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But, come, once for all, explain to me the pleasure which a man of your genius can find in frequenting that international Bohemia, more or less gilded, in which there is not one being who has standing or a history. I no longer allude to that scoundrel Hafner and his daughter, since you have for her, novelist that you are, the eyes of Monsieur Guerillot.
Cardinal Guerillot told me that you showed him, the other day, an interesting prayer-book, although in very bad condition, which you found in Tuscany. Where is it?" "Here it is," said Ribalta, who, leaping over several piles of volumes and thrusting aside with his foot an enormous heap of cartoons, opened the drawer of a tottering press.
They were all three there, the betrothed and the father, and so happy! I vow, it was fine. Cardinal Guerillot baptized pretty Fanny." "And Dorsenne?" again questioned the invalid. "He was there," said Cibo. "You will be vexed when I tell you of the reply he dared to make us. We asked him how he had managed nervous as he is to aim at you as he aimed, without trembling. For he did not tremble.
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 old Bishop de Clermont against her whom he considered the most wily of intriguers.
"I do not wish to look at it," responded Dorsenne. "But, yes," he continued, as Montfanon shrugged his shoulders, "in my capacity of novelist and observer, since you cast it at my head, I know already what it is. What do you bet? . . . It is a prayer-book which bears the signature of Marshal de Montluc, and which Cardinal Guerillot discovered. Is that true?
If I knew where to find the old leaguer! But he has been hiding since our duel. He is in some retreat doing penance. As I have already told you, the world for him has not stirred since Francois de Guise. He only admits the alms of the Protestants and the Jews. When Monseigneur Guerillot tells him of Fanny's religious aspirations, he raves immoderately.
He had thought it wiser to prepare his irascible friend, lest the Baron might make some allusion to the grand event during the course of the conversation, and that the other might not make some impulsive remark. "Did I not tell you that the girl's Catholicism was a farce? Did I not tell Monseigneur Guerillot? This was what she aimed at all those years, with such perfect hypocrisy?
If I knew where to find the old leaguer! But he has been hiding since our duel. He is in some retreat doing penance. As I have already told you, the world for him has not stirred since Francois de Guise. He only admits the alms of the Protestants and the Jews. When Monseigneur Guerillot tells him of Fanny's religious aspirations, he raves immoderately.
When one has, like you, learned intellectual athletics in the circus of the Sainte-Beuves and Renans, one must think it fine that Catholicism, that grand thing, should serve as a plaything for the daughter of a pirate who aims at an aristocratic marriage. It may, too, amuse you that my holy friend, Cardinal Guerillot, should be the dupe of that intriguer.
"And you can jest after having committed that Judas-like act! To inform a child of her father's misdeeds, when she is ignorant of them!... Never, do you hear, never any more will Monsieur de Montfanon and I set foot in your shop, nor Monseigneur Guerillot, nor any of the persons of my acquaintance. I will tell the whole world of your infamy.
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