rtsman? It is the secret of those
natures created for social conquest, like a Napoleon for war and
a Talleyrand for diplomacy. Dorsenne asked himself the question
frequently, and he could not solve it. Although he boasted of watching
the Baron with an intellectual curiosity, he could not restrain a
shudder of antipathy each time he met the eyes of the man.

And on this particular morning it was especially disagreeable to him
that those eyes had seen him making his unoffending notes, although
there was scarcely a shade of gentle condescension--that of a great lord
who patronizes a great artist--in the manner in which Hafner addressed
him.

"Do not inconvenience yourself for me, dear sir," said he to Dorsenne.
"You work from nature, and you are right. I see that your next novel
will touch upon the ruin of our poor Prince d'Ardea. Do not be too hard
on him, nor on us."

The artist could not help coloring at that benign pleasantry. It was
all the more painful to him because it was at once true and untrue. How
should he explain the sort of literary alchemy, thanks to which he was
enabled to affirm that he never drew portraits, although not a line
of his fifteen volumes was traced without a living model? He replied,
therefore, with a touch of ill-humor:

"You are mistaken, my dear Baron. I do not make notes on persons."

"All authors say that," answered the Baron, shrugging his shoulders
with the assumed good-nature which so rarely forsook him, "and they are
right.... At any rate, it is fortunate that you had something to write,
for we shall both be late in arriving at a rendezvous where there are
ladies.... It is almost a quarter past eleven, and we should have been
there at eleven precisely.... But I have one excuse, I waited for my
daughter."

"And she has not come?" asked Dorsenne.

"No," replied Hafner, "at the last moment she could not make up her
mind. She had a slight annoyance this morning--I do not know what old
book she had set her heart on. Some rascal found out that she wanted
it, and he obtained it first.... But that is not the true cause of her
absence. The true cause is that she is too sensitive, and she finds it
so sad that there should be a sale of the possessions of this ancient
family.... I did not insist. What would she have experienced had she
known the late Princess Nicoletta, Pepino's mother? When I came to Rome
on a visit for the first time, in '75, what a salon that was and what a
Princess!.