the room.

The poor wife in tears, and, like Tiretta, bleeding at the nose, besought
me to take her away somewhere, as she feared her husband would kill her
if she returned to him. So, leaving Tiretta with my brother, I got into a
carriage with her and I took her, according to her request, to her
kinsman, an old attorney who lived in the fourth story of a house in the
Quai de Gevres. He received us politely, and after having heard the tale,
he said,

"I am a poor man, and I can do nothing for this unfortunate girl; while
if I had a hundred crowns I could do everything."

"Don't let that stand in your way," said I, and drawing three hundred
francs from my pockets I gave him the money.

"Now, sir," said he, "I will be the ruin of her husband, who shall never
know where his wife is."

She thanked me and I left her there; the reader shall hear what became of
her when I return from my journey.

On my informing Madame d'Urfe that I was going to Holland for the good of
France, and that I should be coming back at the beginning of February,
she begged me to take charge of some shares of hers and to sell them for
her. They amounted in value to sixty thousand francs, but she could not
dispose of them on the Paris Exchange owing to the tightness in the money
market. In addition, she could not obtain the interest due to her, which
had mounted up considerably, as she had not had a dividend for three
years.