res to guarantee the fellow's safe return. If you
can do nothing, I am ready and willing to die for the man to whom
we owe our Adeline's happiness!"

The anguish and raptures of passion and the catastrophe which had
checked his career of profligacy had prevented Baron Hulot's ever
thinking of poor Johann Fischer, though his first letter had given
warning of the danger now become so pressing. The Baron went out of
the dining-room in such agitation that he literally dropped on to a
sofa in the drawing-room. He was stunned, sunk in the dull numbness of
a heavy fall. He stared at a flower on the carpet, quite unconscious
that he still held in his hand Johann's fatal letter.

Adeline, in her room, heard her husband throw himself on the sofa,
like a lifeless mass; the noise was so peculiar that she fancied he
had an apoplectic attack. She looked through the door at the mirror,
in such dread as stops the breath and hinders motion, and she saw her
Hector in the attitude of a man crushed. The Baroness stole in on
tiptoe; Hector heard nothing; she went close up to him, saw the
letter, took it, read it, trembling in every limb. She went through
one of those violent nervous shocks that leave their traces for ever
on the sufferer. Within a few days she became subject to a constant
trembling, for after the first instant the need for action gave her
such strength as can only be drawn from the very wellspring of the
vital powers.

"Hector, come into my room," said she, in a voice that was no more
than a breath. "Do not let your daughter see you in this state! Come,
my dear, come!"

"Two hundred thousand francs? Where can I find them? I can get Claude
Vignon sent out there as commissioner. He is a clever, intelligent
fellow.--That is a matter of a couple of days.--But two hundred
thousand francs! My son has not so much; his house is loaded with
mortgages for three hundred thousand. My brother has saved thirty
thousand francs at most. Nucingen would simply laugh at me!--Vauvinet?
--he was not very ready to lend me the ten thousand francs I wanted to
make up the sum for that villain Marneffe's boy. No, it is all up with
me; I must throw myself at the Prince's feet, confess how matters
stand, hear myself told that I am a low scoundrel, and take his
broadside so as to go decently to the bottom."

"But, Hector, this is not merely ruin, it is disgrace," said Adeline.
"My poor uncle will kill himself. Only kill us--yourself and me; y