Suddenly he came to an abrupt stop. There, close to him, sitting on the base of the fourth pillar of the colonnade, surely that was Julius he caught sight of? He hesitated to recognise him, for if his attire was respectable, his attitude was very far from being so; the Comte de Baraglioul had placed his black straw Cronstadt beside him on the crook of his walking-stick, which he had stuck into the ground between two paving-stones, and all regardless of the solemnity of the spot, with his right foot cocked up on his left knee (like any prophet in the Sixtine Chapel), he was propping a note-book on his right knee, while from time to time his pencil, poised in air, swooped down upon the pages, and he began to write; so absorbed was his attention, and the dictates of his inspiration so urgent, that Amédée might have turned a somersault in front of him without his noticing it. He was speaking to himself as he wrote; and though the splashing of the fountain drowned his voice, the movement of his lips was plainly visible. Amédée drew near, going discreetly round by the other side of the pillar. As he was about to touch him on the shoulder: “In that case, what does it matter?” declaimed Julius, and he consigned these words with a final flourish to his note-book; then, putting his pencil in his pocket and rising abruptly, he came nose to nose with Amédée. “In Heaven’s name, what are _you_ doing here?” Amédée, trembling with emotion, began to stutter without being able to reply; he convulsively pressed one of Julius’s hands between both his own. Julius, in the meanwhile, was examining him: “My poor fellow, what a sight you look!” Providence had dealt unkindly with Julius; of the two brothers in-law who were left to him, one was a church mouse and the other a scarecrow. It was less than three years since he had seen Amédée--but he thought him aged by at least twelve; his cheeks were sunken; his Adam’s apple was protuberant; his magenta comforter enhanced the paleness of his face; his chin was quivering; his blear eyes rolled in a way which should have been pathetic, but was merely grotesque; his yesterday’s expedition had left him with a mysterious hoarseness, so that his voice seemed to come from a long way off. Full of his preoccupations: “So you have seen him?” he said. “Seen whom?” asked Julius. This “whom” sounded in Amédée’s ears like a knell and a blasphemy. He particularised discreetly: “I thought you had just come from the Vatican.” “So I have. Excuse me, I was thinking of something else.... If you only knew what has happened to me!” His eyes were sparkling; he looked on the verge of jumping out of his skin. “Oh, please!” entreated Fleurissoire, “talk about that afterwards; tell me first of all about your visit. I’m so impatient to hear....” “Does it interest you?” “You’ll soon know how much. Go on, go on, I beg you.”