ole business. I shall have no peace until I know
for certain that your fortune is secure."

"Oh! father dear, be careful how you set about it! If there is the least
hint of vengeance in the business, if you show yourself openly hostile,
it will be all over with me. He knows whom he has to deal with; he
thinks it quite natural that if you put the idea into my head, I should
be uneasy about my money; but I swear to you that he has it in his own
hands, and that he had meant to keep it. He is just the man to abscond
with all the money and leave us in the lurch, the scoundrel! He knows
quite well that I will not dishonor the name I bear by bringing him into
a court of law. His position is strong and weak at the same time. If we
drive him to despair, I am lost."

"Why, then, the man is a rogue?"

"Well, yes, father," she said, flinging herself into a chair, "I wanted
to keep it from you to spare your feelings," and she burst into tears;
"I did not want you to know that you had married me to such a man as
he is. He is just the same in private life--body and soul and
conscience--the same through and through--hideous! I hate him; I despise
him! Yes, after all that that despicable Nucingen has told me, I cannot
respect him any longer. A man capable of mixing himself up in such
affairs, and of talking about them to me as he did, without the
slightest scruple,--it is because I have read him through and through
that I am afraid of him. He, my husband, frankly proposed to give me my
liberty, and do you know what that means? It means that if things
turn out badly for him, I am to play into his hands, and be his
stalking-horse."

"But there is law to be had! There is a Place de Greve for sons-in-law
of that sort," cried her father; "why, I would guillotine him myself if
there was no headsman to do it."

"No, father, the law cannot touch him. Listen, this is what he says,
stripped of all his circumlocutions--'Take your choice, you and no one
else can be my accomplice; either everything is lost, you are ruined
and have not a farthing, or you will let me carry this business through
myself.' Is that plain speaking? He _must_ have my assistance. He is
assured that his wife will deal fairly by him; he knows that I shall
leave his money to him and be content with my own. It is an unholy and
dishonest compact, and he holds out threats of ruin to compel me to
consent to it. He is buying my conscience, and the price is liberty to
be Eugene