“1. What the young man is doing;
“2. What he intends to do—whether he is ambitious, and, if so, in what way?
“3. Lastly, tell me shortly what seem to you to be his means of existence, his abilities, his inclinations and his tastes....
“Don’t try to see me for the present; I am in an unsociable mood. You can give me the information I ask just as well by letter. If I am inclined to talk or if I feel the final departure is at hand, I will let you know.
“Yours affecˡʸ,
“Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul.
“P.S. Don’t let it appear that you come from me. The young man knows nothing of me and must continue to know nothing.
“Lafcadio Wluiki is now nineteen—a Roumanian subject—an orphan.
“I have looked at your last book. If after that you don’t get into the Academy, such rubbish is unpardonable.”
There was no denying it, Julius’s last book had not been well received. In spite of his fatigue, the novelist ran his eye over a bundle of newspaper cuttings, in which he found his name mentioned with scant indulgence. Then he opened a window and breathed for a moment the misty night air. Julius’s study windows looked on to the gardens of an Embassy—pools of lustral shadow, where eyes and mind could cleanse themselves from the squalor of the streets and from the meannesses of the world. The pure and thrilling note of a blackbird held him listening a moment or two.... Then he went back to the bedroom where Marguerite was already asleep.