"Where does he work?"

"In his office, the key of which he carries in his pocket."

"I wish to go there."

The man took her to a dark little room looking out on a rear
court-yard. The office was at right angles. Opening the window of the
room she was in, the countess could look through into the window of the
office, and she saw Nathan sitting there in the editorial arm-chair.

"Break in the door, and be silent about all this; I'll pay you well,"
she said. "Don't you see that Monsieur Nathan is dying?"

The man got an iron bar from the press-room, with which he burst in
the door. Raoul had actually smothered himself, like any poor
work-girl, with a pan of charcoal. He had written a letter to Blondet,
which lay on the table, in which he asked him to ascribe his death to
apoplexy. The countess, however, had arrived in time; she had Raoul
carried to her coach, and then, not knowing where else to care for
him, she took him to a hotel, engaged a room, and sent for a doctor.
In a few hours Raoul was out of danger; but the countess did not leave
him until she had obtained a general confession of the causes of his
act. When he had poured into her heart the dreadful elegy of his woes,
she said, in order to make him willing to live:--

"I can arrange all that."

But, nevertheless, she returned home with a heart oppressed with the