“Subject the complexity of life to a thought harmonious and clear, a constant mark of the Latin genus, for a group of trees as well as an entire nation, an entire religion—­Catholicism.  It is the contrary in the races of the North.  Significance of the word:  the forests have taught man liberty.”

He had hardly finished writing that oddly interpreted memorandum, and was closing his note-book, when the sound of a familiar voice caused him to turn suddenly.  He had not heard ascend the stairs a personage who waited until he finished writing, and who was no other than one of the actors in his “troupe” to use his expression, one of the persons of the party of that morning organized the day before at Madame Steno’s, and just the one whom the intolerable marquis had defamed with so much ardor, the father of beautiful Fanny Hafner, Baron Justus himself.  The renowned founder of the ‘Credit Austro-Dalmate’ was a small, thin man, with blue eyes of an acuteness almost insupportable, in a face of neutral color.  His ever-courteous manner, his attire, simple and neat, his speech serious and discreet, gave to him that species of distinction so common to old diplomatists.  But the dangerous adventurer was betrayed by the glance which Hafner could not succeed in veiling with indifferent amiability.  The man-of-the-world, which he prided himself upon having become, was visible through all by certain indefinable trifles, and above all by those eyes, of a restlessness so singular in so wealthy a man, indicating an enigmatical and obscure past of dark and contrasting struggles, of covetous sharpness, of cold calculation and indomitable energy.  Fanatical Montfanon, who abused the daughter with such unjustness, judged the father justly.  The son of a Jew of Berlin and of a Dutch Protestant, Justus Hafner was inscribed on the civil state registers as belonging to his mother’s faith.  But the latter died when Justus was very young, and he was not reared in any other liturgy than that of money.  From his father, a persevering and skilful jeweller, but too prudent to risk or gain much, he learned the business of precious stones, to which he added that of laces, paintings, old materials, tapestries, rare furniture.

An infallible eye, the patience of a German united with his Israelitish and Dutch extraction, soon amassed for him a small capital, which his father’s bequest augmented.  At twenty-seven Justus had not less than five hundred thousand marks.  Two imprudent operations on the Bourse, enterprises to force fortune and to obtain the first million, ruined the too-audacious courtier, who began again the building up of his fortune by becoming a diamond broker.