which she gave evidence as soon as
free.

At Rome, where she lived a portion of the year after the sale of her
land, out of which she retained enough to build the double house, she
continued to increase her fortune with the same intelligence. A very
advantageous investment in Acqua Marcia enabled her to double in five
years the enormous profits of her first operation. And what proved still
more the exceptional good sense with which the woman was endowed, when
love was not in the balance, she stopped on those two gains, just at
the time when the Roman aristocracy, possessed by the delirium of
speculation, had begun to buy stocks which had reached their highest
value.

To spend the evening at the Villa Steno, after spending all the morning
of the day before at the Palais Castagna, was to realize one of those
paradoxes of contradictory sensations such as Dorsenne loved, for poor
Ardea had been ruined in having attempted to do a few years later that
which Countess Catherine had done at the proper moment. He, too, had
hoped for an increase in the value of property. Only he had bought the
land at seventy francs a metre, and in '90 it was not worth more than
twenty-five. He, too, had calculated that Rome would improve, and on
the high-priced land he had begun to build entire streets, imagining he
could become like the Dukes of Bedford and of Westminster in London,
the owner of whole districts. His houses finished, they did not rent,
however. To complete the rest he had to borrow. He speculated in order
to pay his debts, lost, and contracted more debts in order to pay the
difference. His signature, as the proprietor of the Marzocco had said,
was put to innumerable bills of exchange. The result was that on all the
walls of Rome, including that of the Rue Vingt Septembre on which was
the Villa Steno, were posted multi-colored placards announcing the sale,
under the management of Cavalier Fossati, of the collection of art and
of furniture of the Palais Castagna.

"To foresee is to possess power," said Dorsenne to himself, ringing at
Madame Steno's door and summing up thus the invincible association of
ideas which recalled to him the palace of the ruined Roman Prince at the
door of the villa of the triumphant Venetian: "It is the real Alpha and
Omega."

The comparison between the lot of Madame Steno and that of the heir of
the Castagnas had almost caused the writer to forget his plan of inquiry
as to the author of the anonymou