Madame de Lorcy replied in these words, by return mail: 

“You are indeed innocent, my dear professor, and your finesse is but too apparent; I could not help understanding.  Is she, indeed so foolish.  I did not think her overwise; but here she astonishes me more than I would have believed.  You can tell her, for me—­or rather don’t say anything to her; I will only speak to you, I am too angry to reason with her.  I will see your Pole, I await him resolutely; but, in truth, I have seen him already.  I am well acquainted with him, I know him by heart; I have no doubt that he is some impostor.  I will examine him without prejudice, with religious impartiality.  You are so good as to remind me that an expert suspends his judgment.  I will hold my police force in reserve, and I will let you know before long what I think of your adventurer.  Ah! yes, I do pity you, poor man.  After all, however, you alone are to blame; is it my fault that you did not know how to act?  God bless you!”

At the time when Samuel Brohl, seated amid the heather, in an oak-grove, was conversing with phantoms, Mme. de Lorcy, alone in her salon, was occupied with her needlework, and her thoughts, which revolved in a circle, like a horse in a riding-school.  She had for several days been expecting Count Abel Larinski’s visit; she wondered at his want of promptness, and suspected that he was afraid of her.  This suspicion pleased her.  Several times she fancied she heard a man’s step in the antechamber, at which she started nervously, and the rose-coloured strings of her cap fluttered on her shoulders.

Suddenly, while she was counting her stitches, with head bent down, some one entered without her perceiving it, seized her hand, and, devoutly kissing it, threw his hat on the table, and then dropped into a chair, where he remained motionless, with his legs stretched out, and his eyes riveted on the floor.

“Oh!  It is you, Camille,” exclaimed Mme. de Lorcy.  “You come apropos.  Well?”

“Well! yes, madame, that is it,” replied M. Langis; “and you see before you the most unhappy of men.  Why is your pond dry?  I want to fling myself into it head foremost.”

Mme. de Lorcy laid down her embroidery, and crossed her arms.  “So you have returned?” said she.

“Would to God I never had gone there!  It is a land where poison is sold, and I have drunk of it.”

“Don’t abuse metaphors.  You have seen her?  What did you say to her?”

“Nothing, madame—­nothing of what is in my heart.  I made her believe that I had reflected, and changed my views; that I was entirely cured of my foolish passion for her; that I was simply making her a friendly visit.  Yes, madame, I remained half a day with her, and during the half day I never once betrayed myself.  I convinced her that the mask was a face.  Tell me, conscientiously, have you ever read of a more heroic act in Plutarch’s Lives of Great Men?”