Читать книгу: «Scenes from a Courtesan's Life», страница 32

“She is settled in the Rue Sainte-Barbe, managing a house – ”

“And she is to be your legatee? Ah, my dear boy, this is what such sluts bring us to when we are such fools as to love them.”

“Yes, but don’t you give her anything till I am done for.”

“It is a sacred trust,” said Jacques Collin very seriously.

“And nothing to the pals?”

“Nothing! They blowed the gaff for me,” answered la Pouraille vindictively.

“Who did? Shall I serve ‘em out?” asked Jacques Collin eagerly, trying to rouse the last sentiment that survives in these souls till the last hour. “Who knows, old pal, but I might at the same time do them a bad turn and serve you with the public prosecutor?”

The murderer looked at his boss with amazed satisfaction.

“At this moment,” the boss replied to this expressive look, “I am playing the game only for Theodore. When this farce is played out, old boy, I might do wonders for a chum – for you are a chum of mine.”

“If I see that you really can put off the engagement for that poor little Theodore, I will do anything you choose – there!”

“But the trick is done. I am sure to save his head. If you want to get out of the scrape, you see, la Pouraille, you must be ready to do a good turn – we can do nothing single-handed – ”

“That’s true,” said the felon.

His confidence was so strong, and his faith in the boss so fanatical, that he no longer hesitated. La Pouraille revealed the names of his accomplices, a secret hitherto well kept. This was all Jacques needed to know.

“That is the whole story. Ruffard was the third in the job with me and Godet – ”

“Arrache-Laine?” cried Jacques Collin, giving Ruffard his nickname among the gang.

“That’s the man. – And the blackguards peached because I knew where they had hidden their whack, and they did not know where mine was.”

“You are making it all easy, my cherub!” said Jacques Collin.

“What?”

“Well,” replied the master, “you see how wise it is to trust me entirely. Your revenge is now part of the hand I am playing. – I do not ask you to tell me where the dibs are, you can tell me at the last moment; but tell me all about Ruffard and Godet.”

“You are, and you always will be, our boss; I have no secrets from you,” replied la Pouraille. “My money is in the cellar at la Gonore’s.”

“And you are not afraid of her telling?”

“Why, get along! She knows nothing about my little game!” replied la Pouraille. “I make her drunk, though she is of the sort that would never blab even with her head under the knife. – But such a lot of gold – !”

“Yes, that turns the milk of the purest conscience,” replied Jacques Collin.

“So I could do the job with no peepers to spy me. All the chickens were gone to roost. The shiners are three feet underground behind some wine-bottles. And I spread some stones and mortar over them.”

“Good,” said Jacques Collin. “And the others?”

“Ruffard’s pieces are with la Gonore in the poor woman’s bedroom, and he has her tight by that, for she might be nabbed as accessory after the fact, and end her days in Saint-Lazare.”

“The villain! The reelers teach a thief what’s what,” said Jacques.

“Godet left his pieces at his sister’s, a washerwoman; honest girl, she may be caught for five years in La Force without dreaming of it. The pal raised the tiles of the floor, put them back again, and guyed.”

“Now do you know what I want you to do?” said Jacques Collin, with a magnetizing gaze at la Pouraille.

“What?”

“I want you to take Madeleine’s job on your shoulders.”

La Pouraille started queerly; but he at once recovered himself and stood at attention under the boss’ eye.

“So you shy at that? You dare to spoil my game? Come, now! Four murders or three. Does it not come to the same thing?”

“Perhaps.”

“By the God of good-fellowship, there is no blood in your veins! And I was thinking of saving you!”

“How?”

“Idiot, if we promise to give the money back to the family, you will only be lagged for life. I would not give a piece for your nut if we keep the blunt, but at this moment you are worth seven hundred thousand francs, you flat.”

“Good for you, boss!” cried la Pouraille in great glee.

“And then,” said Jacques Collin, “besides casting all the murders on Ruffard – Bibi-Lupin will be finely cold. I have him this time.”

La Pouraille was speechless at this suggestion; his eyes grew round, and he stood like an image.

He had been three months in custody, and was committed for trial, and his chums at La Force, to whom he had never mentioned his accomplices, had given him such small comfort, that he was entirely hopeless after his examination, and this simple expedient had been quite overlooked by these prison-ridden minds. This semblance of a hope almost stupefied his brain.

