astonishing one who wantonly
insulted me, and of killing him. Cursed forever be the day when I
assumed your name, and when I conceived the foolish notion of becoming
your second self! I made myself a Pole: did Poland ever have the least
idea of government? You of all men were the most incapable of making
your way; I aped a poor model indeed. Abel Larinski, I break off all
connection with you; I wind up the affairs of our firm, I put the key
under the door, or drop it down the well. O my great Pole! I return to
you your title, your name, and with your name all that you gave me--your
pride, your pretensions, your dangerous delicacy, your attitudes, your
sentimental grimaces, and your waving plume."

It was thus that Samuel Brohl took a decisive farewell of Count Abel
Larinski, who might henceforth rest quietly in his grave; there was no
further danger of a dead man being compromised by a living one. What
name did Samuel Brohl mean now to assume? Out of spite to his destiny,
he chose for the time the humblest of all; he decided to call himself
Kicks, which was his mother's name.

His melancholy would have known no bounds, had he suspected that Camille
Langis was still in the world. Camille Langis for two weeks lay between
life and death, but the ball had finally been successfully extracted.
Mme. de Lorcy hastened to Mons and nursed him like a mother; she had the
joy of bringing him back alive to Paris.

Care was taken that no mention of the duel should be made to Mlle.
Moriaz, and not a word concerning it reached her; her condition for a
long time caused the gravest anxiety. After she became convalescent she
remained sunk in a gloomy, taciturn sadness. She never made the least
allusion to what had passed, and would not permit any one to speak of it
to her. She had been deceived, and a mortification, mingled with dread,
was the result of her mistake. It seemed to her that nothing remained in
life for her but remembrance and silence.

Towards the end of November, M. Moriaz proposed to her that they should
return to Paris. She expressed her desire not to leave Cormeilles--to
pass the winter in solitude; the human face terrified her. M. Moriaz
tried to represent to her that she was unreasonable.

"Will you wear eternal mourning for a stranger?" he asked; "for, in
reality, the man that you loved you never saw. Ah! _mon Dieu_, you
deceived, you deluded yourself. Is there, I will not say a single woman,
but a single member o