Very rarely, his real frank, true nature would come to the fore, and he
would say:

"After all, are the cowardice of one man, and the lie of one woman, to be
considered the crime of entire humanity?"

Why should he curse, he would think, other beings than Marsa and Menko?
He had no right to hate any one else; he had no enemy that he knew of,
and he was honored in Paris, his new country.

No enemy? No, not one. And yet, one morning, with his letters, his
valet brought him a journal addressed to "Prince Zilah," and, on
unfolding it, Andras's attention was attracted to two paragraphs in the
column headed "Echoes of Paris," which were marked with a red-lead
pencil.

It was a number of 'L'Actualite', sent through the post by an unknown
hand, and the red marks were evidently intended to point out to the
Prince something of interest to himself.

Andras received few journals. A sudden desire seized him, as if he had a
presentiment of what it contained, to cast this one into the fire without
reading it. For a moment he held it in his fingers ready to throw it
into the grate. Then a few words read by accident invincibly prevented
him.

He read, at first with poignant sorrow, and then with a dull rage, the
two paragraphs, one of which followed the other in the paper.

"A sad piece of news has come to our ears," ran the first paragraph, "a