Alvan once more.

‘Indeed I do not,’ she said, for she was addressing an officer high above Alvan in social rank; and she shrugged, implying that she was almost past contradiction of the charge.

‘Surely you must,’ said he; ’where is the lady who could talk and think as you do without knowing Alvan and sharing his views!’

Clotilde was both startled and nettled.

’But I do not know him at all; I have never met him, never seen him.  I am unlikely to meet the kind of person,’ she protested; and she was amazed yet secretly rejoiced on hearing him, a noble of her own circle, and a dashing officer, rejoin:  ’Come, come, let us be honest.  That is all very well for the little midges floating round us to say of Alvan, but we two can clasp hands and avow proudly that we both know and love the man.’

’Were it true, I would own it at once, but I repeat, that he is a total stranger to me,’ she said, seeing the Jew under quite a different illumination.

‘Actually?’

‘In honour.’

‘You have never met, never seen him, never read any of his writings?’

‘Never.  I have heard his name, that is all.’

‘Then,’ the officer’s voice was earnest, ’I pity him, and you no less, while you remain strangers, for you were made for one another.  Those ideas you have expressed, nay, the very words, are Alvan’s:  I have heard him use them.  He has just the same original views of society and history as yours; they’re identical; your features are not unlike . . . you talk alike:  I could fancy your voice the sister of his.  You look incredulous?  You were speaking of Pompeius, and you said “Plutarch’s Pompeius,” and more for it is almost incredible under the supposition that you do not know and have never listened to Alvan—­you said that Pompeius appeared to have been decorated with all the gifts of the Gods to make the greater sacrifice of him to Caesar, who was not personally worth a pretty woman’s “bite.”  Come, now—­you must believe me:  at a supper at Alvan’s table the other night, the talk happened to be of a modern Caesar, which led to the real one, and from him to “Plutarch’s Pompeius,” as Alvan called him; and then he said of him what you have just said, absolutely the same down to the allusion to the bite.  I assure you.  And you have numbers of little phrases in common:  you are partners in aphorisms:  Barriers are for those who cannot fly:  that is Alvan’s.  I could multiply them if I could remember; they struck me as you spoke.’

‘I must be a shameless plagiarist,’ said Clotilde.

‘Or he,’ said Count Kollin.