not ten years since the occurrence, and it is forgotten.  When he settled in Rome he found open doors, extended hands, as he would have found them in Madrid, London, Paris, or elsewhere.  People go to his house; they receive him!  And you wish me to believe in the devoutness of that man’s daughter!....  No, a thousand times no; and you yourself, Dorsenne, with your mania for paradoxes and sophisms, you have the right spirit in you, and these people horrify you in reality, as they do me.”

“Not the least in the world,” replied the writer, who had listened to the Marquis’s tirade; with an unconvinced smile, he repeated:  “Not the least in the world....  You have spoken of me as an acrobat or an athlete.  I am not offended, because it is you, and because I know that you love me dearly.  Let me at least have the suppleness of one.  First, before passing judgment on a financial affair I shall wait until I understand it.  Hafner was acquitted.  That is enough, for one thing.  Were he even the greatest rogue in the universe, that would not prevent his daughter from being an angel, for another.  As for that cosmopolitanism for which you censure him, we do not agree there; it is just that which interests me in him.  Thirdly,....  I should not consider that I had lost the six months spent in Rome, if I had met only him.  Do not look at me as if I were one of the patrons of the circus, Uncle Beuve, or poor Monsieur Renan himself,” he continued, tapping the Marquis’s shoulder.  “I swear to you that I am very serious.  Nothing interests me more than these exceptions to the general rule—­than those who have passed through two, three, four phases of existence.  Those individuals are my museum, and you wish me to sacrifice to your scruples one of my finest subjects....  Moreover,”—­and the malice of the remark he was about to make caused the young man’s eyes to sparkle “revile Baron Hafner as much as you like,” he continued; “call him a thief and a snob, an intriguer and a knave, if it pleases you.  But as for being a person who does not know where his ancestors lived, I reply, as did Bonhomet when he reached heaven and the Lord said to him:  ’Still a chimney-doctor, Bonhomet?’—­’And you, Lord?’.  For you were born in Bourgogne, Monsieur de Montfanon, of an ancient family, related to all the nobility-upon which I congratulate you—­and you have lived here in Rome for almost twenty-four years, in the Cosmopolis which you revile.”

“First of all,” replied the Pope’s former soldier, holding up his mutilated arm, “I might say that I no longer count, I do not live.  And then,” his face became inspired, and the depths of that narrow mind, often blinded but very exalted, suddenly appeared, “and then, my Rome to me, Monsieur, has nothing in common with that of Monsieur Hafner nor with yours, since you are come, it seems, to pursue studies of moral teratology.  Rome to me is not Cosmopolis, as you say, it is Metropolis, it is the mother of cities....  You forget that