a, Maud, and Hafner, one of those walks of which fashionable women
are so fond in Rome as well as in Paris. An irrational instinct had
rendered the painter and his paintings antipathetic to him at their
first meeting. Had he had sufficient cause? Suddenly, on leaning forward
in such a manner as to see without being seen, he perceived a victoria
which entered the Rue Leopardi, and in that victoria the black hat of
Mademoiselle Steno and the light one of her mother. In two minutes more
the elegant carriage drew up at the Moorish structure, which gleamed
among the other buildings in that street, for the most part unfinished,
with a sort of insolent, sumptuousness.

The two ladies alighted and disappeared through the door, which closed
upon them, while the coachman started up his horses at the pace of
animals which are returning to their stable. He checked them that they
might not become overheated, and the fine cobs trembled impatiently in
their harnesses. Evidently the Countess and Alba were in the studio for
a long sitting. What had Boleslas learned that he did not already know?
Was he not ridiculous, standing upon the sidewalk of the square in the
centre of which rose the ruin of an antique reservoir, called, for a
reason more than doubtful, the trophy of Marius. With one glance the
young man took in this scene--the empty victoria turning in the opposite
direction, the large square, the ruin, the row of high houses, his cab.
He appeared to himself so absurd for being there to spy out that of
which he was only too sure, that he burst into a nervous laugh and
reentered his cab, giving his own address to the cabman: Palazzetto
Doria, Place de Venise. The cab that time started off leisurely, for
the man comprehended that the mad desire to arrive hastily no longer
possessed his fare. By a sudden metamorphosis, the swift Roman steed
became a common nag, and the vehicle a heavy machine which rumbled along
the streets. Boleslas yielded to depression, the inevitable reaction
of an excess of violence such as he had just experienced. His composure
could not last. The studio, in which was Madame Steno, began to take a
clear form in the jealous lover's mind in proportion as he drove farther
from it. In his thoughts he saw his former mistress walking about in the
framework of tapestry, armor, studies begun, as he had frequently seen
her walking in his smoking-room, with the smile upon her lips of an
amorous woman, touching the objects