It is inconceivable, but it is
thus. Ah! she is truly the worthy friend of that knave Hafner, whom
his daughter's broken engagement has not grieved, in spite of his
discomfiture. I forgot to tell you that he had just sold Palais Castagna
to a joint-stock company to convert it into a hotel. I laugh," he
continued with singular acrimony, "in order not to weep, for I am
arriving at the most heartrending part. Do you know where I saw poor
Alba Steno's face for the last time? It was three days ago, the day
after her death, at this hour. I called to inquire for the Countess!
She was receiving! 'Do you wish to bid her adieu?' she asked me. 'Good
Lincoln is just molding her face for me.' And I entered the chamber of
death. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks were sunken, her pretty nose was
pinched, and upon her brow and in the corners of her mouth was a mixture
of bitterness and of repose which I can not describe to you. I thought:
'If you had liked, she would be alive, she would smile, she would love
you!' The American was beside the bed, while Florent Chapron, always
faithful, was preparing the oil to put upon the face of the corpse, and
sinister Lydia Maitland was watching the scene with eyes which made
me shudder, reminding me of what I had divined at the time of my last
conversation with Alba. If she does not undertake to play the part of a
Nemesis and to tell all to the Countess, I am mistaken in faces! For the
moment she was silent, and guess the only words the mother uttered
when her lover, he on whose account her daughter had suffered so much,
approached their common victim: 'Above all, do not injure her lovely
lashes!' What horrible irony, was it not? Horrible!"

The young man sank upon a bench as he uttered that cry of distress and
of remorse, which Montfanon mechanically repeated, as if startled by the
tragical confidence he had just received.

Montfanon shook his gray head several times as if deliberating; then
forced Dorsenne to rise, chiding him thus:

"Come, Julien, we can not remain here all the afternoon dreaming and
sighing like young women! The child is dead. We can not restore her to
life, you in despairing, I in deploring. We should do better to look in
the face our responsibility in that sinister adventure, to repent of it
and to expiate it."

"Our responsibility?" interrogated Julien. "I see mine, although I can
truly not see yours."

"Yours and mine," replied Montfanon. "I am no sophist, and I am not