carry off Madame de Vandenesse, or show yourself a gentleman. As it
is, you are playing the lover in one of your own books."

Nathan listened with his head lowered; he was like a lion caught in a
toil.

"I'll never set foot in this house again," he cried. "That
papier-mache marquise sells her tea too dear. She thinks me amusing! I
understand now why Saint-Just wanted to guillotine this whole class of
people."

"You'll be back here to-morrow."

Blondet was right. Passions are as mean as they are cruel. The next
day after long hesitation between "I'll go--I'll not go," Raoul left
his new partners in the midst of an important discussion and rushed to
Madame d'Espard's house in the faubourg Saint-Honore. Beholding
Rastignac's elegant cabriolet enter the court-yard while he was paying
his cab at the gate, Nathan's vanity was stung; he resolved to have a
cabriolet himself, and its accompanying tiger, too. The carriage of
the countess was in the court-yard, and the sight of it swelled
Raoul's heart with joy. Marie was advancing under the pressure of her
desires with the regularity of the hands of a clock obeying the
mainspring. He found her sitting at the corner of the fireplace in the
little salon. Instead of looking at Nathan when he was announced, she
looked at his reflection in a mirror.

"Monsieur le ministre," said Madame d'Espard, addressing Nathan, and
presenting him to de Marsay by a glance, "was maintaining, when you
came in, that the royalists and the republicans have a secret