n immediately?
It will not be very long, but do not interrupt me. You will be angry if
you will survive the blow I am about to give you. Ah, you do not wish
to call your Rome a Cosmopolis; then what do you say to the party with
which, in twenty minutes, I shall visit the ancient palace of Urban
VII? First of all, we have your beautiful enemy, Fanny Hafner, and
her father, the Baron, representing a little of Germany, a little of
Austria, a little of Italy and a little of Holland. For it seems the
Baron's mother was from Rotterdam. Do not interrupt. We shall have
Countess Steno to represent Venice, and her charming daughter, Alba, to
represent a small corner of Russia, for the Chronicle claims that she
was the child, not of the defunct Steno, but of Werekiew-Andre, you
know, the one who killed himself in Paris five or six years ago, by
casting himself into the Seine, not at all aristocratically, from the
Pont de la Concorde. We shall have the painter, the celebrated Lincoln
Maitland, to represent America. He is the lover of Steno, whom he
stole from Gorka during the latter's trip to Poland. We shall have the
painter's wife, Lydia Maitland, and her brother, Florent Chapron, to
represent a little of France, a little of America, and a little of
Africa; for their grandfather was the famous Colonel Chapron mentioned
in the Memorial, who, after 1815, became a planter in Alabama. That old
soldier, without any prejudices, had, by a mulattress, a son whom he
recognized and to whom he left--I do not know how many dollars. 'Inde'
Lydia and Florent. Do not interrupt, it is almost finished. We shall
have, to represent England, a Catholic wedded to a Pole, Madame Gorka,
the wife of Boleslas, and, lastly, Paris, in the form of your servant.
It is now I who will essay to drag you away, for were you to join our
party, you, the feudal, it would be complete.... Will you come?"

"Has the blow satisfied you?" asked Montfanon. "And the unhappy man has
talent," he exclaimed, talking of Dorsenne as if the latter were not
present, "and he has written ten pages on Rhodes which are worthy of
Chateaubriand, and he has received from God the noblest gifts--poetry,
wit, the sense of history; and in what society does he delight! But,
come, once for all, explain to me the pleasure which a man of your
genius can find in frequenting that international Bohemia, more or less
gilded, in which there is not one being who has standing or a history.
I no longer a