himself with regard to the vast space which is forbidden him.  I have seen many tragical sights in my life.  I have been to the war, and I have spent one entire night wounded on a battlefield covered with snow, among the dead, grazed by the wheels of the artillery of the conquerors, who defiled singing.  Nothing has moved me like that drive of the old man, who has never uttered a complaint and who has for himself only that acre of land in which to move freely.  But these are grand words which the holy man wrote one day at the foot of his portrait for a missionary.  The words explain his life:  ’Debitricem martyrii fidem’—­Faith is bound to martyrdom.”

“’Debitricem martyrii fidem’,” repeated Dorsenne, “that is beautiful, indeed.  And,” he added, in a low voice, “you just now abused very rudely the dilettantes and the sceptic.  But do you think there would be one of them who would refuse martyrdom if he could have at the same time faith?”

Never had Montfanon heard the young man utter a similar phrase and in such an accent.  The image returned to him, by way of contrast, of Dorsenne, alert and foppish, the dandy of literature, so gayly a scoffer and a sophist, to whom antique and venerable Rome was only a city of pleasure, a cosmopolis more paradoxical than Florence, Nice, Biarritz, St. Moritz, than such and such other cities of international winter and summer.  He felt that for the first time that soul was strained to its depths, the tragical death of poor Alba had become in the mind of the writer the point of remorse around which revolved the moral life of the superior and incomplete being, exiled from simple humanity by the most invincible pride of mind.  Montfanon comprehended that every additional word would pain the wounded heart.  He was afraid of having already lectured Dorsenne too severely.  He took within his arm the arm of the young man, and he pressed it silently, putting into that manly caress all the warm and discreet pity of an elder brother.

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     Mobile and complaisant conscience had already forgiven himself
     Not an excuse, but an explanation of your conduct
     Sufficed him to conceive the plan of a reparation
     There is always and everywhere a duty to fulfill

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks for the entire cosmopolis: 

     Conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity
     Despotism natural to puissant personalities
     Egyptian tobacco, mixed with opium and saltpetre
     Follow their thoughts instead of heeding objects
     Has as much sense as the handle of a basket
     Have never known in the morning what I would do in the evening
     I no longer love you
     Imagine what it would be never to have been born
     Mediocre sensibility
     Melancholy problem of the birth and death of love
     Mobile and complaisant