red, followed by Abbe Miollens, who inflicted a real
torture by insisting on accompanying him to the station.

No longer restrained by Mme. de Lorcy's presence, the abbe spoke
freely of the happy event in which he prided himself to have been a
co-operator; he overwhelmed him with congratulation, and all the good
wishes he could possibly think of for his happiness. During a quarter of
an hour he lavished on him his myrrh and honey. Samuel would gladly have
wrung his neck. He could not breathe until the abbe had freed him from
his obtrusive society.

A storm muttered in the almost cloudless sky. It was a dry storm; the
rain fell elsewhere. The incessant lightning, accompanied by distant
thunder, gleamed from all quarters of the horizon, and darted its
luminous flashes over the whole extent of the plain. At intervals the
hills seemed to be on fire. Several times Samuel, who stood with his
nose against the glass of the car-door, thought that he saw in the
direction of Cormeilles the flaring light of a conflagration, in which
were blazing his dream and two millions, to say nothing of his great
expectations.

He bitterly reproached himself for his folly of the previous day. "If
I had passed yesterday evening with her," he thought, "surely she
would have spoken of the Princess Gulof. I would have taken measures
accordingly, and nothing would have happened." It was all M. Langis's
fault; it was to him that he imputed the disaster, and he hated him all
the more.

However, as he approached Paris, he felt his courage returning.

"Those two letters frightened the old fairy," he thought. "She will
think twice before she declares war with me. No, she will not dare." He
added: "And if she dared, Antoinette loves me so much that I can make
her believe what I please."

And he prepared in his mind what he should say, in case the event
occurred.

At that very moment Mme. de Lorcy, who was alone with Princess Gulof,
was saying: "Well, my dear, you have talked with my man. What do you
think of him?"

The princess distressed her by her reply. "I think, my dear," she
rejoined, "that Count Larinski is the last of the heroes of romance--or,
if you like better, the last of the troubadours; but I have no reason to
believe him to be an adventurer."

Mme. de Lorcy could get nothing further from Princess Gulof; she had
invited her to remain overnight; she got no pay for her hospitality. The
princess spent part of the night in reflecting