as well as in Paris.  An irrational instinct had rendered the painter and his paintings antipathetic to him at their first meeting.  Had he had sufficient cause?  Suddenly, on leaning forward in such a manner as to see without being seen, he perceived a victoria which entered the Rue Leopardi, and in that victoria the black hat of Mademoiselle Steno and the light one of her mother.  In two minutes more the elegant carriage drew up at the Moorish structure, which gleamed among the other buildings in that street, for the most part unfinished, with a sort of insolent, sumptuousness.

The two ladies alighted and disappeared through the door, which closed upon them, while the coachman started up his horses at the pace of animals which are returning to their stable.  He checked them that they might not become overheated, and the fine cobs trembled impatiently in their harnesses.  Evidently the Countess and Alba were in the studio for a long sitting.  What had Boleslas learned that he did not already know?  Was he not ridiculous, standing upon the sidewalk of the square in the centre of which rose the ruin of an antique reservoir, called, for a reason more than doubtful, the trophy of Marius.  With one glance the young man took in this scene—­the empty victoria turning in the opposite direction, the large square, the ruin, the row of high houses, his cab.  He appeared to himself so absurd for being there to spy out that of which he was only too sure, that he burst into a nervous laugh and reentered his cab, giving his own address to the cabman:  Palazzetto Doria, Place de Venise.  The cab that time started off leisurely, for the man comprehended that the mad desire to arrive hastily no longer possessed his fare.  By a sudden metamorphosis, the swift Roman steed became a common nag, and the vehicle a heavy machine which rumbled along the streets.  Boleslas yielded to depression, the inevitable reaction of an excess of violence such as he had just experienced.  His composure could not last.  The studio, in which was Madame Steno, began to take a clear form in the jealous lover’s mind in proportion as he drove farther from it.  In his thoughts he saw his former mistress walking about in the framework of tapestry, armor, studies begun, as he had frequently seen her walking in his smoking-room, with the smile upon her lips of an amorous woman, touching the objects among which her lover lives.  He saw impassive Alba, who served as chaperon in the new intrigue of her mother’s with the same naivete she had formerly employed in shielding their liaison.  He saw Maitland with his indifferent glance of the day before, the glance of a preferred lover, so sure of his triumph that he did not even feel jealous of the former lover.