t
was a garret like any other to all appearance; Mme. de Maufrigneuse was
obliged to bow her head with its court feathers or wreath of flowers to
enter in at the door; but within all the peris of the East had made the
chamber fair. And now that the Count was on the brink of ruin, he had
longed to bid farewell to the dainty nest, which he had built to realize
a day-dream worthy of his angel. Presently adversity would break the
enchanted eggs; there would be no brood of white doves, no brilliant
tropical birds, no more of the thousand bright-winged fancies which
hover above our heads even to the last days of our lives. Alas! alas! in
three days he must be gone; his bills had fallen into the hands of the
money-lenders, the law proceedings had reached the last stage.

An evil thought crossed his brain. He would fly with the Duchess; they
would live in some undiscovered nook in the wilds of North or South
America; but--he would fly with a fortune, and leave his creditors to
confront their bills. To carry out the plan, he had only to cut off the
lower portion of that letter with du Croisier's signature, and to fill
in the figures to turn it into a bill, and present it to the Kellers.
There was a dreadful struggle with temptation; tears shed, but the honor
of the family triumphed, subject to one condition. Victurnien wanted to
be sure of his beautiful Diane; he would do nothing unless she should
consent to their flight. So he went to the Duchess in the Rue Faubourg
Saint-Honore, and found her in coquettish morning dress, which cost as
much in thought as in money, a fit dress in which to begin to play the
part of Angel at eleven o'clock in the morning.

Mme. de Maufrigneuse was somewhat pensive. Cares of a similar kind
were gnawing her mind; but she took them gallantly. Of all the various
feminine organizations classified by physiologists, there is one that
has something indescribably terrible about it. Such women combine
strength of soul and clear insight, with a faculty for prompt decision,
and a recklessness, or rather resolution in a crisis which would shake a
man's nerves. And these powers lie out of sight beneath an appearance of
the most graceful helplessness. Such women only among womankind afford
examples of a phenomenon which Buffon recognized in men alone, to wit,
the union, or rather the disunion, of two different natures in one human
being. Other women are wholly women; wholly tender, wholly devoted,
wholly mother