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Still, she remained disturbed, and continually glanced towards the door.

And on the priest asking if Baroness Duvillard had yet arrived, "Why no!"

she cried, "and I am much surprised at it. She is to bring her son and

daughter. Yesterday, Hyacinthe positively promised me that he would

come."

There lay her new caprice. If her passion for chemistry was giving way to

a budding taste for decadent, symbolical verse, it was because one

evening, whilst discussing Occultism with Hyacinthe, she had discovered

an extraordinary beauty in him: the astral beauty of Nero's wandering

soul! At least, said she, the signs of it were certain.

And all at once she quitted Pierre: "Ah, at last!" she cried, feeling

relieved and happy. Then she darted forward: Hyacinthe was coming in with

his sister Camille.

On the very threshold, however, he had just met the friend on whose

account he was there, young Lord George Eldrett, a pale and languid

stripling with the hair of a girl; and he scarcely condescended to notice

the tender greeting of Rosemonde, for he professed to regard woman as an

impure and degrading creature. Distressed by such coldness, she followed

the two young men, returning in their rear into the reeking, blinding

furnace of the drawing-room.

Massot, however, had been obliging enough to stop Camille and bring her

to Pierre, who at the first words they exchanged relapsed into despair.

"What, mademoiselle, has not madame your mother accompanied you here?"

The girl, clad according to her wont in a dark gown, this time of

peacock-blue, was nervous, with wicked eyes and sibilant voice. And as

she ragefully drew up her little figure, her deformity, her left shoulder

higher than the right one, became more apparent than ever. "No," she

rejoined, "she was unable. She had something to try on at her

dressmaker's. We stopped too long at the Exposition du Lis, and she

requested us to set her down at Salmon's door on our way here."

It was Camille herself who had skilfully prolonged the visit to the art

show, still hoping to prevent her mother from meeting Gerard. And her

rage arose from the ease with which her mother had got rid of her, thanks

to that falsehood of having something to try on.

"But," ingenuously said Pierre, "if I went at once to this person Salmon,

I might perhaps be able to send up my card."

Camille gave a shrill laugh, so funny did the idea appear to her. Then

she retorted: "Oh! who knows if you would still find her there? She had

another pressing appointment, and is no doubt already keeping it!"

"Well, then, I will wait for her here. She will surely come to fetch you,

will she not?"

"Fetch us? Oh no! since I tell you that she has other important affairs

to attend to. The carriage will take us home alone, my brother and I."

Increasing bitterness was infecting the girl's pain-fraught irony. Did he

not understand her then, that priest who asked such naive questions which

were like dagger-thrusts in her heart? Yet he must know, since everybody

knew the truth.

"Ah! how worried I am," Pierre resumed, so grieved indeed that tears

almost came to his eyes. "It's still on account of that poor man about

whom I have been busying myself since this morning. I have a line from

your father, and Monsieur Gerard told me--" But at this point he paused

in confusion, and amidst all his thoughtlessness of the world, absorbed

as he was in the one passion of charity, he suddenly divined the truth.

"Yes," he added mechanically, "I just now saw your father again with

Monsieur de Quinsac."

"I know, I know," replied Camille, with the suffering yet scoffing air of

a girl who is ignorant of nothing. "Well, Monsieur l'Abbe, if you have a

line from papa for mamma, you must wait till mamma has finished her

business. You might come to the house about six o'clock, but I doubt if

you'll find her there, as she may well be detained."

While Camille thus spoke, her murderous eyes glistened, and each word she

uttered, simple as it seemed, became instinct with ferocity, as if it

were a knife, which she would have liked to plunge into her mother's

breast. In all certainty she had never before hated her mother to such a

point as this in her envy of her beauty and her happiness in being loved.

And the irony which poured from the girl's virgin lips, before that

simple priest, was like a flood of mire with which she sought to submerge

her rival.

Just then, however, Rosemonde came back again, feverish and flurried as

usual. And she led Camille away: "Ah, my dear, make haste. They are

extraordinary, delightful, intoxicating!"

