his pace to the Baron's. "He would have me believe that he was received
at the house of that woman who was politically the blackest of the black,
the most difficult to please in the recruiting of her salon.... Life is
more complex than the Montfanons even know of! This girl feels by
instinct that which the chouan of a marquis feels by doctrine, the
absurdity of this striving after nobility, with a father who forgets the
broker and who talks of the popes of the Middle Ages as of a trinket!....
While we are alone, I must ask this old fox what he knows of Boleslas
Gorka's return. He is the confidant of Madame Steno. He should be
informed of the doings and whereabouts of the Pole."

The friendship of Baron Hafner for the Countess, whose financial adviser
he was, should have been for Dorsenne a reason for avoiding such a
subject, the more so as he was convinced of the man's dislike for him.
The Baron could, by a single word perfidiously repeated, injure him very
much with Alba's mother. But the novelist, similar on that point to the
majority of professional observers, had only the power of analysis of a
retrospective order. Never had his keen intelligence served him to avoid
one of those slight errors of conversation which are important mistakes
on the pitiful checker-board of life. Happily for him, he cherished no
ambition except for his pleasure and his art, without which he would have
found the means of making for himself, gratuitously, enough enemies to
clear all the academies.

He, therefore, chose the moment when the Baron arrived at the landing on
the first floor, pausing somewhat out of breath, and after the agent had
verified their passes, to say to his companion:

"Have you seen Gorka since his arrival?"