“Have Ruffard and Godet had their spree yet? Have they forked out any of the yellow boys?” asked Jacques Collin.

“They dare not,” replied la Pouraille. “The wretches are waiting till I am turned off. That is what my moll sent me word by la Biffe when she came to see le Biffon.”

“Very well; we will have their whack of money in twenty-four hours,” said Jacques Collin. “Then the blackguards cannot pay up, as you will; you will come out as white as snow, and they will be red with all that blood! By my kind offices you will seem a good sort of fellow led away by them. I shall have money enough of yours to prove alibis on the other counts, and when you are back on the hulks – for you are bound to go there – you must see about escaping. It is a dog’s life, still it is life!”

La Pouraille’s eyes glittered with suppressed delirium.

“With seven hundred thousand francs you can get a good many drinks,” said Jacques Collin, making his pal quite drunk with hope.

“Ay, ay, boss!”

“I can bamboozle the Minister of Justice. – Ah, ha! Ruffard will shell out to do for a reeler. Bibi-Lupin is fairly gulled!”

“Very good, it is a bargain,” said la Pouraille with savage glee. “You order, and I obey.”

And he hugged Jacques Collin in his arms, while tears of joy stood in his eyes, so hopeful did he feel of saving his head.

“That is not all,” said Jacques Collin; “the public prosecutor does not swallow everything, you know, especially when a new count is entered against you. The next thing is to bring a moll into the case by blowing the gaff.”

“But how, and what for?”

“Do as I bid you; you will see.” And Trompe-la-Mort briefly told the secret of the Nanterre murders, showing him how necessary it was to find a woman who would pretend to be Ginetta. Then he and la Pouraille, now in good spirits, went across to le Biffon.

“I know how sweet you are on la Biffe,” said Jacques Collin to this man.

The expression in le Biffon’s eyes was a horrible poem.

“What will she do while you are on the hulks?”

A tear sparkled in le Biffon’s fierce eyes.

“Well, suppose I were to get her lodgings in the Lorcefe des Largues” (the women’s La Force, i. e. les Madelonnettes or Saint-Lazare) “for a stretch, allowing that time for you to be sentenced and sent there, to arrive and to escape?”

“Even you cannot work such a miracle. She took no part in the job,” replied la Biffe’s partner.

“Oh, my good Biffon,” said la Pouraille, “our boss is more powerful than God Almighty.”

“What is your password for her?” asked Jacques Collin, with the assurance of a master to whom nothing can be refused.

“Sorgue a Pantin (night in Paris). If you say that she knows you have come from me, and if you want her to do as you bid her, show her a five-franc piece and say Tondif.”

“She will be involved in the sentence on la Pouraille, and let off with a year in quod for snitching,” said Jacques Collin, looking at la Pouraille.

La Pouraille understood his boss’ scheme, and by a single look promised to persuade le Biffon to promote it by inducing la Biffe to take upon herself this complicity in the crime la Pouraille was prepared to confess.

“Farewell, my children. You will presently hear that I have saved my boy from Jack Ketch,” said Trompe-la-Mort. “Yes, Jack Ketch and his hairdresser were waiting in the office to get Madeleine ready. – There,” he added, “they have come to fetch me to go to the public prosecutor.”

And, in fact, a warder came out of the gate and beckoned to this extraordinary man, who, in face of the young Corsican’s danger, had recovered his own against his own society.

It is worthy of note that at the moment when Lucien’s body was taken away from him, Jacques Collin had, with a crowning effort, made up his mind to attempt a last incarnation, not as a human being, but as a thing. He had at last taken the fateful step that Napoleon took on board the boat which conveyed him to the Bellerophon. And a strange concurrence of events aided this genius of evil and corruption in his undertaking.

But though the unlooked-for conclusion of this life of crime may perhaps be deprived of some of the marvelous effect which, in our day, can be given to a narrative only by incredible improbabilities, it is necessary, before we accompany Jacques Collin to the public prosecutor’s room, that we should follow Madame Camusot in her visits during the time we have spent in the Conciergerie.

One of the obligations which the historian of manners must unfailingly observe is that of never marring the truth for the sake of dramatic arrangement, especially when the truth is so kind as to be in itself romantic. Social nature, particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity of facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of “situation” forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and purified by the writer.

