this affair is the suicide of
one Schroeder, a brave citizen of Vienna, who knew our Baron intimately,
and who invested, on the advice of his excellent friend, his entire
fortune, three hundred thousand florins, in the scheme. He lost them,
and, in despair, killed himself, his wife, and their three children."

"My God!" cried Alba, clasping her hands. "And Fanny might have read
that letter in the book."

"Yes," continued Julien, "and all the rest with proof in support of
it. But rest assured, she shall not have the volume. I will go to that
anarchist of a Ribalta to-morrow and I will buy the last copy, if Hafner
has not already bought it."

Notwithstanding his constant affectation of irony, and, notwithstanding,
his assumption of intellectual egotism, Julien was obliging. He never
hesitated to render any one a service. He had not told his little friend
an untruth when he promised her to buy the dangerous work, and the
following morning he turned toward the Rue Borgognona, furnished with
the twenty louis demanded by the bookseller. Imagine his feelings when
the latter said to him:

"It is too late, Monsieur Dorsenne. The young lady was here last night.
She pretended not to prefer one volume to the other. It was to bargain,
no doubt. Ha, ha! But she had to pay the price. I would have asked the
father more. One owes some consideration to a young girl."

"Wretch!" exclaimed the novelist. "And you can jest after having
committed that Judas-like act! To inform a child of her father's
misdeeds, when she is ignorant of them!... Never, do you hear, never
any more will Monsieur de Montfanon and I set foot in your shop, nor
Monseigneur Guerillot, nor any of the persons of my acquaintance. I
will tell the whole world of your infamy. I will write it, and it shall
appear in all the journals of Rome. I will ruin you, I will force you to
close this dusty old shop."

During the entire day, Dorsenne vainly tried to shake off the weight
of melancholy which that visit to the brigand of the Rue Borgognona had
left upon his heart.

On crossing, at nine o'clock, the threshold of the Villa Steno to give
an account of his mission to the Contessina, he was singularly moved.
There was no one there but the Maitlands, two tourists and two English
diplomatists, on their way to posts in the East.

"I was awaiting you," said Alba to her friend, as soon as she could
speak with him in a corner of the salon. "I need your advice. Last night
a t