"Then say good-bye to me now, my friend," she murmured, "for you will die."
Julien laughed scornfully.
"We do not live in those days," he reminded her. "We fight with the pen, with diplomacy, with all the weapons of statecraft and intrigue, if you will. But this is not now the Paris of Dumas. One does not assassinate."
"My friend," she said earnestly, "you do not know Herr Freudenberg. If indeed you have become during these last few days his enemy, by this time next week you will surely have passed into some other sphere of activity. There are no methods too primitive for him, no methods too subtle or too cruel. He can be the most charming, the most winning, the most generous, the most romantic person who ever breathed; or he can be a Nero, a cruel and brutal butcher, a murderer either of reputations or bodies—he cares little which."
"Presently," Julien declared, "I shall begin to feel uncomfortable."
"Oh! you have courage, of course," she admitted, with a scornful little shrug of the shoulders. "No one has ever denied that to your race. But you have also the unconquerable stupidity which makes heroes and victims of your soldiers."
Julien smiled.
"Well, I am at least warned, and for that I thank you. Now let me ask you another question. You have told me this very strange thing about yourself and Herr Freudenberg. You have told me of your feelings concerning him. Yet you have not really told me exactly on what terms you are with him at present? Forgive me if I find this important."
"I do not receive him," she replied. "I have no interest in his comings or his goings. I have a solemn promise, a promise to which he has subscribed upon his honor, that he shall not seek to cross the threshold of my house. He sent me an ambassador once quite lately to make me a certain proposition connected with you."
"With me?" Julien repeated.