but the second was capable of entangling innocence, virtue, and beauty
in the nets of calumny and intrigue, and then poisoning them or
drowning them. The rubicund stranger would have comforted his victim
with a jest; the other was incapable of a smile. The first was
forty-five years old, and he loved, undoubtedly, both women and good
cheer. Such men have passions which keep them slaves to their calling.
But the young man was plainly without passions and without vices. If he
was a spy he belonged to diplomacy, and did such work from a pure love
of art. He conceived, the other executed; he was the idea, the other
was the form.

"This must be Gondreville, is it not, my good woman?" said the young
man.

"We don't say 'my good woman' here," said Michu. "We are still simple
enough to say 'citizen' and 'citizeness' in these parts."

"Ah!" exclaimed the young man, in a natural way, and without seeming
at all annoyed.

Players of ecarte often have a sense of inward disaster when some
unknown person sits down at the same table with them, whose manners,
look, voice, and method of shuffling the cards, all, to their fancy,
foretell defeat. The instant Michu looked at the young man he felt an
inward and prophetic collapse. He was struck by a fatal presentiment;
he had a sudden confused foreboding of the scaffold. A voice told him
that that dandy would destroy him, although there was nothing whatever
in common between them. For this reason his answer was rude; he was
and he wished to be forbidding.