by the wheels of the artillery of the conquerors,
who defiled singing. Nothing has moved me like that drive of the old
man, who has never uttered a complaint and who has for himself only that
acre of land in which to move freely. But these are grand words which
the holy man wrote one day at the foot of his portrait for a missionary.
The words explain his life: 'Debitricem martyrii fidem'--Faith is bound
to martyrdom."

"'Debitricem martyrii fidem'," repeated Dorsenne, "that is beautiful,
indeed. And," he added, in a low voice, "you just now abused very rudely
the dilettantes and the sceptic. But do you think there would be one
of them who would refuse martyrdom if he could have at the same time
faith?"

Never had Montfanon heard the young man utter a similar phrase and
in such an accent. The image returned to him, by way of contrast, of
Dorsenne, alert and foppish, the dandy of literature, so gayly a scoffer
and a sophist, to whom antique and venerable Rome was only a city of
pleasure, a cosmopolis more paradoxical than Florence, Nice, Biarritz,
St. Moritz, than such and such other cities of international winter and
summer. He felt that for the first time that soul was strained to its
depths, the tragical death of poor Alba had become in the mind of the
writer the point of remorse around which revolved the moral life of the
superior and incomplete being, exiled from simple humanity by the most
invincible pride of mind. Montfanon comprehended that every additional
word would pain the wounded heart. He was afraid of having already
lectured Dorsenne too severely. He took within his arm the arm of the
young man, and he pressed it silently, putting into that manly caress
all the warm and discreet pity of an elder brother.

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