ruin? I have felt to the full how wretched it is to
be a woman. Send a word to reassure me, and explain how it is that you
have not come after what my father told you. I shall be angry, but I
will forgive you. One word, for pity's sake. You will come to me soon,
will you not? If you are busy, a line will be enough. Say, 'I will
hasten to you,' or else, 'I am ill.' But if you were ill my father would
have come to tell me so. What can have happened?..."

"Yes, indeed, what has happened?" exclaimed Eugene, and, hurrying down
to the dining-room, he crumpled up the letter without reading any more.
"What time is it?"

"Half-past eleven," said Vautrin, dropping a lump of sugar into his
coffee.

The escaped convict cast a glance at Eugene, a cold and fascinating
glance; men gifted with this magnetic power can quell furious lunatics
in a madhouse by such a glance, it is said. Eugene shook in every limb.
There was the sound of wheels in the street, and in another moment a man
with a scared face rushed into the room. It was one of M. Taillefer's
servants; Mme. Couture recognized the livery at once.

"Mademoiselle," he cried, "your father is asking for you--something
terrible has happened! M. Frederic has had a sword thrust in the
forehead in a duel, and the doctors have given him up. You will scarcely
be in time to say good-bye to him! he is unconscious."

"Poor young fellow!" exclaimed Vautrin. "How can people brawl when they
have a certain income of thirty thousand livres? Young people have bad
manners, and that is a fact."

"Sir!" cried Eugene.

"Well, what then, you big baby!" said Vautrin, swallowing down his
coffee imperturbably, an operation which Mlle. Michonneau watched with
such close attention that she had no emotion to spare for the amazing
news that had struck the others dumb with amazement. "Are there not
duels every morning in Paris?" added Vautrin.

"I will go with you, Victorine," said Mme. Couture, and the two women
hurried away at once without either hats or shawls. But before she
went, Victorine, with her eyes full of tears, gave Eugene a glance that
said--"How little I thought that our happiness should cost me tears!"

"Dear me, you are a prophet, M. Vautrin," said Mme. Vauquer.

"I am all sorts of things," said Vautrin.

"Queer, isn't it?" said Mme. Vauquer, stringing together a succession of
commonplaces suited to the occasion. "Death takes us off without asking
us about it. The young often g