"I was afraid that you would not come," she said to Rastignac.

"Madame," he said, in an unsteady voice, taking her speech as a
reproach, "I shall be the last to go, that is why I am here."

"Good," she said, and she took his hand. "You are perhaps the only one
I can trust here among all these. Oh, my friend, when you love, love a
woman whom you are sure that you can love always. Never forsake a
woman."

She took Rastignac's arm, and went towards a sofa in the card-room.

"I want you to go to the Marquis," she said. "Jacques, my footman,
will go with you; he has a letter that you will take. I am asking the
Marquis to give my letters back to me. He will give them all up, I
like to think that. When you have my letters, go up to my room with
them. Some one shall bring me word."

She rose to go to meet the Duchesse de Langeais, her most intimate
friend, who had come like the rest of the world.

Rastignac went. He asked for the Marquis d'Ajuda at the Hotel
Rochefide, feeling certain that the latter would be spending his
evening there, and so it proved. The Marquis went to his own house
with Rastignac, and gave a casket to the student, saying as he did so,
"They are all there."

He seemed as if he was about to say something to Eugene, to ask about
the ball, or the Vicomtesse; perhaps he was on the brink of the
confession that, even then, he was in despair, and knew that his