shams, religious or social. My wife, he was rude to me, insulting! but
he had been drinking--that made him incautious: and he continued to walk
by my side towards his own lodging, on reaching which he ironically
invited me to enter, saying, 'I should meet there men who would soon
argue me out of my obsolete notions.' You may go to him, wife, now, if
you please. I will not, nor will I take from him a crust of bread. I
came hither, determined to tell the young lady all this, if I found her
at home. I should be a dishonoured man if I suffered her to be cheated
into misery.

"There, Madame Venosta, there! Take that journal, show it to
Mademoiselle; and report to her all I have said."

M. Rameau, habitually the mildest of men, had, in talking, worked himself
up into positive fury.

His wife, calmer but more deeply affected, made a piteous sign to the
Venosta not to say more; and without other salutation or adieu took her
husband's arm, and led him from the house.




CHAPTER VI.

Obtaining from her husband Gustave's address, Madame Rameau hastened to
her son's apartment alone through the darkling streets. The house in
which he lodged was in a different quarter from that in which Isaura had
visited him. Then, the street selected was still in the centre of the
_beau monde_--now, it was within the precincts of that section of the