among which her lover lives. He
saw impassive Alba, who served as chaperon in the new intrigue of her
mother's with the same naivete she had formerly employed in shielding
their liaison. He saw Maitland with his indifferent glance of the day
before, the glance of a preferred lover, so sure of his triumph that he
did not even feel jealous of the former lover.

The absolute tranquillity of one who replaces us in an unfaithful
mistress's affections augments our fury still more if we have the
misfortune to be placed in a position similar to Gorka's. In a moment
his rival's evocation became to him impossible to bear. He was very near
his own home, for he was just at that admirable square encumbered with
the debris of basilica, the Forum of Trajan, which the statue of St.
Peter at the summit of the column overlooks. Around the base of the
sculptured marble, legends attest the triumph of the humble Galilean
fisherman who landed at the port of the Tiber 1800 years ago, unknown,
persecuted, a beggar. What a symbol and what counsel to say with the
apostle: "Whither shall we go, Lord? Thou alone hast the words of
eternal life!"

But Gorka was neither a Montfanon nor a Dorsenne to hear within his
heart or his mind the echo of such precepts. He was a man of passion and
of action, who only saw his passion and his actions in the position
in which fortune threw him. A fresh access of fury recalled to him
Maitland's attitude of the preceding day. This time he would no longer
control himself. He violently pulled the surprised coachman's sleeve,
and called out to him the address of the Rue Leopardi in so imperative
a tone that the horse began again to trot as he had done before, and the
cab to go quickly through the labyrinth of streets. A wave of tragical
desire rolled into the young man's heart. No, he would not bear that
affront. He was too bitterly wounded in the most sensitive chords of his
being, in his love as well as his pride. Both struggled within him, and
another instinct as well, urging him to the mad step he was about to
take. The ancient blood of the Palatines, with regard to which Dorsenne
always jested, boiled in his veins. If the Poles have furnished many
heroes for dramas and modern romances, they have remained, through their
faults, so dearly atoned for, the race the most chivalrously, the most
madly brave in Europe. When men of so intemperate and so complex an
excitability are touched to a certain depth, they think o