The absolute tranquillity of one who replaces us in an unfaithful mistress’s affections augments our fury still more if we have the 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 descendants of a line of suicides think of killing themselves.

Joyous Ardea, with his Italian keenness, had seen at a glance the end to which Gorka’s nature would lead him.  The betrayed lover required a duel to enable him to bear the treason.  He might wound, he might, perhaps, kill his rival, and his passion would be satisfied, or else he would risk being killed himself, and the courage he would display braving death would suffice to raise him in his own estimation.  A mad thought possessed him and caused him to hasten toward the Rue Leopardi, to provoke his rival suddenly and before Madame Steno!  Ah, what pleasure it would give him to see her tremble, for she surely would tremble when she saw him enter the studio!  But he would be correct, as she had so insolently asked him to be.  He would go, so to speak, to see Alba’s portrait.  He would