“Let us say nine o’clock,” said Dorsenne.  “Monsieur de Montfanon is somewhat formal.  He would like to have your reply by letter.”

“Prince Ardea to marry Mademoiselle Hafner!” That cry which the news brought by Julien wrested from Montfanon was so dolorous that the young man did not think of laughing.  He had thought it wiser to prepare his irascible friend, lest the Baron might make some allusion to the grand event during the course of the conversation, and that the other might not make some impulsive remark.

“Did I not tell you that the girl’s Catholicism was a farce?  Did I not tell Monseigneur Guerillot?  This was what she aimed at all those years, with such perfect hypocrisy?  It was the Palais Castagna.  And she will enter there as mistress!....  She will bring there the dishonor of that pirated gold on which there are stains of blood!  Warn them, that they do not speak to me of it, or I will not answer for myself....  The second of a Gorka, the father-in-law of an Ardea, he triumphs, the thief who should by rights be a convict!....  But we shall see.  Will not all the other Roman princes who have no blots upon their escutcheons, the Orsinis, the Colonnas, the Odeschalchis, the Borgheses, the Rospigliosis, not combine to prevent this monstrosity?  Nobility is like love, those who buy those sacred things degrade them in paying for them, and those to whom they are given are no better than mire....  Princess d’Ardea!  That creature!  Ah, what a disgrace!....  But we must remember our engagement relative to that brave young Chapron.  The boy pleases me; first, because very probably he is going to fight for some one else and out of a devotion which I can not very well understand!  It is devotion all the same, and it is chivalry!....  He desires to prevent that miserable Gorka from calling forth a scandal which would have warned his sister....  And then, as I told him, he respects the dead....  Let us....  I have my wits no longer about me, that intelligence has so greatly disturbed me....  Princess d’Ardea!....  Well, write that we will be at Monsieur Hafner’s at nine o’clock....  I do not want any of those people at my house....  At yours it would not be proper; you are too young.  And I prefer going to the father-in-law’s rather than to the son-inlaw’s.  The rascal has made a good bargain in buying what he has bought with his stolen millions.  But the other....  And his great-great-uncle might have been Jules Second, Pie Fifth, Hildebrand; he would have sold all just the same!....  He can not deceive himself!  He has heard the suit against that man spoken of!  He knows whence come those millions!  He has heard their family, their lives spoken of!  And he has not been inspired with too great a horror to accept the gold of that adventurer.  Does he not know what a name is?  Our name!  It is ourselves, our honor, in the mouths, in the thoughts, of others!  How happy I am, Dorsenne, to have been fifty-two years of age last month.  I shall be gone before having