deadly sin; she contrived that every grace should be extorted
from her, and this with such consummate art, that it was impossible not
to feel that she was more an angel than ever when she yielded.

None but Parisian women are clever enough always to give a new charm to
the moon, to romanticize the stars, to roll in the same sack of charcoal
and emerge each time whiter than ever. This is the highest refinement
of intellectual and Parisian civilization. Women beyond the Rhine or the
English Channel believe nonsense of this sort when they utter it; while
your Parisienne makes her lover believe that she is an angel, the better
to add to his bliss by flattering his vanity on both sides--temporal and
spiritual. Certain persons, detractors of the Duchess, maintain that she
was the first dupe of her own white magic. A wicked slander. The Duchess
believed in nothing but herself.

By the end of the year 1823 the Kellers had supplied Victurnien with
two hundred thousand francs, and neither Chesnel nor Mlle. Armande knew
anything about it. He had had, besides, two thousand crowns from Chesnel
at one time and another, the better to hide the sources on which he was
drawing. He wrote lying letters to his poor father and aunt, who lived
on, happy and deceived, like most happy people under the sun. The
insidious current of life in Paris was bringing a dreadful catastrophe
upon the great and noble house; and only one person was in the secret of
it. This was du Croisier. He rubbed his hands gleefully as he went
past in the dark and looked in at the Antiquities. He had good hope of
attaining his ends; and his ends were not, as heretofore, the simple
ruin of the d'Esgrignons, but the dishonor of their house. He felt
instinctively at such times that his revenge was at hand; he scented
it in the wind! He had been sure of it indeed from the day when he
discovered that the young Count's burden of debt was growing too heavy
for the boy to bear.

Du Croisier's first step was to rid himself of his most hated enemy, the
venerable Chesnel. The good old man lived in the Rue du Bercail, in a
house with a steep-pitched roof. There was a little paved courtyard in
front, where the rose-bushes grew and clambered up to the windows of
the upper story. Behind lay a little country garden, with its box-edged
borders, shut in by damp, gloomy-looking walls. The prim, gray-painted
street door, with its wicket opening and bell attached, announced quite
as plainl