.. She was a Condolmieri, of the family of Eugene IV."

"How absurd vanity renders the most refined man," thought Julien,
suiting his pace to the Baron's. "He would have me believe that he was
received at the house of that woman who was politically the blackest
of the black, the most difficult to please in the recruiting of her
salon.... Life is more complex than the Montfanons even know of! This
girl feels by instinct that which the chouan of a marquis feels by
doctrine, the absurdity of this striving after nobility, with a father
who forgets the broker and who talks of the popes of the Middle Ages
as of a trinket!... While we are alone, I must ask this old fox what he
knows of Boleslas Gorka's return. He is the confidant of Madame Steno.
He should be informed of the doings and whereabouts of the Pole."

The friendship of Baron Hafner for the Countess, whose financial adviser
he was, should have been for Dorsenne a reason for avoiding such a
subject, the more so as he was convinced of the man's dislike for him.
The Baron could, by a single word perfidiously repeated, injure him very
much with Alba's mother. But the novelist, similar on that point to the
majority of professional observers, had only the power of analysis of a
retrospective order. Never had his keen intelligence served him to avoid
one of those slight errors of conversation which are important mistakes
on the pitiful checker-board of life. Happily for him, he cherished no
ambition except for his pleasure and his art, without which he would
have found the means of making for himself, gratuitously, enough enemies
to clear all the academies.

He, therefore, chose the moment when the Baron arrived at the landing on
the first floor, pausing somewhat out of breath, and after the agent had
verified their passes, to say to his companion:

"Have you seen Gorka since his arrival?"

"What? Is Boleslas here?" asked Justus Hafner, who manifested his
astonishment in no other manner than by adding: "I thought he was still
in Poland."

"I have not seen him myself," said Dorsenne. He already regretted having
spoken too hastily. It is always more prudent not to spread the first
report. But the ignorance of that return of Countess Steno's best
friend, who saw her daily, struck the young man with such surprise that
he could not resist adding: "Some one, whose veracity I can not doubt,
met him this morning." Then, brusquely: "Does not this sudden return
make you fearful