hat the report would reach
the poor Contessina. It was sufficient to cause the writer to reply:
"Very well! I accept. I will serve you. Do not thank me. We are losing
valuable time. You will require another second. Of whom have you
thought?"

"Of no one," returned Florent. "I confess I have counted on you to aid
me."

"Let us make a list," said Julien. "It is the best way, and then cross
off the names."

Dorsenne wrote down a number of their acquaintances, and they indeed
crossed them off, according to his expression, so effectually that after
a minute examination they had rejected all of them. They were then as
much perplexed as ever, when suddenly Dorsenne's eyes brightened, he
uttered a slight exclamation, and said brusquely:

"What an idea! But it is an idea!... Do you know the Marquis de
Montfanon?" he asked Florent.

"He with one arm?" replied the latter. "I saw him once with reference to
a monument I put up at Saint Louis des Francais."

"He told me of it," said Dorsenne. "For one of your relatives, was it
not?"

"Oh, a distant cousin," replied Florent; "one Captain Chapron, killed in
'forty-nine in the trenches before Rome."

"Now, to our business," cried Dorsenne, rubbing his hands. "It is
Montfanon who must be your second. First of all, he is an experienced
duellist, while I have never been on the ground. That is very important.
You know the celebrated saying: 'It is neither swords nor pistols which
kill; it is the seconds.'.... And then if the matter has to be arranged,
he will have more prestige than your servant."

"It is impossible," said Florent; "Marquis de Montfanon.... He will
never consent. I do not exist for him."

"That is my affair," cried Dorsenne. "Let me take the necessary steps in
my own name, and then if he agrees you can make it in yours.... Only we
have no time to lose. Do not leave your house until six o'clock. By that
time I shall know upon what to depend."

If, at first, the novelist had felt great confidence in the issue of
his strange attempt with reference to his old friend, that confidence
changed to absolute apprehension when he found himself, half an hour
later, at the house which Marquis Claude Francois occupied in one of the
oldest parts of Rome, from which location he could obtain an admirable
view of the Forum. How many times had Julien come, in the past six
months, to that Marquis who dived constantly in the sentiment of the
past, to gaze upon the tragical and gr