seen what you will see, the agony of all the aristocrats and royalties.  It was only in blood that they fell!  But they do not fall.  Alas!  They fix themselves upon the ground, which is the saddest of all.  Still, what matters it?  The monarchy, the nobility, and the Church are everlasting.  The people who disregard them will die, that is all.  Come, write your letter, which I will sign.  Send it away, and you will dine with me.  We must go into the den provided with an argument which will prevent this duel, and sustaining our part toward our client.  There must be an arrangement which I would accept myself.  I like him, I repeat.”

The excitement which began to startle Dorsenne was only augmented during dinner, so much the more so as, on discussing the conditions of that arrangement he hoped to bring about, the recollection of his terrible youth filled the thoughts and the discourse of the former duellist.  Was it, indeed, the same personage who recited the verses of a hymn in the catacombs a few hours before?  It only required the feudal in him to be reawakened to transform him.  The fire in his eyes and the color in his face betrayed that the duel in which he had thought best to engage, out of charity, intoxicated him on his own statement.  It was the old amateur, the epicure of the sword, very ungovernable, which stirred within that man of faith, in whom passion had burned and who had loved all excitement, including that of danger, as to-day he loved his ideas, as he loved his flagi mmoderately.  He no longer thought of the three women to be spared suspicion, nor of the good deed to be accomplished.  He saw all his old friends and their talent for fighting, the thrusts of this one, the way another had of striking, the composure of a third, and then this refrain interrupted constantly his warlike anecdotes:  “But why the deuce has Gorka chosen that Hafner for his second?....  It is incomprehensible."....  On entering the carriage which was to bear them to their interview, he heard Dorsenne say to the coachman:  “Palais Savorelli.”

“That is the final blow,” said he, raising his arm and clenching his fist.  “The adventurer occupies the Pretender’s house, the house of the Stuarts."....  He repeated:  “The house of the Stuarts!” and then lapsed into a silence which the writer felt to be laden with more storminess than his last denunciation.  He did not emerge from his meditations until ushered into the salon of the ci-devant jeweller, now a grand seigneur—­into one of the salons, rather, for there were five.  There Montfanon began to examine everything around him, with an air of such contempt and pride that, notwithstanding his anxiety, Dorsenne could not resist laughing and teasing him by saying: 

“You will not pretend to say that there are no pretty things here?  These two paintings by Moroni, for example?”