comfortable. Before they left the room,
Victorine snatched an opportunity when her guardian's back was turned,
and pressed a kiss on Eugene's forehead, feeling all the joy that this
stolen pleasure could give her. Then she looked round the room, and
gathering up, as it were, into one single thought all the untold bliss
of that day, she made a picture of her memories, and dwelt upon it until
she slept, the happiest creature in Paris.

That evening's merry-making, in the course of which Vautrin had
given the drugged wine to Eugene and Father Goriot, was his own
ruin. Bianchon, flustered with wine, forgot to open the subject of
Trompe-la-Mort with Mlle. Michonneau. The mere mention of the name would
have set Vautrin on his guard; for Vautrin, or, to give him his real
name, Jacques Collin, was in fact the notorious escaped convict.

But it was the joke about the Venus of Pere-Lachaise that finally
decided his fate. Mlle. Michonneau had very nearly made up her mind to
warn the convict and to throw herself on his generosity, with the idea
of making a better bargain for herself by helping him to escape that
night; but as it was, she went out escorted by Poiret in search of the
famous chief of detectives in the Petite Rue Saint-Anne, still thinking
that it was the district superintendent--one Gondureau--with whom she
had to do. The head of the department received his visitors courteously.
There was a little talk, and the details were definitely arranged. Mlle.
Michonneau asked for the draught that she was to administer in order to
set about her investigation. But the great man's evident satisfaction
set Mlle. Michonneau thinking; and she began to see that this business
involved something more than the mere capture of a runaway convict. She
racked her brains while he looked in a drawer in his desk for the
little phial, and it dawned upon her that in consequence of treacherous
revelations made by the prisoners the police were hoping to lay their
hands on a considerable sum of money. But on hinting her suspicions to
the old fox of the Petite Rue Saint-Anne, that officer began to smile,
and tried to put her off the scent.

"A delusion," he said. "Collin's _sorbonne_ is the most dangerous that
has yet been found among the dangerous classes. That is all, and the
rascals are quite aware of it. They rally round him; he is the backbone
of the federation, its Bonaparte, in short; he is very popular with them
all. The rogue will never l