On the other hand, the three books of travel pretentiously named ‘Tourisime,’ ‘Les Profils d’Etrangeres’ and the ‘Eclogue Mondaine,’ which fluctuated between Florence and London, St.-Moritz and Bayreuth, revealed long sojourns out of France; a clever analysis of the Italian, English, and German worlds; a superficial but true knowledge of the languages, the history and literature, which in no way accords with ‘l’odor di femina’, exhale from every page.  These contrasts are brought out by a mind endowed with strangely complex qualities, dominated by a firm will and, it must be said, a very mediocre sensibility.  The last point will appear irreconcilable with the extreme and almost morbid delicacy of certain of Dorsenne’s works.  It is thus however.  He had very little heart.  But, on the other hand, he had an abundance of nerves and nerves, and their irritability suffice for him who desires to paint human passions, above all, love, with its joys and its sorrows, of which one does not speak to a certain extent when one experiences them.  Success had come to Julien too early not to have afforded him occasion for several adventures.  In each of the centres traversed in the course of his sentimental vagabondage he tried to find a woman in whom was embodied all the scattered charms of the district.  He had formed innumerable intimacies.  Some had been frankly affectionate.  The majority were Platonic.  Others had consisted of the simple coquetry of friendship, as was the case with Mademoiselle Steno.  The young man had never employed more vanity than enthusiasm.  Every woman, mistress or friend, had been to him, nine times out of ten, a curiosity, then a model.  But, as he held that the model could not be recognized by any exterior sign, he did not think that he was wrong in making use of his prestige as a writer, for what he called his “culture.”  He was capable of justice, the defense which he made of Fanny Hafner to Montfanon proved it; of admiration, his respect for the noble qualities of that same Montfanon testify to it; of compassion, for without it he would not have apprehended at once with so much sympathy the result which the return of Count Gorka would have on the destiny of innocent Alba Steno.

On reaching the staircase of the Palais Castagna, instead of hastening, as was natural, to find out at least what meant the return to Rome of the lover whom Madame Steno deceived, he collected his startled sensibilities before meeting Alba, and, pausing, he scribbled in a note-book which he drew from his pocket, with a pencil always within reach of his fingers, in a firm hand, precise and clear, this note savoring somewhat of sentimentalism: 

“25 April, ’90.  Palais Castagna.—­Marvellous staircase constructed by Balthazar Peruzzi; so broad and long, with double rows of stairs, like those of Santa Colomba, near Siena.  Enjoyed above all the sight of an interior garden so arranged, so designed that the red flowers, the regularity of the green shrubs, the neat lines of the graveled walks resemble the features of a face.  The idea of the Latin garden, opposed to the Germanic or Anglo-Saxon, the latter respecting the irregularity of nature, the other all in order, humanizing and administering even to the flower-garden.”