Janzen and little Massot also followed the Princess. All the men hastened

from the adjoining rooms, scrambled and plunged into the _salon_ at the

news that the Mauritanians had again begun to dance. That time it must

have been the frantic, lascivious gallop that Paris whispered about, for

Pierre saw the rows of necks and heads, now fair, now dark, wave and

quiver as beneath a violent wind. With every window-shutter closed, the

conflagration of the electric lamps turned the place into a perfect

brazier, reeking with human effluvia. And there came a spell of rapture,

fresh laughter and bravos, all the delight of an overflowing orgy.

When Pierre again found himself on the footwalk, he remained for a moment

bewildered, blinking, astonished to be in broad daylight once more.

Half-past four would soon strike, but he had nearly two hours to wait

before calling at the house in the Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. What should he

do? He paid his driver; preferring to descend the Champs Elysees on foot,

since he had some time to lose. A walk, moreover, might calm the fever

which was burning his hands, in the passion of charity which ever since

the morning had been mastering him more and more, in proportion as he

encountered fresh and fresh obstacles. He now had but one pressing

desire, to complete his good work, since success henceforth seemed

certain. And he tried to restrain his steps and walk leisurely down the

magnificent avenue, which had now been dried by the bright sun, and was

enlivened by a concourse of people, while overhead the sky was again

blue, lightly blue, as in springtime.

Nearly two hours to lose while, yonder, the wretched Laveuve lay with

life ebbing from him on his bed of rags, in his icy den. Sudden feelings

of revolt, of well-nigh irresistible impatience ascended from Pierre's

heart, making him quiver with desire to run off and at once find Baroness

Duvillard so as to obtain from her the all-saving order. He felt sure

that she was somewhere near, in one of those quiet neighbouring streets,

and great was his perturbation, his grief-fraught anger at having to wait

in this wise to save a human life until she should have attended to those

affairs of hers, of which her daughter spoke with such murderous glances!

He seemed to hear a formidable cracking, the family life of the

_bourgeoisie_ was collapsing: the father was at a hussy's house, the

mother with a lover, the son and daughter knew everything; the former

gliding to idiotic perversity, the latter enraged and dreaming of

stealing her mother's lover to make a husband of him. And meantime the

splendid equipages descended the triumphal avenue, and the crowd with its

luxury flowed along the sidewalks, one and all joyous and superb,

seemingly with no idea that somewhere at the far end there was a gaping

abyss wherein everyone of them would fall and be annihilated!

When Pierre got as far as the Summer Circus he was much surprised at

again seeing Salvat, the journeyman engineer, on one of the avenue seats.

He must have sunk down there, overcome by weariness and hunger, after

many a vain search. However, his jacket was still distended by something

he carried in or under it, some bit of bread, no doubt, which he meant to

take home with him. And leaning back, with his arms hanging listlessly,

he was watching with dreamy eyes the play of some very little children,

who, with the help of their wooden spades, were laboriously raising

mounds of sand, and then destroying them by dint of kicks. As he looked

at them his red eyelids moistened, and a very gentle smile appeared on

his poor discoloured lips. This time Pierre, penetrated by disquietude,

wished to approach and question him. But Salvat distrustfully rose and

went off towards the Circus, where a concert was drawing to a close; and

he prowled around the entrance of that festive edifice in which two

thousand happy people were heaped up together listening to music.

V. FROM RELIGION TO ANARCHY

AS Pierre was reaching the Place de la Concorde he suddenly remembered

the appointment which Abbe Rose had given him for five o'clock at the

Madeleine, and which he was forgetting in the feverishness born of his

repeated steps to save Laveuve. And at thought of it he hastened on, well

pleased at having this appointment to occupy and keep him patient.