Madame Camusot did her utmost to dress herself for the morning almost in good taste – a difficult task for the wife of a judge who for six years has lived in a provincial town. Her object was to give no hold for criticism to the Marquise d’Espard or the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, in a call so early as between eight and nine in the morning. Amelie Cecile Camusot, nee Thirion, it must be said, only half succeeded; and in a matter of dress is this not a twofold blunder?

Few people can imagine how useful the women of Paris are to ambitious men of every class; they are equally necessary in the world of fashion and the world of thieves, where, as we have seen, they fill a most important part. For instance, suppose that a man, not to find himself left in the lurch, must absolutely get speech within a given time with the high functionary who was of such immense importance under the Restoration, and who is to this day called the Keeper of the Seals – a man, let us say, in the most favorable position, a judge, that is to say, a man familiar with the way of things. He is compelled to seek out the presiding judge of a circuit, or some private or official secretary, and prove to him his need of an immediate interview. But is a Keeper of the Seals ever visible “that very minute”? In the middle of the day, if he is not at the Chamber, he is at the Privy Council, or signing papers, or hearing a case. In the early morning he is out, no one knows where. In the evening he has public and private engagements. If every magistrate could claim a moment’s interview under any pretext that might occur to him, the Supreme Judge would be besieged.

The purpose of a private and immediate interview is therefore submitted to the judgment of one of those mediatory potentates who are but an obstacle to be removed, a door that can be unlocked, so long as it is not held by a rival. A woman at once goes to another woman; she can get straight into her bedroom if she can arouse the curiosity of mistress or maid, especially if the mistress is under the stress of a strong interest or pressing necessity.

Call this female potentate Madame la Marquise d’Espard, with whom a Minister has to come to terms; this woman writes a little scented note, which her man-servant carries to the Minister’s man-servant. The note greets the Minister on his waking, and he reads it at once. Though the Minister has business to attend to, the man is enchanted to have a reason for calling on one of the Queens of Paris, one of the Powers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, one of the favorites of the Dauphiness, of MADAME, or of the King. Casimir Perier, the only real statesman of the Revolution of July, would leave anything to call on a retired Gentleman of the bed-chamber to King Charles X.

This theory accounts for the magical effect of the words:

“Madame, – Madame Camusot, on very important business, which she says you know of,” spoken in Madame d’Espard’s ear by her maid, who thought she was awake.

And the Marquise desired that Amelie should be shown in at once.

The magistrate’s wife was attentively heard when she began with these words:

“Madame la Marquise, we have ruined ourselves by trying to avenge you – ”

“How is that, my dear?” replied the Marquise, looking at Madame Camusot in the dim light that fell through the half-open door. “You are vastly sweet this morning in that little bonnet. Where do you get that shape?”

“You are very kind, madame. – Well, you know that Camusot’s way of examining Lucien de Rubempre drove the young man to despair, and he hanged himself in prison.”

“Oh, what will become of Madame de Serizy?” cried the Marquise, affecting ignorance, that she might hear the whole story once more.

“Alas! they say she is quite mad,” said Amelie. “If you could persuade the Lord Keeper to send for my husband this minute, by special messenger, to meet him at the Palais, the Minister would hear some strange mysteries, and report them, no doubt, to the King… Then Camusot’s enemies would be reduced to silence.”

“But who are Camusot’s enemies?” asked Madame d’Espard.

“The public prosecutor, and now Monsieur de Serizy.”

“Very good, my dear,” replied Madame d’Espard, who owed to Monsieur de Granville and the Comte de Serizy her defeat in the disgraceful proceedings by which she had tried to have her husband treated as a lunatic, “I will protect you; I never forget either my foes or my friends.”

She rang; the maid drew open the curtains, and daylight flooded the room; she asked for her desk, and the maid brought it in. The Marquise hastily scrawled a few lines.

“Tell Godard to go on horseback, and carry this note to the Chancellor’s office. – There is no reply,” said she to the maid.

The woman went out of the room quickly, but, in spite of the order, remained at the door for some minutes.

“There are great mysteries going forward then?” asked Madame d’Espard. “Tell me all about it, dear child. Has Clotilde de Grandlieu put a finger in the pie?”

“You will know everything from the Lord Keeper, for my husband has told me nothing. He only told me he was in danger. It would be better for us that Madame de Serizy should die than that she should remain mad.”

“Poor woman!” said the Marquise. “But was she not mad already?”

