She was a Condolmieri, of the family of Eugene IV." "How absurd vanity renders the most refined man," thought Julien, suiting his pace to the Baron's.

"He would have me believe that he was received at the house of that woman who was politically the blackest of the black, the most difficult to please in the recruiting of her salon....

Life is more complex than the Montfanons even know of! This girl feels by instinct that which the chouan of a marquis feels by doctrine, the absurdity of this striving after nobility, with a father who forgets the broker and who talks of the popes of the Middle Ages as of a trinket!...

While we are alone, I must ask this old fox what he knows of Boleslas Gorka's return.

He is the confidant of Madame Steno.
He should be informed of the doings and whereabouts of the Pole." The friendship of Baron Hafner for the Countess, whose financial adviser he was, should have been for Dorsenne a reason for avoiding such a subject, the more so as he was convinced of the man's dislike for him.
The Baron could, by a single word perfidiously repeated, injure him very much with Alba's mother.