"I suppose he is pleased, for he is terribly frightened. Fright is one
of the great enjoyments of a Parisian. Good day. Your path to your
hotel is clear now. Remember me kindly to Alain."

De Mauleon continued his way through streets sometimes deserted,
sometimes thronged. At the commencement of the Rue de Florentin he
encountered the brothers Vandemar walking arm in arm.

"Ha, De Mauleon!" cried Enguerrand; "what is the last minute's news?"

"I can't guess. Nobody knows at Paris how soon one folly swallows up
another. Saturn here is always devouring one or other of his children."

"They say that Vinoy, after a most masterly retreat, is almost at our
gates with 80,000 men."

"And this day twelvemonth we may know what he does with them."

Here Raoul, who seemed absorbed in gloomy reflections, halted before the
hotel in which the Contessa di Rimini lodged, and with a nod to his
brother, and a polite, if not cordial salutation to Victor, entered the
_porte cochere_.

"Your brother seems out of spirits,--a pleasing contrast to the
uproarious mirth with which Parisians welcome the advance of calamity."

"Raoul, as you know, is deeply religious. He regards the defeat we have
sustained, and the peril that threatens us, as the beginning of a divine
chastisement, justly incurred by our sins--I mean, the sins of Paris. In