character who was
the most artistically, exquisitely cruel, and the most scoundrelly of
men.

No one knew of the projected study but Des Hermies, whom Durtal saw
nearly every day.

They had met in the strangest of homes, that of Chantelouve, the
Catholic historian, who boasted of receiving all classes of people. And
every week in the social season that drawing-room in the rue de Bagneux
was the scene of a heterogeneous gathering of under sacristans, cafe
poets, journalists, actresses, partisans of the cause of Naundorff,[1]
and dabblers in equivocal sciences.

[Footnote 1: A watchmaker who at the time of the July monarchy attempted
to pass himself off for Louis XVII.]

This salon was on the edge of the clerical world, and many religious
came here at the risk of their reputations. The dinners were
discriminately, if unconventionally, ordered. Chantelouve, rotund,
jovial, bade everyone make himself at home. Now and then through his
smoked spectacles there stole an ambiguous look which might have given
an analyst pause, but the man's bonhomie, quite ecclesiastical, was
instantly disarming. Madame was no beauty, but possessed a certain
bizarre charm and was always surrounded. She, however, remained silent
and did nothing to encourage her voluble admirers. As void of prudery as
her husband, she listened impassively, absently, with her thoughts
evidently afar, to the boldest of conversational imprudences.

At one of these evening parties, while La Rousseil, recently converted,
howled a hymn, Durtal, sitting in a corner having a quiet smoke, had
been struck by the physiognomy and bearing of Des Hermies, who stood out
sharply from the motley throng of defrocked priests and grubby poets
packed into Chantelouve's library and drawing-room.

Among these smirking and carefully composed faces, Des Hermies,
evidently a man of forceful individuality, seemed, and probably felt,
singularly out of place. He was tall, slender, somewhat pale. His eyes,
narrowed in a frown, had the cold blue gleam of sapphires. The nose was
short and sharp, the cheeks smooth shaven. With his flaxen hair and
Vandyke he might have been a Norwegian or an Englishman in not very good
health. His garments were of London make, and the long, tight,
wasp-waisted coat, buttoned clear up to the neck, seemed to enclose him
like a box. Very careful of his person, he had a manner all his own of
drawing off his gloves, rolling them up with an almost inaudible
crac