They have no family. Where was this man reared? What did his father,
his mother, his brothers, his sisters do? Where did he grow up? Where
are his traditions? Where is his past, all that constitutes, all that
establishes the moral man?.... Just look. All is mystery in this
personage, excepting this, which is very clear: if he had received his
due in Vienna, at the time of the suit of the 'Credit Austro-Dalmate',
in 1880, he would be in the galleys, instead of in Rome. The facts were
these: there were innumerable failures. I know something about it. My
poor cousin De Saint-Remy, who was with the Comte de Chambord, lost the
bread of his old age and his daughter's dowry. There were suicides and
deeds of violence, notably that of a certain Schroeder, who went mad on
account of that crash, and who killed himself, after murdering his wife
and his two children. And the Baron came out of it unsullied. It is not
ten years since the occurrence, and it is forgotten. When he settled in
Rome he found open doors, extended hands, as he would have found them in
Madrid, London, Paris, or elsewhere. People go to his house; they
receive him! And you wish me to believe in the devoutness of that man's
daughter!.... No, a thousand times no; and you yourself, Dorsenne, with
your mania for paradoxes and sophisms, you have the right spirit in you,
and these people horrify you in reality, as they do me."

"Not the least in the world," replied the writer, who had listened to the
Marquis's tirade; with an unconvinced smile, he repeated: "Not the least
in the world.... You have spoken of me as an acrobat or an athlete.
I am not offended, because it is you, and because I know that you love
me dearly. Let me at least have the suppleness of one. First, before
passing judgment on a financial affair I shall wait until I understand
it. Hafner was acquitted. That is enough, for one thing. Were he even
the greatest rogue in the universe, that would not prevent his daughter
from being an angel, for another. As for that cosmopolitanism for which