xtending the book to his interlocutor, at
whom he glanced with a comical expression of triumph.

"I do not wish to look at it," responded Dorsenne. "But, yes," he
continued, as Montfanon shrugged his shoulders, "in my capacity of
novelist and observer, since you cast it at my head, I know already what
it is. What do you bet?... It is a prayer-book which bears the signature
of Marshal de Montluc, and which Cardinal Guerillot discovered. Is that
true? He spoke to Mademoiselle Hafner about it, and he thought he would
mitigate your animosity toward her by telling you she was an enthusiast
and wished to buy it. Is that true as well? And you, wretched man, had
only one thought, to deprive that poor little thing of the trifle.
Is that true? We spent the evening before last together at Countess
Steno's; she talked to me of nothing but her desire to have the book on
which the illustrious soldier, the great believer, had prayed. She told
me of all her heroic resolutions. Later she went to buy it. But the
shop was closed; I noticed it on passing, and you certainly went there,
too.... Is that true?... And, now that I have detailed to you the story,
explain to me, you who are so just, why you cherish an antipathy so
bitter and so childish--excuse the word!--for an innocent, young girl,
who has never speculated on 'Change, who is as charitable as a whole
convent, and who is fast becoming as devout as yourself. Were it not
for her father, who will not listen to the thought of conversion before
marriage, she would already be a Catholic, and--Protestants as they are
for the moment--she would never go anywhere but to church... When she is
altogether a Catholic, and under the protection of a Sainte-Claudine and
a Sainte-Francoise, as you are under the protection of Saint-Claude and
Saint-Francois, you will have to lay down your arms, old leaguer, and
acknowledge the sincerity of the religious sentiments of that child who
has never harmed you."

"What! She has done nothing to me?"... interrupted Montfanon. "But it is
quite natural that a sceptic should not comprehend what she has done to
me, what she does to me daily, not to me personally, but to my opinions.
When one has, like you, learned intellectual athletics in the circus of
the Sainte-Beuves and Renans, one must think it fine that Catholicism,
that grand thing, should serve as a plaything for the daughter of a
pirate who aims at an aristocratic marriage. It may, too, amuse you
that