Women of the world, by a hundred ways of pronouncing the same phrase, illustrate to attentive hearers the infinite variety of musical modes. The soul goes out into the voice as it does into the eyes; it vibrates in light and in air – the elements acted on by the eyes and the voice. By the tone she gave to the two words, “Poor woman!” the Marquise betrayed the joy of satisfied hatred, the pleasure of triumph. Oh! what woes did she not wish to befall Lucien’s protectress. Revenge, which nothing can assuage, which can survive the person hated, fills us with dark terrors. And Madame Camusot, though harsh herself, vindictive, and quarrelsome, was overwhelmed. She could find nothing to say, and was silent.

“Diane told me that Leontine went to the prison,” Madame d’Espard went on. “The dear Duchess is in despair at such a scandal, for she is so foolish as to be very fond of Madame de Serizy; however, it is comprehensible: they both adored that little fool Lucien at about the same time, and nothing so effectually binds or severs two women as worshiping at the same altar. And our dear friend spent two hours yesterday in Leontine’s room. The poor Countess, it seems, says dreadful things! I heard that it was disgusting! A woman of rank ought not to give way to such attacks. – Bah! A purely physical passion. – The Duchess came to see me as pale as death; she really was very brave. There are monstrous things connected with this business.”

“My husband will tell the Keeper of the Seals all he knows for his own justification, for they wanted to save Lucien, and he, Madame la Marquise, did his duty. An examining judge always has to question people in private at the time fixed by law! He had to ask the poor little wretch something, if only for form’s sake, and the young fellow did not understand, and confessed things – ”

“He was an impertinent fool!” said Madame d’Espard in a hard tone.

The judge’s wife kept silence on hearing this sentence.

“Though we failed in the matter of the Commission in Lunacy, it was not Camusot’s fault, I shall never forget that,” said the Marquise after a pause. “It was Lucien, Monsieur de Serizy, Monsieur de Bauvan, and Monsieur de Granville who overthrew us. With time God will be on my side; all those people will come to grief. – Be quite easy, I will send the Chevalier d’Espard to the Keeper of the Seals that he may desire your husbands’s presence immediately, if that is of any use.”

“Oh! madame – ”

“Listen,” said the Marquise. “I promise you the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at once – to-morrow. It will be a conspicuous testimonial of satisfaction with your conduct in this affair. Yes, it implies further blame on Lucien; it will prove him guilty. Men do not commonly hang themselves for the pleasure of it. – Now, good-bye, my pretty dear – ”

Ten minutes later Madame Camusot was in the bedroom of the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse, who had not gone to bed till one, and at nine o’clock had not yet slept.

However insensible duchesses may be, even these women, whose hearts are of stone, cannot see a friend a victim to madness without being painfully impressed by it.

And besides, the connection between Diane and Lucien, though at an end now eighteen months since, had left such memories with the Duchess that the poor boy’s disastrous end had been to her also a fearful blow. All night Diane had seen visions of the beautiful youth, so charming, so poetical, who had been so delightful a lover – painted as Leontine depicted him, with the vividness of wild delirium. She had letters from Lucien that she had kept, intoxicating letters worthy to compare with Mirabeau’s to Sophie, but more literary, more elaborate, for Lucien’s letters had been dictated by the most powerful of passions – Vanity. Having the most bewitching of duchesses for his mistress, and seeing her commit any folly for him – secret follies, of course – had turned Lucien’s head with happiness. The lover’s pride had inspired the poet. And the Duchess had treasured these touching letters, as some old men keep indecent prints, for the sake of their extravagant praise of all that was least duchess-like in her nature.

“And he died in a squalid prison!” cried she to herself, putting the letters away in a panic when she heard her maid knocking gently at her door.

“Madame Camusot,” said the woman, “on business of the greatest importance to you, Madame la Duchesse.”

Diane sprang to her feet in terror.

“Oh!” cried she, looking at Amelie, who had assumed a duly condoling air, “I guess it all – my letters! It is about my letters. Oh, my letters, my letters!”

She sank on to a couch. She remembered now how, in the extravagance of her passion, she had answered Lucien in the same vein, had lauded the man’s poetry as he has sung the charms of the woman, and in what a strain!

“Alas, yes, madame, I have come to save what is dearer to you than life – your honor. Compose yourself and get dressed, we must go to the Duchesse de Grandlieu; happily for you, you are not the only person compromised.”

“But at the Palais, yesterday, Leontine burned, I am told, all the letters found at poor Lucien’s.”

