He had walked with Marsa under these great lindens forming an arch overhead like that of a cathedral.  He remembered conversations they had had in the evening, when a slight mist silvered the majestic park, and the white villa loomed vaguely before them like some phantom palace of fairyland.  With the Tzigana clinging to his arm, he had seen those fountains, with their singing waters, that broad lawn between the two long lines of trees, those winding paths through the shrubbery; and, in the emotion aroused by these well-remembered places, there was a sensation of bitter pain at the thought of the happiness that might have been his had fate fulfilled her promises, which increased, rather than appeased, the Prince’s anger.

As his steps led him mechanically nearer and nearer to the house where she lived, all the details of his wedding-day rose in his memory, and he turned aside to see again the little church, the threshold of which they had crossed together—­she exquisitely lovely in her white draperies, and he overflowing with happiness.

The square in front of the sanctuary was now deserted and the leaves were beginning to fall from the trees.  A man was lying asleep upon the steps before the bolted door.  Zilah stood gazing at the Gothic portal, with a statue of the Virgin Mother above it, and wondered whether it were he who had once led there a lovely girl, about to become his wife; and the sad, closed church produced upon him the effect of a tomb.

He dragged himself away from the contemplation of the stone threshold, where slept the tired man—­drunk perhaps, at all events happier than the Prince—­and proceeded on his way through the woods to the abode of Marsa Laszlo.

There was, Zilah remembered well, quite near there, a sort of narrow valley (where the Mayor of Maisons was said to have royally entertained Louis XIV and his courtiers, as they were returning from Marly), a lovely spot, surrounded by grassy slopes covered with violets, a little shady, Virgilian wood, where he and Marsa had dreamed away many happy hours.  They had christened it The Vale o f Violets.  How many memories were in that sweet name, each one of which stabbed and exasperated Zilah, rising before him like so many spectres.

He hastened his steps, repeating: 

“He is there!  She is waiting for him!  Her lover is there!”

At the end of the road, before the villa, closed and silent like the old church, he stopped.  He had reached his destination; but what was he about to do, he who—­who up to this time had protected his name from the poisonous breath of scandal?

He was about to kill Menko, or to be killed himself.  A duel!  But what was the need of proposing a duel, when, exercising his rights as a husband, he could punish both the man and the woman?

He did not hesitate long, however, but advanced to the gate, saying, aloud: 

“I have a right to enter my own house.”