"Very dangerously ill," he answered; "if you will grant me a proof of
your affections, we will just go in to see him on the way."

"Very well," she said. "Yes, but afterwards. Dear Eugene, do be nice,
and don't preach to me. Come."

They set out. Eugene said nothing for a while.

"What is it now?" she asked.

"I can hear the death-rattle in your father's throat," he said almost
angrily. And with the hot indignation of youth, he told the story of
Mme. de Restaud's vanity and cruelty, of her father's final act of
self-sacrifice, that had brought about this struggle between life and
death, of the price that had been paid for Anastasie's golden
embroideries. Delphine cried.

"I shall look frightful," she thought. She dried her tears.

"I will nurse my father; I will not leave his bedside," she said
aloud.

"Ah! now you are as I would have you," exclaimed Rastignac.

The lamps of five hundred carriages lit up the darkness about the
Hotel de Beauseant. A gendarme in all the glory of his uniform stood
on either side of the brightly lighted gateway. The great world was
flocking thither that night in its eager curiosity to see the great
lady at the moment of her fall, and the rooms on the ground floor were