his room, and which would force him to submit for several weeks to the
annoyance of a sling. When he was taken home and his personal physician,
hastily summoned, made him a bandage and prescribed for the first few
days bed and rest, he experienced a new access of rage, which exceeded
the paroxysms of the day before and of that morning. All parts of his
soul, the noblest as well as the meanest, bled at once and caused him to
suffer with another agony than that occasioned by his wounded arm. Was
he satisfied in the desire, almost morbid, to figure in the eyes of
those who knew him as an extraordinary personage? He had hastened from
Poland through Europe as an avenger of his betrayed love, and he had
begun by missing his rival. Instead of provoking him immediately in
the salon of Villa Steno, he had waited, and another had had time to
substitute himself for the one he had wished to chastise. The other,
whose death would at least have given a tragical issue to the adventure,
Boleslas had scarcely touched. He had hoped in striking Dorsenne to
execute at least one traitor whom he considered as having trifled with
the most sacred of confidences. He had simply succeeded in giving that
false friend occasion to humiliate him bitterly, leaving out of the
question that he had rendered it impossible to fight again for many
days. None of the persons who had wronged him would be punished for
some time, neither his coarse and cowardly rival, nor his perfidious
mistress, nor monstrous Lydia Maitland, whose infamy he had just
discovered. They were all happy and triumphant, on that lovely, radiant
May day, while he tossed on a bed of pain, and it was proven too clearly
to him that very afternoon by his two seconds, the only visitors whom
he had not denied admission, and who came to see him about five o'clock.
They came from the races of Tor di Quinto, which had taken place that
day.

"All is well," began Cibo, "I will guarantee that no one has talked....
I have told you before, I am sure of my innkeeper, and we have paid the
witnesses and the coachman."

"Were Madame Steno and her daughter at the races?" interrupted Boleslas.

"Yes," replied the Roman, whom the abruptness of the question surprised
too much for him to evade it with his habitual diplomacy.

"With whom?" asked the wounded man.

"Alone, that time," replied Cibo, with an eagerness in which Boleslas
distinguished an intention to deceive him.

"And Madame Maitland?"

"