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Updated: April 30, 2025
He perceived that not one of his interlocutor's sentences, not even the most agitated, had been uttered at random. From reply to reply, from confidence to confidence, he, Dorsenne, had become involved in the dilemma without being able to foresee or to avoid it; he would either have had to accuse a woman or to lie with one of those lies which a manly conscience does not easily pardon.
"And the unhappy man has talent," he exclaimed, talking of Dorsenne as if the latter were not present, "and he has written ten pages on Rhodes which are worthy of Chateaubriand, and he has received from God the noblest gifts poetry, wit, the sense of history; and in what society does he delight!
The young man sank upon a bench as he uttered that cry of distress and of remorse, which Montfanon mechanically repeated, as if startled by the tragical confidence he had just received. Montfanon shook his gray head several times as if deliberating; then forced Dorsenne to rise, chiding him thus: "Come, Julien, we can not remain here all the afternoon dreaming and sighing like young women!
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 excesses of emotion, as those of libertinism, seem only to invest the man with a new prestige; the fact is that the novelist's room, with its collection of books, photographs, engravings, paintings and moldings, invested that form, tortured by the bitter sufferings of passion, with a poesy to which Dorsenne could not remain altogether insensible.
What we, Monsieur Dorsenne and I, desire," he continued in a severe voice, "is this: Count Gorka has gravely insulted Monsieur Chapron. Let me finish," he added upon a simultaneous gesture on the part of Ardea and of Hafner. "Yes, sirs, Monsieur Chapron, known to us all for his perfect courtesy, must have been very gravely insulted, even to make the improper gesture of which you just spoke.
The other threatened to relate their little dealing to Ardea, and he did so." "And Peppino was angry?" asked Dorsenne, shaking his head. "That is not like him." "Indignant or not," continued Alba, "last night he went to the Palais Savorelli to make a terrible scene with his future father-in-law." "And to obtain an increase of dowry," said Julian.
It was in the morning especially, when there was no one in the restaurant, that he voluntarily left his ovens to chat, and if Dorsenne gave the address of the Marzocco to his cabman, it was in the hope that the old cook would in his manner sketch for him the story of the ruin of Ardea.
Obscure or famous, rich or poor, an artist must be an artisan and practise these fruitful virtues patient application, conscientious technicality, absorption in work. When he seated himself at his table Dorsenne was heart and soul in his business.
But Dorsenne no sooner turned toward the direction of the Palais Castagna than he quickly forgot both Mademoiselle Hafner's and Montfanon's prejudices, in thinking only of one sentence uttered by the latter that which related to the return of Boleslas Gorka.
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