“I met Hafner this morning on the Corso,” said the latter to Alba at one of the soirees at the end of the month, “and I had my third edition of the pleasantry on the pears and chestnuts.  And then, as we took a few steps in the same direction, he pointed out to me the Palais Bonaparte, saying, ’We are also related to them.’....  Which means that a grand-nephew of the Emperor married a cousin of Peppino....  I swear he thinks he is related to Napoleon!....  He is not even proud of it.  The Bonapartes are nowhere when it is a question of nobility!....  I await the time when he will blush.”

“And I the time when he will be punished as he deserves,” interrupted Alba Steno, in a mournful voice.  “He is insolently triumphant.  But no. ....He will succeed....  If it be true that his fortune is one immense theft, think of those he has ruined.  In what can they believe in the face of his infamous happiness?”

“If they are philosophers,” replied Dorsenne, laughing still more gayly, “this spectacle will cause them to meditate on the words uttered by one of my friends:  ’One can not doubt the hand of God, for it created the world.’  Do you remember a certain prayer-book of Montluc’s?”

“The one which your friend Montfanon bought to vex the poor little thing?”

“Precisely.  The old-leaguer has returned it to Ribalta; the latter told me so yesterday; no doubt in a spirit of mortification.  I say no doubt for I have not seen the poor, dear man since the duel, which his impatience toward Ardea and Hafner rendered in evitable.  He retired, I know not for how many days, to the convent of Mount Olivet, near Sienna, where he has a friend, one Abbe de Negro, of whom he always speaks as of a saint.  I learned, through Rebalta, that he has returned, but is invisible.  I tried to force an entrance.  In short, the volume is again in the shop of the curiosity-seeker in the Rue Borgognona, if Mademoiselle Hafner still wants it!”

“What good fortune!” exclaimed Fanny, with a sparkle of delight in her eyes.  “I did not know what present to offer my dear Cardinal.  Shall we make the purchase at once?”

“Montluc’s prayer-book?” repeated old Ribalta, when the two young ladies had alighted from the carriage before his small book-shop, more dusty, more littered than ever with pamphlets, in which he still was, with his face more wrinkled, more wan and more proud, peering from beneath his broad-brimmed hat, which he did not raise.  “How do you know it is here?  Who has told you?  Are there spies everywhere?”

“It was Monsieur Dorsenne, one of Monsieur de Montfanon’s friends,” said Fanny, in her gentle voice.

“Sara sara,” replied the merchant with his habitual insolence, and, opening the drawer of the chest in which he kept the most incongruous treasures, he drew from it the precious volume, which he held toward them, without giving it up.  Then he began a speech, which reproduced the details given by Montfanon himself.  “Ah, it is very authentic.  There is an indistinct but undeniable signature.  I have compared it with that which is preserved in the archives of Sienna.  It is Montluc’s writing, and there is his escutcheon with the turtles....  Here, too, are the half-moons of the Piccolomini....  This book has a history....”