
opening the drawer of the chest in which he kept the most incongruous
treasures, he drew from it the precious volume, which he held toward
them, without giving it up. Then he began a speech, which reproduced the
details given by Montfanon himself. "Ah, it is very authentic.