se
you to be calm."

He had scarcely uttered those words when the door opened, disclosing
to view another room, lighted also, and which, to judge by the sound
of voices, contained several persons. No doubt Madame Steno and Alba,
thought Julien; and the Baron entered, accompanied by Peppino Ardea.
While going through the introductions, the writer was struck by the
contrast offered between his three companions. Hafner and Ardea in
evening dress, with buttonhole bouquets, had the open and happy faces of
two citizens who had clear consciences. The usually sallow complexion
of the business man was tinged with excitement, his eyes, as a rule so
hard, were gentler. As for the Prince, the same childish carelessness
lighted up his jovial face, while the hero of Patay, with his coarse
boots, his immense form enveloped in a somewhat shabby redingote,
exhibited a face so contracted that one would have thought him devoured
by remorse. A dishonest intendant, forced to expose his accounts to
generous and confiding masters, could not have had a face more gloomy
or more anxious. He had, moreover, put his one arm behind his back in
a manner so formal that neither of the two men who entered offered him
their hands. That appearance was without doubt little in keeping with
what the father and the fiance of Fanny had expected; for there was,
when the four men were seated, a pause which the Baron was the first to
break. He began in his measured tones, in a voice which handles words as
the weight of a usurer weighs gold pieces to the milligramme:

"Gentlemen, I believe I shall express our common sentiment in first of
all establishing a point which shall govern our meeting.... We are here,
it is understood, to bring about the work of reconciliation between two
men, two gentlemen whom we know, whom we esteem--I might better
say, whom we all love.".... He turned, in pronouncing those words,
successively to each of his three listeners, who all bowed, with the
exception of the Marquis. Hafner examined the nobleman, with his
glance accustomed to read the depths of the mind in order to divine
the intentions. He saw that Chapron's first witness was a troublesome
customer, and he continued: "That done, I beg to read to you this little
paper." He drew from his pocket a sheet of folded paper and placed upon
the end of his nose his famous gold 'lorgnon': "It is very trifling, one
of those directives, as Monsieur de Moltke says, which serve to guide
oper