CHAPTER II.
'Who is the man they call Alvan ?' She put the question at the first opportunity to an aunt of hers.
Up went five-fingered hands.

This violent natural sign of horror was comforting: she saw that he was a celebrity indeed.
'Alvan! My dear Clotilde! What on earth can you want to know about a creature who is the worst of demagogues, a disreputable person, and a Jew!' Clotilde remarked that she had asked only who he was.

'Is he clever ?' 'He is one of the basest of those wretches who are for upsetting the Throne and Society to gratify their own wicked passions: that is what he is.' 'But is he clever ?' 'Able as Satan himself, they say.

He is a really dangerous, bad man.

You could not have been curious about a worse one.' 'Politically, you mean.' 'Of course I do.' The lady had not thought of any other kind of danger from a man of that station.
The likening of one to Satan does not always exclude meditation upon him.