caused
by the terrible strain he was making upon his conscience. But Gorka's
laugh had terrified him so much the more as at the same instant the
jealous lover's disengaged hand was voluntarily or involuntarily
extended toward the weapon which gleamed upon the couch. The vision of
an immediate catastrophe, this time inevitable, rose before Julien.
His lips had spoken, as his arm would have been out stretched, by an
irresistible instinct, to save several lives, and he had made the
false statement, the first and no doubt the last in his life, without
reflecting. He had no sooner uttered it than he experienced such an
excess of anger that he would at that moment almost have preferred
not to be believed. It would indeed have been a comfort to him if his
visitor had replied by one of those insulting negations which permit one
man to strike another, so great was his irritation. On the contrary,
he saw the face of Madame Steno's lover turned toward him with an
expression of gratitude upon it. Boleslas's lips quivered, his hands
were clasped, two large tears gushed from his burning eyes and rolled
down his cheeks. When he was able to speak, he moaned:

"Ah, my friend, how much good you have done me! From what a nightmare
you have relieved me. Ah! Now I am saved! I believe you, I believe you.
You are intimate with them. You see them every day. If there had been
anything between them you would know it. You would have heard it talked
of. Ah! Thanks! Give me your hand that I may press it. Forget all I said
to you just now, the slander I uttered in a moment of delirium. I know
very well it was untrue. And now, let me embrace you as I would if you
had really saved me from drowning. Ah, my friend, my only friend!"

And he rushed up to clasp to his bosom the novelist, who replied with
the words uttered at the beginning of this conversation: "Calm yourself,
I beseech you, calm yourself!" and repeating to himself, brave and loyal
man that he was: "I could not act differently, but it is hard!"

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER IV. APPROACHING DANGER

"I could not act differently," repeated Dorsenne on the evening of that
eventful day. He had given his entire afternoon to caring for Gorka. He
made him lunch. He made him lie down. He watched him. He took him in a
closed carriage to Portonaccio, the first stopping-place on the Florence
line. Indeed, he made every effort not to leave alone for a moment the
man whose frenzy he had rather suspe