“Very well!  So much the better, so much the better,” said Ribalta, wrapping up his volume again; “tell your father I will keep it at his service.”

“Ah, the miserable man!” said Alba, when Fanny and she had left the shop and reentered the carriage.  “To dare to show you that!”

“You saw,” replied Fanny, “I was so surprised I could not utter a word.  That the man should offer me that infamous work is very impertinent.  My father?....  You do not know his scrupulousness in business.  It is the honor of his profession.  There is not a sovereign in Europe who has not given him a testimonial.”

That impassioned protestation was so touching, the generous child’s illusion was so sincere, that Alba pressed her hand with a deeper tenderness.  When Alba found herself that evening with her friend Dorsenne, who again dined at Madame Steno’s, she took him aside to relate to him the tragical scene, and to ask him:  “Have you seen that pamphlet?”

“To-day,” said the writer.  “Montfanon, whom I have found at length, has just bought one of the two copies which Ribalta received lately.  The old leaguer believes everything, you know, when a Hafner is in the question....  I am more skeptical in the bad as well as in the good.  It was only the account given by the trial which produced any impression on me, for that is truth.”

“But he was acquitted.”

“Yes,” replied Dorsenne, “though it is none the less true that he ruined hundreds and hundreds of persons.”

“Then, by the account given you of the case, it is clear to you that he is dishonest,” interrupted Alba,

“As clear as that you are here, Contessina,” replied Dorsenne, “if to steal means to plunder one’s neighbors and to escape justice.  But that would be nothing.  The sinister corner in this affair is the suicide of one Schroeder, a brave citizen of Vienna, who knew our Baron intimately, and who invested, on the advice of his excellent friend, his entire fortune, three hundred thousand florins, in the scheme.  He lost them, and, in despair, killed himself, his wife, and their three children.”

“My God!” cried Alba, clasping her hands.  “And Fanny might have read that letter in the book.”

“Yes,” continued Julien, “and all the rest with proof in support of it.  But rest assured, she shall not have the volume.  I will go to that anarchist of a Ribalta to-morrow and I will buy the last copy, if Hafner has not already bought it.”

Notwithstanding his constant affectation of irony, and, notwithstanding, his assumption of intellectual egotism, Julien was obliging.  He never hesitated to render any one a service.  He had not told his little friend an untruth when he promised her to buy the dangerous work, and the following morning he turned toward the Rue Borgognona, furnished with the twenty louis demanded by the bookseller.  Imagine his feelings when the latter said to him: 

“It is too late, Monsieur Dorsenne.  The young lady was here last night.  She pretended not to prefer one volume to the other.  It was to bargain, no doubt.  Ha, ha!  But she had to pay the price.  I would have asked the father more.  One owes some consideration to a young girl.”