“Let me pass!” he cried, striding over Protos’s body. Stretched across the compartment from one seat to the other, the latter made no movement to stop him. Lafcadio, astonished at not finding himself detained, opened the corridor door and, as he went off: “I’m not running away,” he said. “Don’t be alarmed. You can keep your eye on me. But anything is better than listening to you any longer. Excuse me if I prefer the police. Go and inform them. I am ready.” VI On that same day the Anthimes arrived from Milan by the evening train. As they travelled third it was not till they reached Rome that they saw the Comtesse de Baraglioul and her daughter, who had come from Paris in a sleeping-car of the same train. A few hours before the arrival of the telegram announcing Fleurissoire’s death, the Countess had received a letter from her husband; the Count had written eloquently of the immense pleasure his unexpected meeting with Lafcadio had caused him. Doubtless he had not breathed the faintest word of allusion to that semi-fraternity which, in Julius’s eyes, invested the young man with a perfidious charm (Julius, faithful to his father’s commands, had never had any open explanation with his wife, any more than with Lafcadio himself), but certain hints, certain reticences had been sufficient to enlighten the Countess; I am not quite sure even that Julius, who had very little to amuse him in the daily round of his bourgeois existence, did not find some pleasure in fluttering about the scandal and singeing the tips of his wings. I am not sure either that Lafcadio’s presence at Rome, the hope of meeting him again, had not something--had not a great deal--to do with Genevieve’s decision to accompany her mother. Julius was there to meet them at the station. He hurried them back to the Grand Hotel, without speaking more than a word or two to the Anthimes, whom he was to meet next day at the funeral. The latter went to the hotel in the Via Bocca di Leone, where they had stayed for a day or two during their first visit to Rome. Marguerite brought the author good news. Not a single hitch remained in the way of the Academy election; Cardinal André had semi-officially informed her the day before that there was no need even for the candidate to pay any further visits; the Academy was advancing to welcome him with open doors. “You see!” said Marguerite. “What did I tell you in Paris? _Tout vient à point_.... One has nothing to do in this world but to wait.” “And not to change,” added Julius, with an air of compunction, raising his wife’s hand to his lips, and not noticing his daughter’s eyes grow big with contempt as they dwelt on him. “Faithful to you, to my opinions, to my principles! Perseverance is the most indispensable of virtues.”