his
sister.... And then, as I told him, he respects the dead.... Let us....
I have my wits no longer about me, that intelligence has so greatly
disturbed me.... Princess d'Ardea!... Well, write that we will be at
Monsieur Hafner's at nine o'clock.... I do not want any of those people
at my house.... At yours it would not be proper; you are too young. And
I prefer going to the father-in-law's rather than to the son-inlaw's.
The rascal has made a good bargain in buying what he has bought with his
stolen millions. But the other.... And his great-great-uncle might have
been Jules Second, Pie Fifth, Hildebrand; he would have sold all just
the same!... He can not deceive himself! He has heard the suit against
that man spoken of! He knows whence come those millions! He has heard
their family, their lives spoken of! And he has not been inspired with
too great a horror to accept the gold of that adventurer. Does he
not know what a name is? Our name! It is ourselves, our honor, in the
mouths, in the thoughts, of others! How happy I am, Dorsenne, to have
been fifty-two years of age last month. I shall be gone before having
seen what you will see, the agony of all the aristocrats and royalties.
It was only in blood that they fell! But they do not fall. Alas! They
fix themselves upon the ground, which is the saddest of all. Still, what
matters it? The monarchy, the nobility, and the Church are everlasting.
The people who disregard them will die, that is all. Come, write your
letter, which I will sign. Send it away, and you will dine with me. We
must go into the den provided with an argument which will prevent
this duel, and sustaining our part toward our client. There must be an
arrangement which I would accept myself. I like him, I repeat."

The excitement which began to startle Dorsenne was only augmented during
dinner, so much the more so as, on discussing the conditions of that
arrangement he hoped to bring about, the recollection of his terrible
youth filled the thoughts and the discourse of the former duellist. Was
it, indeed, the same personage who recited the verses of a hymn in the
catacombs a few hours before? It only required the feudal in him to be
reawakened to transform him. The fire in his eyes and the color in his
face betrayed that the duel in which he had thought best to engage,
out of charity, intoxicated him on his own statement. It was the old
amateur, the epicure of the sword, very ungovernable, which stirred
w