it was, will never be effaced from my memory.

"'Favor me so far as to stay here,' he added. 'I am armed, and a sure
shot. I have gone tiger-hunting, and fought on the deck when there
was nothing for it but to win or die; but I don't care to trust yonder
elegant scoundrel.'

"He sat down again in his armchair before his bureau, and his face grew
pale and impassive as before.

"'Ah!' he continued, turning to me, 'you will see that lovely creature
I once told you about; I can hear a fine lady's step in the corridor; it
is she, no doubt;' and, as a matter of fact, the young man came in with
a woman on his arm. I recognized the Countess, whose levee Gobseck had
described for me, one of old Goriot's two daughters.

"The Countess did not see me at first; I stayed where I was in the
window bay, with my face against the pane; but I saw her give Maxime a
suspicious glance as she came into the money-lender's damp, dark room.
So beautiful she was, that in spite of her faults I felt sorry for her.
There was a terrible storm of anguish in her heart; her haughty, proud
features were drawn and distorted with pain which she strove in vain
to disguise. The young man had come to be her evil genius. I admired
Gobseck, whose perspicacity had foreseen their future four years ago at
the first bill which she endorsed.

"'Probably,' said I to myself, 'this monster with the angel face
controls every possible spring of action in her: rules her through
vanity, jealousy, pleasure, and the current of life in the world.'"

The Vicomtesse de Grandlieu broke in on the story.

"Why, the woman's very virtues have been turned against her," she
exclaimed. "He has made her shed tears of devotion, and then abused her
kindness and made her pay very dearly for unhallowed bliss."

Derville did not understand the signs which Mme. de Grandlieu made to
him.

"I confess," he said, "that I had no inclination to shed tears over the
lot of this unhappy creature, so brilliant in society, so repulsive to
eyes that could read her heart; I shuddered rather at the sight of her
murderer, a young angel with such a clear brow, such red lips and white
teeth, such a winning smile. There they stood before their judge, he
scrutinizing them much as some fifteenth-century Dominican inquisitor
might have peered into the dungeons of the Holy Office while the torture
was administered to two Moors.

"The Countess spoke tremulously. 'Sir,' she said, 'is there any way
of obt