When he entered the church he was surprised to find it so dark. There

were only a few candles burning, huge shadows were flooding the nave, and

amidst the semi-obscurity a very loud, clear voice spoke on with a

ceaseless streaming of words. All that one could at first distinguish of

the numerous congregation was a pale, vague mass of heads, motionless

with extreme attention. In the pulpit stood Monseigneur Martha, finishing

his third address on the New Spirit. The two former ones had re-echoed

far and wide, and so what is called "all Paris" was there--women of

society, politicians, and writers, who were captivated by the speaker's

artistic oratory, his warm, skilful language, and his broad, easy

gestures, worthy of a great actor.

Pierre did not wish to disturb the solemn attention, the quivering

silence above which the prelate's voice alone rang out. Accordingly he

resolved to wait before seeking Abbe Rose, and remained standing near a

pillar. A parting gleam of daylight fell obliquely on Monseigneur Martha,

who looked tall and sturdy in his white surplice, and scarcely showed a

grey hair, although he was more than fifty. He had handsome features:

black, keen eyes, a commanding nose, a mouth and chin of the greatest

firmness of contour. What more particularly struck one, however, what

gained the heart of every listener, was the expression of extreme

amiability and anxious sympathy which ever softened the imperious

haughtiness of the prelate's face.

Pierre had formerly known him as Cure, or parish priest, of Ste.

Clotilde. He was doubtless of Italian origin, but he had been born in

Paris, and had quitted the seminary of St. Sulpice with the best possible

record. Very intelligent and very ambitious, he had evinced an activity

which even made his superiors anxious. Then, on being appointed Bishop of

Persepolis, he had disappeared, gone to Rome, where he had spent five

years engaged in work of which very little was known. However, since his

return he had been astonishing Paris by his brilliant propaganda, busying

himself with the most varied affairs, and becoming much appreciated and

very powerful at the archiepiscopal residence. He devoted himself in

particular, and with wonderful results, to the task of increasing the

subscriptions for the completion of the basilica of the Sacred Heart. He

recoiled from nothing, neither from journeys, nor lectures, nor

collections, nor applications to Government, nor even endeavours among

Israelites and Freemasons. And at last, again enlarging his sphere of

action, he had undertaken to reconcile Science with Catholicism, and to

bring all Christian France to the Republic, on all sides expounding the

policy of Pope Leo XIII., in order that the Church might finally triumph.

However, in spite of the advances of this influential and amiable man,

Pierre scarcely liked him. He only felt grateful to him for one thing,

the appointment of good Abbe Rose as curate at St. Pierre de Montmartre,

which appointment he had secured for him no doubt in order to prevent

such a scandal as the punishment of an old priest for showing himself too

charitable. On thus finding and hearing the prelate speak in that

renowned pulpit of the Madeleine, still and ever pursuing his work of

conquest, Pierre remembered how he had seen him at the Duvillards' during

the previous spring, when, with his usual _maestria_, he had achieved his

greatest triumph--the conversion of Eve to Catholicism. That church, too,

had witnessed her baptism, a wonderfully pompous ceremony, a perfect gala

offered to the public which figures in all the great events of Parisian

life. Gerard had knelt down, moved to tears, whilst the Baron triumphed

like a good-natured husband who was happy to find religion establishing

perfect harmony in his household. It was related among the spectators

that Eve's family, and particularly old Justus Steinberger, her father,

was not in reality much displeased by the affair. The old man sneeringly

remarked, indeed, that he knew his daughter well enough to wish her to

belong to his worst enemy. In the banking business there is a class of

security which one is pleased to see discounted by one's rivals. With the

stubborn hope of triumph peculiar to his race, Justus, consoling himself

for the failure of his first scheme, doubtless considered that Eve would

prove a powerful dissolving agent in the Christian family which she had

entered, and thus help to make all wealth and power fall into the hands

of the Jews.

However, Pierre's vision faded. Monseigneur Martha's voice was rising

with increase of volume, celebrating, amidst the quivering of the

congregation, the benefits that would accrue from the New Spirit, which

was at last about to pacify France and restore her to her due rank and

power. Were there not certain signs of this resurrection on every hand?

The New Spirit was the revival of the Ideal, the protest of the soul

against degrading materialism, the triumph of spirituality over filthy