“But, my dear fellow, what in the world could I write in them?” objected Anthime benevolently. “None of my former occupations has any further interest for me.” Then silence closed down over the affair. Julius had been obliged to return to Paris. Anthime, in the meanwhile, pressed by Father Anselm, had obediently quitted Rome. The withdrawal of the Lodge’s assistance had been rapidly followed by the ruin of his worldly fortunes; and the applications which Veronica, confident of the Church’s support, had urged him to make, merely resulted in wearing out the patience of the influential members of the clergy and finally in setting them against him. He was advised in a friendly way to go to Milan. There he was to await the long-since promised compensation and any scraps which might fall from a celestial bounty that had grown in the meantime singularly lukewarm. BOOK II: JULIUS DE BARAGLIOUL _“Puisqu’il ne faut jamais ôter le retour à personne.”_ --RETZ, VIII, p. 93. I On March 30th, at twelve o’clock at night, the Baragliouls got back to Paris and went straight to their apartment in the Rue de Verneuil. While Marguerite was getting ready for the night, Julius, with a small lamp in his hand and slippers on his feet, went to his study--a room to which he never returned without pleasure; it was soberly decorated and furnished; one or two Lépines and a Boudin hung on the walls; in one corner a marble bust of his wife by Chapu, which stood on a revolving pedestal, made a patch of whiteness that was somewhat glaring; in the middle of the room stood an enormous Renaissance table, littered with books, pamphlets and prospectuses which had been accumulating during his absence; in a salver of cloisonné enamel lay a few visiting-cards with their corners turned down, and well in sight, apart from the others and leaning against a bronze Barye, there was a letter addressed in a handwriting which Julius recognised as his old father’s. He immediately tore open the envelope and read as follows: “MY DEAR SON, “I have been growing much weaker lately. It is impossible to misunderstand the nature of the warnings which tell me I must be preparing to depart; and indeed I have not much to gain by delaying longer. “I know that you are returning to Paris to-night and I count on you for doing me a service without delay. In order to make some arrangements, of which I shall shortly inform you, it is necessary for me to know whether a young man called Lafcadio Wluiki (pronounced _Louki_--the _w_ and _i_ are hardly sounded) is still living at No. 12 Impasse Claude-Bernard. “I should be much obliged if you would be so good as to call at this address and ask to see the said young man. (A novelist like you will easily be able to invent some excuse for introducing yourself.) I want to know: “1. What the young man is doing;