“The Marshal gave it, after the famous siege, to one of the members of that illustrious family.  And it was for one of the descendants that I was commissioned to buy it....  They will not give it up for less than two thousand francs.”

“What a cheat!” said Alba to her companion, in English.  “Dorsenne told me that Monsieur de Monfanon bought it for four hundred.”

“Are you sure?” asked Fanny, who, on receiving a reply in the affirmative, addressed the bookseller, with the same gentleness, but with reproach in her accent:  “Two thousand francs, Monsieur Ribalta?  But it is not a just price, since you sold it to Monsieur de Montfanon for one-fifth of that sum.”

“Then I am a liar and a thief,” roughly replied the old man; “a thief and a liar,” he repeated.  “Four hundred francs!  You wish to have this book for four hundred francs?  I wish Monsieur de Montfanon was here to tell you how much I asked him for it.”

The old bookseller smiled cruelly as he replaced the prayerbook in the drawer, the key of which he turned, and turning toward the two young girls, whose delicate beauty, heightened by their fine toilettes, contrasted so delightfully with the sordid surroundings, he enveloped them with a glance so malicious that they shuddered and instinctively drew nearer one another.  Then the bookseller resumed, in a voice hoarser and deeper than ever:  “If you wish to spend four hundred francs I have a volume which is worth it, and which I propose to take to the Palais Savorelli one of these days....  Ha, ha!  It must be one of the very last, for the Baron has bought them all.”  In uttering, those enigmatical words, he opened the cup board which formed the lower part of the chest, and took from one of the shelves a book wrapped in a newspaper.  He then unfolded the journal, and, holding the volume in his enormous hand with his dirty nails, he disclosed the title to the two young girls:  ’Hafner and His Band; Some Reflections on the Scandalous Acquittal.  By a Shareholder.’  It was a pamphlet, at that date forgotten, but which created much excitement at one time in the financial circles of Paris, of London and of Berlin, having been printed at once in three languages—­in French, in German and in English—­on the day after the suit of the ‘Credit Austro Dalmate.’  The dealer’s chestnut-colored eyes twinkled with a truly ferocious joy as he held out the volume and repeated: 

“It is worth four hundred francs.”

“Do not read that book, Fanny,” said Alba quickly, after having read the title of the work, and again speaking in English; “it is one of those books with which one should not even pollute one’s thoughts.”

“You may keep the book, sir,” she continued, “since you have made yourself the accomplice of those who have written it, by speculating on the fear you hoped it would inspire.  Mademoiselle Hafner has known of it long, and neither she nor her father will give a centime.”