a vain passion of such magnitude that being locked up within my breast it gave me an illusion of lonely greatness with my miserable head uplifted amongst the stars.  But when I made up my mind (which I did quickly, to be done with it) to call on the banker’s wife, almost the first thing she said to me was that the Marquis de Villarel was “amongst us.”  She said it joyously.  If in her husband’s room at the bank legitimism was a mere unpopulated principle, in her salon Legitimacy was nothing but persons.  “Il m’a cause beaucoup de vous,” she said as if there had been a joke in it of which I ought to be proud.  I slunk away from her.  I couldn’t believe that the grandee had talked to her about me.  I had never felt myself part of the great Royalist enterprise.  I confess that I was so indifferent to everything, so profoundly demoralized, that having once got into that drawing-room I hadn’t the strength to get away; though I could see perfectly well my volatile hostess going from one to another of her acquaintances in order to tell them with a little gesture, “Look!  Over there—­in that corner.  That’s the notorious Monsieur George.”  At last she herself drove me out by coming to sit by me vivaciously and going into ecstasies over “ce cher Monsieur Mills” and that magnificent Lord X; and ultimately, with a perfectly odious snap in the eyes and drop in the voice, dragging in the name of Madame de Lastaola and asking me whether I was really so much in the confidence of that astonishing person.  “Vous devez bien regretter son depart pour Paris,” she cooed, looking with affected bashfulness at her fan. . . .  How I got out of the room I really don’t know.  There was also a staircase.  I did not fall down it head first—­that much I am certain of; and I also remember that I wandered for a long time about the seashore and went home very late, by the way of the Prado, giving in passing a fearful glance at the Villa.  It showed not a gleam of light through the thin foliage of its trees.

I spent the next day with Dominic on board the little craft watching the shipwrights at work on her deck.  From the way they went about their business those men must have been perfectly sane; and I felt greatly refreshed by my company during the day.  Dominic, too, devoted himself to his business, but his taciturnity was sardonic.  Then I dropped in at the cafe and Madame Leonore’s loud “Eh, Signorino, here you are at last!” pleased me by its resonant friendliness.  But I found the sparkle of her black eyes as she sat down for a moment opposite me while I was having my drink rather difficult to bear.  That man and that woman seemed to know something.  What did they know?  At parting she pressed my hand significantly.  What did she mean?  But I didn’t feel offended by these manifestations.  The souls within these people’s breasts were not volatile in the manner of slightly scented and inflated bladders.  Neither had they the impervious skins which seem the rule in the fine world that wants only to get on.  Somehow they had sensed that there was something wrong; and whatever impression they might have formed for themselves I had the certitude that it would not be for them a matter of grins at my expense.