down their names only. I hoped in this way to learn the name of the young
traveller, and I was not disappointed. I soon saw the corpulent Monsieur
de Mauleon busily writing his name upon the register in characters worthy
of Monsieur Prudhomme; the other members of the little party followed his
example. The young woman was the last to write down her name. I took the
book in my turn, after she had left, and with apparent composure I read
upon the last line these words, written in a slender handwriting:

"Baroness Clemence de Bergenheim."

CHAPTER VII

GERFAUT ASKS A FAVOR

"The Baroness de Bergenheim!" exclaimed Marillac. "Ah! I understand it
all now, and you may dispense with the remainder of your story. So this
was the reason why, instead of visiting the banks of the Rhine as we
agreed, you made me leave the route at Strasbourg under the pretext of
walking through the picturesque sites of the Vosges. It was unworthy of
you to abuse my confidence as a friend. And I allowed myself to be led by
the nose to within a mile of Bergenheim!"

"Peace," interrupted Gerfaut; "I have not finished. Smoke and listen.

"I followed Madame de Bergenheim as far as Geneva. She had gone there
from here with her aunt, and had availed herself of this journey to visit
Mont Blanc. She left for her home the next day without my meeting her
again; but I preserved her name, and it was not unknown to me. I had
heard it spoken in several houses in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and I
knew that I should certainly have an opportunity of meeting her during
the winter.

"So I remained at Geneva, yielding to a sensation as new as it was
strange. It first acted upon my brain whose ice I felt melting away, and
its sources ready to gush forth. I seized my pen with a passion not
unlike an access of rage. I finished in four days two acts of a drama
that I was then writing. I never had written anything more vigorous or
more highly colored. My unconstrained genius throbbed in my arteries, ran
through my blood, and bubbled over as if it wished to burst forth. My
hand could not keep even with the course of my imagination; I was obliged
to write in hieroglyphics.

"Adieu to the empty reveries brought about by spleen, and to the
meditations 'a la Werther'! The sky was blue, the air pure, life
delightful--my talent was not dead.

"After this first effort, I slackened a little! Madame de Bergenheim's
face, which I had seen but dimly during this short tim