to the father-in-law's rather than to the son-inlaw's. The rascal has
made a good bargain in buying what he has bought with his stolen
millions. But the other.... And his great-great-uncle might have been
Jules Second, Pie Fifth, Hildebrand; he would have sold all just the
same!.... He can not deceive himself! He has heard the suit against
that man spoken of! He knows whence come those millions! He has heard
their family, their lives spoken of! And he has not been inspired with
too great a horror to accept the gold of that adventurer. Does he not
know what a name is? Our name! It is ourselves, our honor, in the
mouths, in the thoughts, of others! How happy I am, Dorsenne, to have
been fifty-two years of age last month. I shall be gone before having
seen what you will see, the agony of all the aristocrats and royalties.
It was only in blood that they fell! But they do not fall. Alas! They
fix themselves upon the ground, which is the saddest of all. Still, what
matters it? The monarchy, the nobility, and the Church are everlasting.
The people who disregard them will die, that is all. Come, write your
letter, which I will sign. Send it away, and you will dine with me. We
must go into the den provided with an argument which will prevent this
duel, and sustaining our part toward our client. There must be an
arrangement which I would accept myself. I like him, I repeat."
The excitement which began to startle Dorsenne was only augmented during
dinner, so much the more so as, on discussing the conditions of that
arrangement he hoped to bring about, the recollection of his terrible
youth filled the thoughts and the discourse of the former duellist. Was
it, indeed, the same personage who recited the verses of a hymn in the
catacombs a few hours before? It only required the feudal in him to be
reawakened to transform him. The fire in his eyes and the color in his
face betrayed that the duel in which he had thought best to engage, out
of charity, intoxicated him on his own statement. It was the old
amateur, the epicure of the sword, very ungovernable, which stirred
within that man of faith, in whom passion had burned and who had loved
all excitement, including that of danger, as to-day he loved his ideas,
as he loved his flagi mmoderately. He no longer thought of the three
women to be spared suspicion, nor of the good deed to be accomplished.
He saw all his old friends and their talent for fighting, the thrusts of
this one, the way another had of striking, the composure of a third, and
then this refrain interrupted constantly his warlike anecdotes: "But why
the deuce has Gorka chosen that Hafner for his second?.... It is
incomprehensible.".... On entering the carriage which was to bear them
to their interview, he heard Dorsenne say to the coachman: "Palais
Savorelli."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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