The summer day passed very slowly for him in the suspense of waiting.  He opened and read the letters of which he had spoken to Marsa the evening before; they always affected him like a poison, to which he returned again and again with a morbid desire for fresh suffering—­love-letters, the exchange of vows now borne away as by a whirlwind, but which revived in Michel’s mind happy hours, the only hours of his life in which he had really lived, perhaps.  These letters, dated from Pau, burned him like a live coal as he read them.  They still retained a subtle perfume, a fugitive aroma, which had survived their love, and which brought Marsa vividly before his eyes.  Then, his heart bursting with jealousy and rage, he threw the package into the drawer from which he had taken it, and mechanically picked up a volume of De Musset, opening to some page which recalled his own suffering.  Casting this aside, he took up another book, and his eyes fell upon the passionate verses of the soldier-poet, Petoefi, addressed to his Etelka: 

     Thou lovest me not?  What matters it? 
     My soul is linked to thine,
     As clings the leaf unto the tree: 
     Cold winter comes; it falls; let be! 
     So I for thee will pine.  My fate pursues me to the tomb. 
     Thou fliest?  Even in its gloom
     Thou art not free. 
     What follows in thy steps?  Thy shade? 
     Ah, no! my soul in pain, sweet maid,
     E’er watches thee.

“My soul is linked to thine, as clings the leaf unto the tree!” Michel repeated the lines with a sort of defiance in his look, and longed impatiently and nervously for the day to end.

A rapid flush of anger mounted to his face as his valet entered with a card upon a salver, and he exclaimed, harshly: 

“Did not Pierre give you my orders that I would receive no one?”

“I beg your pardon, Monsieur; but Monsieur Labanoff insisted so strongly—­”

“Labanoff?” repeated Michel.

“Monsieur Labanoff, who leaves Paris this evening, and desires to see Monsieur before his departure.”

The name of Labanoff recalled to Michel an old friend whom he had met in all parts of Europe, and whom he had not seen for a long time.  He liked him exceedingly for a sort of odd pessimism of aggressive philosophy, a species of mysticism mingled with bitterness, which Labanoff took no pains to conceal.  The young Hungarian had, perhaps, among the men of his own age, no other friend in the world than this Russian with odd ideas, whose enigmatical smile puzzled and interested him.

He looked at the clock.  Labanoff’s visit might make the time pass until dinner.

“Admit Monsieur Labanoff!”

In a few moments Labanoff entered.  He was a tall, thin young man, with a complexion the color of wax, flashing eyes, and a little pointed mustache.  His hair, black and curly, was brushed straight up from his forehead.  He had the air of a soldier in his long, closely buttoned frock-coat.