At times it assumes a written form, and it is the most marked of professional distortions, the most unintelligible to the illiterate, who think waveringly and who do not, happily for them, suffer the continual servitude to precision of word and to too conscientious thought.

“Yes; poor, charming Alba!” he repeated to himself.  “How unfortunate that the marriage with Countess Gorka’s brother could not have been arranged four months ago.  Connection with the family of her mother’s lover would be tolerably immoral!  But she would at least have had less chance of ever knowing it; and the convenient combination by which the mother has caused her to form a friendship with that wife in order the better to blind the two, would have bordered a little more on propriety.  To-day Alba would be Lady Ardrahan, leading a prosaic English life, instead of being united to some imbecile whom they will find for her here or elsewhere.  She will then deceive him as her mother deceived the late Steno—­with me, perhaps, in remembrance of our pure intimacy of to-day.  That would be too sad!  Do not let us think of it!  It is the future, of the existence of which we are ignorant, while we do know that the present exists and that it has all rights.  I owe to the Contessina my best impressions of Rome, to the vision of her loveliness in this scene of so grand a past.  And this is a sensation which is enjoyable; to visit the Palais Castagna with the adorable creature upon whom rests the menace of a drama.  To enjoy the Countess Steno’s kindness, otherwise the house would not have that tone and I would never have obtained the little one’s friendship.  To rejoice that Ardea is a fool, that he has lost his fortune on the Bourse, and that the syndicate of his creditors, presided over by Monsieur Ancona, has laid hands upon his palace.  For, otherwise, I should not have ascended the steps of this papal staircase, nor have seen this debris of Grecian sarcophagi fitted into the walls, and this garden of so intense a green.  As for Gorka, he may have returned for thirty-six other reasons than jealousy, and Montfanon is right:  Caterina is cunning enough to inveigle both the painter and him.  She will make Maitland believe that she received Gorka for the sake of Madame Gorka, and to prevent him from ruining that excellent woman at gaming.  She will tell Boleslas that there was nothing more between her and Maitland than Platonic discussions on the merits of Raphael and Perugino....  And I should be more of a dupe than the other two for missing the visit.  It is not every day that one has a chance to see auctioned, like a simple Bohemian, the grand-nephew of a pope.”

The second suite of reflections resembled more than the first the real Dorsenne, who was often incomprehensible even to his best friends.  The young man with the large, black eyes, the face with delicate features, the olive complexion of a Spanish monk, had never had but one passion, too exceptional not to baffle the ordinary observer, and developed in a sense so singular that to the most charitable it assumed either an attitude almost outrageous or else that of an abominable egotism and profound corruption.