“But, madame, behind Lucien there was Jacques Collin!” cried the magistrate’s wife. “You always forget that horrible companionship which beyond question led to that charming and lamented young man’s end. That Machiavelli of the galleys never loses his head! Monsieur Camusot is convinced that the wretch has in some safe hiding-place all the most compromising letters written by you ladies to his – ”

“His friend,” the Duchess hastily put in. “You are right, my child. We must hold council at the Grandlieus’. We are all concerned in this matter, and Serizy happily will lend us his aid.”

Extreme peril – as we have observed in the scenes in the Conciergerie – has a hold over the soul not less terrible than that of powerful reagents over the body. It is a mental Voltaic battery. The day, perhaps, is not far off when the process shall be discovered by which feeling is chemically converted into a fluid not unlike the electric fluid.

The phenomena were the same in the convict and the Duchess. This crushed, half-dying woman, who had not slept, who was so particular over her dressing, had recovered the strength of a lioness at bay, and the presence of mind of a general under fire. Diane chose her gown and got through her dressing with the alacrity of a grisette who is her own waiting-woman. It was so astounding, that the lady’s-maid stood for a moment stock-still, so greatly was she surprised to see her mistress in her shift, not ill pleased perhaps to let the judge’s wife discern through the thin cloud of lawn a form as white and as perfect as that of Canova’s Venus. It was like a gem in a fold of tissue paper. Diane suddenly remembered where a pair of stays had been put that fastened in front, sparing a woman in a hurry the ill-spent time and fatigue of being laced. She had arranged the lace trimming of her shift and the fulness of the bosom by the time the maid had fetched her petticoat, and crowned the work by putting on her gown. While Amelie, at a sign from the maid, hooked the bodice behind, the woman brought out a pair of thread stockings, velvet boots, a shawl, and a bonnet. Amelie and the maid each drew on a stocking.

“You are the loveliest creature I ever saw!” said Amelie, insidiously kissing Diane’s elegant and polished knee with an eager impulse.

“Madame has not her match!” cried the maid.

“There, there, Josette, hold your tongue,” replied the Duchess. – “Have you a carriage?” she went on, to Madame Camusot. “Then come along, my dear, we can talk on the road.”

And the Duchess ran down the great stairs of the Hotel de Cadignan, putting on her gloves as she went – a thing she had never been known to do.

“To the Hotel de Grandlieu, and drive fast,” said she to one of her men, signing to him to get up behind.

The footman hesitated – it was a hackney coach.

“Ah! Madame la Duchesse, you never told me that the young man had letters of yours. Otherwise Camusot would have proceeded differently…”

“Leontine’s state so occupied my thoughts that I forgot myself entirely. The poor woman was almost crazy the day before yesterday; imagine the effect on her of this tragical termination. If you could only know, child, what a morning we went through yesterday! It is enough to make one forswear love! – Yesterday Leontine and I were dragged across Paris by a horrible old woman, an old-clothes buyer, a domineering creature, to that stinking and blood-stained sty they call the Palace of Justice, and I said to her as I took her there: ‘Is not this enough to make us fall on our knees and cry out like Madame de Nucingen, when she went through one of those awful Mediterranean storms on her way to Naples, “Dear God, save me this time, and never again – !”’

“These two days will certainly have shortened my life. – What fools we are ever to write! – But love prompts us; we receive pages that fire the heart through the eyes, and everything is in a blaze! Prudence deserts us – we reply – ”

“But why reply when you can act?” said Madame Camusot.

“It is grand to lose oneself utterly!” cried the Duchess with pride. “It is the luxury of the soul.”

“Beautiful women are excusable,” said Madame Camusot modestly. “They have more opportunities of falling than we have.”

The Duchess smiled.

“We are always too generous,” said Diane de Maufrigneuse. “I shall do just like that odious Madame d’Espard.”

“And what does she do?” asked the judge’s wife, very curious.

“She has written a thousand love-notes – ”

“So many!” exclaimed Amelie, interrupting the Duchess.

“Well, my dear, and not a word that could compromise her is to be found in any one of them.”

“You would be incapable of maintaining such coldness, such caution,” said Madame Camusot. “You are a woman; you are one of those angels who cannot stand out against the devil – ”

“I have made a vow to write no more letters. I never in my life wrote to anybody but that unhappy Lucien. – I will keep his letters to my dying day! My dear child, they are fire, and sometimes we want – ”

“But if they were found!” said Amelie, with a little shocked expression.

