This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By PAUL BOURGET
The remorse which Montfanon expressed so naively, once acknowledged tohimself, increased rapidly in the honest man's heart. He had reason tosay from the beginning that the affair looked bad. A quarrel, togetherwith assault, or an attempt at assault, would not be easily set right.It required a diplomatic miracle. The slightest lack of self-possessionon the part of the seconds is equivalent to a catastrophe. As happens insuch circumstances, events are hurried, and the pessimistic anticipationsof the irritable Marquis were verified almost as soon as he uttered them.Dorsenne and he had barely left the Palais Savorelli when Gorka arrived.The energy with which he repulsed the proposition of an arrangement whichwould admit of excuses on his part, served prudent Hafner, and the notless prudent Ardea, as a signal for withdrawal. It was too evident tothe two men that no reconciliation would result from a collision of sucha madman with a personage so difficult as the most authorized ofFlorent's proxies had shown himself to be. They then asked Gorka torelieve them from their duty. They had too plausible an excuse inFanny's betrothal for Boleslas to refuse to release them. Thatretirement was a second catastrophe. In his impatience to find otherseconds who would be firm, Gorka hastened to the Cercle de la Chasse.Chance willed that he should meet with two of his comrades—a MarquisCibo, Roman, and a Prince Pietrapertoso, Neapolitan, who were assuredlythe best he could have chosen to hasten the simplest affair to its worstconsequences.
Those two young men of the best Italian families, both very intelligent,very loyal and very good, belonged to that particular class which is tobe met with in Vienna, Madrid, St. Petersburg, as in Milan and in Rome,of foreign club-men hypnotized by Paris. And what a Paris! That ofshowy and noisy fetes, that which passes the morning in practising thesports in fashion, the afternoons in racing, in frequenting fencing-schools, the evening at the theatre and the night at the gaming-table!That Paris which emigrates by turns, according to the season, to MonteCarlo for the 'Tir aux Pigeons', to Deauville for the race week, to Aix-les-Bains for the baccarat season; that Paris which has its own customs,its own language, its own history, even its own cosmopolitanism, for itexercises over certain minds, throughout Europe, so despotic a rule thatCibo, for example, and his friend Pietrapertoso never opened a Frenchjournal that was not Parisian.
They sought the short paragraphs in which were related, in detail, thedoings of the demi-monde, the last supper given by some well-knownviveur, the details of some large party in such and such a fashionableclub, the result of a shooting match, or of a fencing match betweencelebrated fencers! There were between them subjects of conversation ofwhich they never wearied; to know if spirituelle Gladys Harvey was moreelegant than Leona d'Astri, if Machault made "counters" as rapid as thoseof General Garnier, if little Lautrec would adhere or would not adhere tothe game he was playing. Imprisoned in Rome by the scantiness of theirmeans, and also by the wishes, the one of his uncle, the other of hisgrandfather, whose heirs they were, their entire year was sum