de la Propagande, and who walked at the rapid pace characteristic of
monomaniacs. They follow their thoughts instead of heeding objects.
However, the care he exercised in avoiding the sun's line for the shade
attested the instincts of an old Roman, who knew the danger of the first
rays of spring beneath that blue sky. For a moment Montfanon paused to
give alms to one of the numerous mendicants who abound in the
neighborhood of the Place d'Espagne, meritorious in him, for with his one
arm and burdened with the prayer-book it required a veritable effort to
search in his pocket. Dorsenne was well enough acquainted with that
original personage to know that he had never been able to say "no" to any
one who asked charity, great or small, of him. Thanks to that system,
the enemy of beautiful Fanny Hafner was always short of cash with forty
thousand francs' income and leading a simple existence. The costly
purchase of the relic of Montluc proved that the antipathy conceived for
Baron Justus's charming daughter had become a species of passion. Under
any other circumstances, the novelist, who delighted in such cases, would
not have failed to meditate ironically on that feeling, easy enough of
explanation. There was much more irrational instinct in it than
Montfanon himself suspected. The old leaguer would not have been logical
if he had not had in point of race an inquisition partiality, and the
mere suspicion of Jewish origin should have prejudiced him against Fanny.
But he was just, as Dorsenne had told him, and if the young girl had been
an avowed Jewess, living up zealously to her religion, he would have
respected but have avoided her, and he never would have spoken of her
with such bitterness.

The true motive of his antipathy was that he loved Cardinal Guerillot,
as was his habit in all things, with passion and with jealousy, and he
could not forgive Mademoiselle Hafner for having formed an intimacy with
the holy prelate in spite of him, Montfanon, who had vainly warned the