“Oh! I should say they were part of a romance I was writing; for I have copied them all, my dear, and burned the originals.”

“Oh, madame, as a reward allow me to read them.”

“Perhaps, child,” said the Duchess. “And then you will see that he did not write such letters as those to Leontine.”

This speech was woman all the world over, of every age and every land.

Madame Camusot, like the frog in la Fontaine’s fable, was ready to burst her skin with the joy of going to the Grandlieus’ in the society of the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse. This morning she would forge one of the links that are so needful to ambition. She could already hear herself addressed as Madame la Presidente. She felt the ineffable gladness of triumphing over stupendous obstacles, of which the greatest was her husband’s ineptitude, as yet unrevealed, but to her well known. To win success for a second-rate man! that is to a woman – as to a king – the delight which tempts great actors when they act a bad play a hundred times over. It is the very drunkenness of egoism. It is in a way the Saturnalia of power.

Power can prove itself to itself only by the strange misapplication which leads it to crown some absurd person with the laurels of success while insulting genius – the only strong-hold which power cannot touch. The knighting of Caligula’s horse, an imperial farce, has been, and always will be, a favorite performance.

In a few minutes Diane and Amelie had exchanged the elegant disorder of the fair Diane’s bedroom for the severe but dignified and splendid austerity of the Duchesse de Grandlieu’s rooms.

She, a Portuguese, and very pious, always rose at eight to attend mass at the little church of Sainte-Valere, a chapelry to Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, standing at that time on the esplanade of the Invalides. This chapel, now destroyed, was rebuilt in the Rue de Bourgogne, pending the building of a Gothic church to be dedicated to Sainte-Clotilde.

On hearing the first words spoken in her ear by Diane de Maufrigneuse, this saintly lady went to find Monsieur de Grandlieu, and brought him back at once. The Duke threw a flashing look at Madame Camusot, one of those rapid glances with which a man of the world can guess at a whole existence, or often read a soul. Amelie’s dress greatly helped the Duke to decipher the story of a middle-class life, from Alencon to Mantes, and from Mantes to Paris.

Oh! if only the lawyer’s wife could have understood this gift in dukes, she could never have endured that politely ironical look; she saw the politeness only. Ignorance shares the privileges of fine breeding.

“This is Madame Camusot, a daughter of Thirion’s – one of the Cabinet ushers,” said the Duchess to her husband.

The Duke bowed with extreme politeness to the wife of a legal official, and his face became a little less grave.

The Duke had rung for his valet, who now came in.

“Go to the Rue Saint-Honore: take a coach. Ring at a side door, No. 10. Tell the man who opens the door that I beg his master will come here, and if the gentleman is at home, bring him back with you. – Mention my name, that will remove all difficulties.

“And do not be gone more than a quarter of an hour in all.”

Another footman, the Duchess’ servant, came in as soon as the other was gone.

“Go from me to the Duc de Chaulieu, and send up this card.”

The Duke gave him a card folded down in a particular way. When the two friends wanted to meet at once, on any urgent or confidential business which would not allow of note-writing, they used this means of communication.

Thus we see that similar customs prevail in every rank of society, and differ only in manner, civility, and small details. The world of fashion, too, has its argot, its slang; but that slang is called style.

“Are you quite sure, madame, of the existence of the letters you say were written by Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu to this young man?” said the Duc de Grandlieu.

And he cast a look at Madame Camusot as a sailor casts a sounding line.

“I have not seen them, but there is reason to fear it,” replied Madame Camusot, quaking.

“My daughter can have written nothing we would not own to!” said the Duchess.

“Poor Duchess!” thought Diane, with a glance at the Duke that terrified him.

“What do you think, my dear little Diane?” said the Duke in a whisper, as he led her away into a recess.

“Clotilde is so crazy about Lucien, my dear friend, that she had made an assignation with him before leaving. If it had not been for little Lenoncourt, she would perhaps have gone off with him into the forest of Fontainebleau. I know that Lucien used to write letters to her which were enough to turn the brain of a saint. – We are three daughters of Eve in the coils of the serpent of letter-writing.”

The Duke and Diane came back to the Duchess and Madame Camusot, who were talking in undertones. Amelie, following the advice of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, affected piety to win the proud lady’s favor.