still make after playing the magnamimous with me?"
His question was never to be answered, nor was he to know that Ribalta
had bought the rare volume among a heap of papers, engravings, and old
books, paying twenty-five francs for all. Moreover, two encounters which
followed one upon the other on leaving the shop, prevented him from
meditating on that problem of commercial psychology. He paused for a
moment at the end of the street to cast a glance at the Place d'Espagne,
which he loved as one of those corners unchanged for the last thirty
years. On that morning in the early days of May, the square, with its
sinuous edge, was indeed charming with bustle and light, with the
houses which gave it a proper contour, with the double staircase of La
Trinite-des-Monts lined with idlers, with the water which gushed from
a large fountain in the form of a bark placed in the centre-one of
the innumerable caprices in which the fancy of Bernin, that illusive
decorator, delighted to indulge. Indeed, at that hour and in that light,
the fountain was as natural in effect as were the nimble hawkers who
held in their extended arms baskets filled with roses, narcissus, red
anemones, fragile cyclamens and dark pansies. Barefooted, with sparkling
eyes, entreaties upon their lips, they glided among the carriages which
passed along rapidly, fewer than in the height of the season, still
quite numerous, for spring was very late this year, and it came
with delightful freshness. The flower-sellers besieged the hurried
passers-by, as well as those who paused at the shop-windows, and, devout
Catholic as Montfanon was, he tasted, in the face of the picturesque
scene of a beautiful morning in his favorite city, the pleasure of
crowning that impression of a bright moment by a dream of eternity.
He had only to turn his eyes to the right, toward the College de la
Propagande, a seminary from which all the missions of the world set out.

But it was decreed that the impassioned nobleman should not enjoy
undisturbed the bibliographical trifle obtained so cheaply and which he
carried under his arm, nor that feeling so thoroughly Roman; a sudden
apparition surprised him at the corner of a street, at an angle of the
sidewalk. His bright eyes lost their serenity when a carriage passed by
him, a carriage, perfectly appointed, drawn by two black horses, and
in which, notwithstanding the early hour, sat two ladies. The one was
evidently an inferior, a companion who a