“Baron Hafner!” exclaimed Dorsenne.  “What a singular choice!” He paused, and he and Florent exchanged glances.  They understood one another without speaking.  Boleslas could not have found a surer means of informing Madame Steno as to the plan he intended to employ in his vengeance.  On the other hand, the known devotion of the Baron for the Countess gave one chance more for a pacific solution, at the same time that the fanaticism of Montfanon would be confronted with Fanny’s father, an episode of comedy suddenly cast across Gorka’s drama of jealousy.

Julien resumed with a smile:  “You must watch Montfanon’s face when we inform him of those two witnesses.  He is a man of the fifteenth century, you know, a Montluc, a Duc d’Alba, a Philippe II.  I do not know which he detests the most, the Freemasons, the Free-thinkers, the Protestants, the Jews, or the Germans.  And as this obscure and tortuous Hafner is a little of everything, he has vowed hatred against him!....  Leaving that out of the question, he suspects him of being a secret agent in the service of the Triple Alliance!  But let us see the letter.”

He opened and glanced through it.  “This craftiness serves for something, it is equivalent almost to kindness.  He, too, has felt that it is necessary to end our affair, were it only to avoid scandal.  He appoints a meeting at his house between six and seven o’clock with me and your second.  Come, time is flying.  You must come to the Marquis to make your request officially.  Begin this way.  Obtain his promise before mentioning Hafner’s name.  I know him.  He will not retract his word.  But it is just.”

The two friends found Montfanon awaiting them in his office, a large room filled with books, from which could be obtained a fine view of the panorama of the Forum, more majestic still on that afternoon when the shadows of the columns and arches grew longer on the sidewalk.  The room with its brick floor had no other comfort than a carpet under the large desk littered with papers—­no doubt fragments of the famous work on the relations of the French nobility and the Church.  A crucifix stood upon the desk.  On the wall were two engravings, that of Monseigneur Pie, the holy Bishop of Poitiers, and that of General de Sonis, on foot, with his wooden leg, and a painting representing St. Francois, the patron of the house.  Those were the only artistic decorations of the modest habitation.  The nobleman often said:  “I have freed myself from the tyranny of objects.”  But with that marvellous background of grandiose ruins and that sky, the simple spot was an incomparable retreat in which to end in meditation and renouncement a life already shaken by the tempests of the senses and of the world.

The hermit of that Thebaide rose to greet his two visitors, and pointing out to Chapron an open volume on his table, he said to him: