When Ferragut returned to Marseilles two months afterwards, he was still ignorant as to whether his former mistress was yet among the living.

The first evening that he met his old comrade, the captain, in the cafe of the Cannebiere, he skillfully guided the conversation around until he could bring out naturally the question in the back of his mind:  “What was the fate of that Freya Talberg that there was so much talk about in the newspapers before I went to Salonica?...”

The Marseillaise had to make an effort to recall her.

“Ah, yes!...  The boche spy,” he said after a long pause.  “They shot her some weeks ago.  The papers said little of her death,—­just a few lines.  Such people don’t deserve any more....”

Ferragut’s friend had two sons in the army; a nephew had died in the trenches, another, a mate aboard a transport, had just perished in a torpedo attack.  The old man was passing many nights without sleeping thinking of his sons battling at the front.  And this uneasiness gave a hard and ferocious tone to his patriotic enthusiasm.

“It’s a good thing she is dead....  She was a woman, and shooting a woman is a painful thing.  It is always repugnant to be obliged to treat them like men....  But according to what they tell me, this individual with her spy-information brought about the torpedoing of sixteen vessels....  Ah, the wicked beast!...”

And he said no more, changing the subject.  Every one evinced the same revulsion on recalling the spy.

Ferragut eventually shared the same sentiments, his brain having divested itself of the contradictory duality which had attended all the critical moments of his existence.  Remembering only her crimes, he hated Freya.  As a man of the sea, he recalled his nameless fellow-sailors killed by torpedoes.  This woman had indirectly prepared the ground for many assassinations....  And at the same time he recalled another image of her as the mistress who knew so well how to keep him spellbound by her artifices in the old palace of Naples, making that voluptuous prison her best souvenir.

“Let’s think no more about her,” he said to himself energetically.  “She has died....  She does not exist.”

But not even after her death did she leave him in peace.  Remembrance of her soon came surging back, binding her to him with a tragic interest.

The very evening that he was talking with his friend in the cafe of the Cannebiere, he went to the post office to get the mail which had been forwarded to him at Marseilles.  They gave him a great package of letters and newspapers.  By the handwriting on the envelopes, and the postmarks on the postals, he tried to make out who was writing to him:—­one letter only from his wife, evidently but a single sheet, judging from its slender flexibility, three very bulky ones from Toni,—­a species of diary in which he continued relating his purchases, his crops, his hope of seeing the captain,—­all this mixed in with abundant news about the war, and the wretched condition of the people.  There were, besides, various sheets from the banking establishments at Barcelona, rendering Ferragut an account of the investment of his capital.