refuse the imprudent fellow what he will ask of me." In his anger the
novelist sought to arm himself against his weakness, of which he was
aware--not the weakness of insufficient will, but of a too vivid
perception of the motives which the person with whom he was in conflict
obeyed. He, however, was to learn that there is no greater dissolvent of
rancor than intelligent curiosity. His was, indeed, aroused by a simple
detail, which consisted in ascertaining under what conditions the Pole
had travelled; his dressing-case, his overcoat and his hat, still white
with the dust of travel, were lying upon the table in the antechamber.

Evidently he had come direct from Warsaw to the Place de la
Trinite-des-Monts. A prey to what delirium of passion? Dorsenne had not
time to ask the question any more than he had presence of mind to compose
his manner to such severity that it would cut short all familiarity on
the part of his strange visitor. At the noise made by the opening of the
antechamber door, Boleslas started up. He seized both hands of the man
into whose apartments he had obtruded himself. He pressed them. He gazed
at him with feverish eyes, with eyes which had not closed for hours, and
he murmured, drawing the novelist into the tiny salon:

"You have come, Julien, you are here! Ah, I thank you for having answered
my call at once! Let me look at you, for I am sure I have a friend beside
me, one in whom I can trust, with whom I can speak frankly, upon whom I
can depend. If this solitude had lasted much longer I should have become
mad."

Although Madame Steno's lover belonged to the class of excitable, nervous
people who exaggerate their feelings by an unconscious wildness of tone
and of manner, his face bore the traces of a trouble too deep not to be
startling.

Julien, who had seen him set out, three months before, so radiantly
handsome, was struck by the change which had taken place during such a
brief absence. He was the same Boleslas Gorka, that handsome man, that
admirable human animal, so refined and so strong, in which was embodied
centuries of aristocracy--the Counts de Gorka belong to the ancient house
of Lodzia, with which are connected so many illustrious Polish families,
the Opalenice-Opalenskis, the Bnin-Bninskis, the Ponin-Poniniskis and
many others--but his cheeks were sunken beneath his long, brown beard, in
which were glints of gold; his eyes were heavy as if from wakeful nights,
his nostrils were pinch