t was forgotten. Besides, however
angelical and saintly a woman may be, when she is crying bitterly her
beauty disappears. A Madame Marneffe, as has been seen, whimpers now
and then, a tear trickles down her cheek; but as to melting into tears
and making her eyes and nose red!--never would she commit such a
blunder.

"Come, child, compose yourself.--Deuce take it!" Crevel went on,
taking Madame Hulot's hands in his own and patting them. "Why do you
apply to me for two hundred thousand francs? What do you want with
them? Whom are they for?"

"Do not," said she, "insist on any explanations. Give me the money!
--You will save three lives and the honor of our children."

"And do you suppose, my good mother, that in all Paris you will find a
man who at a word from a half-crazy woman will go off _hic et nunc_,
and bring out of some drawer, Heaven knows where, two hundred thousand
francs that have been lying simmering there till she is pleased to
scoop them up? Is that all you know of life and of business, my
beauty? Your folks are in a bad way; you may send them the last
sacraments; for no one in Paris but her Divine Highness Madame la
Banque, or the great Nucingen, or some miserable miser who is in love
with gold as we other folks are with a woman, could produce such a
miracle! The civil list, civil as it may be, would beg you to call
again tomorrow. Every one invests his money, and turns it over to the
best of his powers.

"You are quite mistaken, my angel, if you suppose that King
Louis-Philippe rules us; he himself knows better than that. He knows
as well as we do that supreme above the Charter reigns the holy,
venerated, substantial, delightful, obliging, beautiful, noble,
ever-youthful, and all-powerful five-franc piece! But money, my beauty,
insists on interest, and is always engaged in seeking it! 'God of the
Jews, thou art supreme!' says Racine. The perennial parable of the
golden calf, you see!--In the days of Moses there was stock-jobbing in
the desert!

"We have reverted to Biblical traditions; the Golden Calf was the
first State ledger," he went on. "You, my Adeline, have not gone
beyond the Rue Plumet. The Egyptians had lent enormous sums to the
Hebrews, and what they ran after was not God's people, but their
capital."

He looked at the Baroness with an expression which said, "How clever I
am!"

"You know nothing of the devotion of every city man to his sacred
hoard!" he went on, after a pause. "Excus