misfortune to be placed in a position similar to Gorka's. In a moment
his rival's evocation became to him impossible to bear. He was very near
his own home, for he was just at that admirable square encumbered with
the debris of basilica, the Forum of Trajan, which the statue of St.
Peter at the summit of the column overlooks. Around the base of the
sculptured marble, legends attest the triumph of the humble Galilean
fisherman who landed at the port of the Tiber 1800 years ago, unknown,
persecuted, a beggar. What a symbol and what counsel to say with the
apostle: "Whither shall we go, Lord? Thou alone hast the words of
eternal life!"

But Gorka was neither a Montfanon nor a Dorsenne to hear within his heart
or his mind the echo of such precepts. He was a man of passion and of
action, who only saw his passion and his actions in the position in which
fortune threw him. A fresh access of fury recalled to him Maitland's
attitude of the preceding day. This time he would no longer control
himself. He violently pulled the surprised coachman's sleeve, and called
out to him the address of the Rue Leopardi in so imperative a tone that
the horse began again to trot as he had done before, and the cab to go
quickly through the labyrinth of streets. A wave of tragical desire
rolled into the young man's heart. No, he would not bear that affront.
He was too bitterly wounded in the most sensitive chords of his being, in
his love as well as his pride. Both struggled within him, and another
instinct as well, urging him to the mad step he was about to take. The
ancient blood of the Palatines, with regard to which Dorsenne always
jested, boiled in his veins. If the Poles have furnished many heroes for
dramas and modern romances, they have remained, through their faults, so
dearly atoned for, the race the most chivalrously, the most madly brave
in Europe. When men of so intemperate and so complex an excitability are
touched to a certain depth, they think of a duel as naturally as the