ths. If I do not return by the fifteenth of
November, you will come into possession of my things. This sealed packet
of manuscript is the fair copy of my great work on "The Will,"' I went
on, pointing to a package. 'Will you deposit it in the King's Library?
And you may do as you wish with everything that is left here.'

"Her look weighed heavily on my heart; Pauline was an embodiment of
conscience there before me.

"'I shall have no more lessons,' she said, pointing to the piano.

"I did not answer that.

"'Will you write to me?'

"'Good-bye, Pauline.'

"I gently drew her towards me, and set a kiss on that innocent fair brow
of hers, like snow that has not yet touched the earth--a father's or a
brother's kiss. She fled. I would not see Madame Gaudin, hung my key in
its wonted place, and departed. I was almost at the end of the Rue de
Cluny when I heard a woman's light footstep behind me.

"'I have embroidered this purse for you,' Pauline said; 'will you refuse
even that?'

"By the light of the street lamp I thought I saw tears in Pauline's
eyes, and I groaned. Moved perhaps by a common impulse, we parted in
haste like people who fear the contagion of the plague.

"As I waited with dignified calmness for Rastignac's return, his room
seemed a grotesque interpretation of the sort of life I was about to
enter upon. The clock on the chimney-piece was surmounted by a Venus
resting on her tortoise; a half-smoked cigar lay in her arms. Costly
furniture of various kinds--love tokens, very likely--was scattered
about. Old shoes lay on a luxurious sofa. The comfortable armchair into
which I had thrown myself bore as many scars as a veteran; the arms were
gnashed, the back was overlaid with a thick, stale deposit of pomade and
hair-oil from the heads of all his visitors. Splendor and squalor were
oddly mingled, on the walls, the bed, and everywhere. You might have
thought of a Neapolitan palace and the groups of lazzaroni about it. It
was the room of a gambler or a mauvais sujet, where the luxury exists
for one individual, who leads the life of the senses and does not
trouble himself over inconsistencies.

"There was a certain imaginative element about the picture it presented.
Life was suddenly revealed there in its rags and spangles as
the incomplete thing it really is, of course, but so vividly and
picturesquely; it was like a den where a brigand has heaped up all the
plunder in which he delights. Some pages were mi