e of the Conte Ferraro. The
smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He had arranged
matters so as to divert the search that would be made for him into
Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the English
vessel. Then, by the time that Nucingen might flatter himself that he
was on the track of his late cashier, the said cashier, as the Conte
Ferraro, hoped to be safe in Naples. He had determined to disfigure his
face in order to disguise himself the more completely, and by means of
an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox. Yet, in spite of all these
precautions, which surely seemed as if they must secure him complete
immunity, his conscience tormented him; he was afraid. The even and
peaceful life that he had led for so long had modified the morality of
the camp. His life was stainless as yet; he could not sully it without a
pang. So for the last time he abandoned himself to all the influences of
the better self that strenuously resisted.

"Pshaw!" he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue
Montmartre, "I will take a cab after the play this evening and go out to
Versailles. A post-chaise will be ready for me at my old quartermaster's
place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men were standing ready
to shoot him down. The chances are all in my favor, so far as I see; so
I shall take my little Naqui with me, and I will go."

"You will not go!" exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones of
his voice drove all the cashier's blood back to his heart.

Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and was
whirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foe
some hundred paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mind
to cut off the man's retreat the tilbury was far on its way up the
Boulevard Montmartre.

"Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!" said
he to himself. "If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should think
that He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and
the police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nick
of time? Did any one ever see the like! But there, this is folly..."

Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, slackening his pace
as he neared the Rue Richer. There on the second floor of a block of
buildings which looked out upon some gardens lived the unconscious cause
of Castanier's crime--a young woman known in the quarter as Mme. de