osition; you will only have a few debts. Come, promise me that you
will again speak to your duchess. You are such a fellow for the women!
You know how to make yourself interesting in spite of your errors; and,
let the worst come to the worst, they will like you a little the worse,
or not at all; but they will extricate you from your mess. Come, come,
see your lovely and loving friend once more. I will run to Petit-Jean,
and I feel sure I shall get a respite of an hour or two."

"Hell! Must I, then, drink the draught of shame to the very dregs?"

"Come, come, good luck; be tender, passionate, charming. I will run to
Petit-Jean; you will find me there until three o'clock; later than that
will be useless; the attorney-general's office closes at four o'clock."
And M. Badinot left the apartment.

When the door was closed, they heard Florestan exclaim in accents of the
deepest despair: "_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_"

During this conversation, which unveiled to the comte the infamy of his
son, and to Madame de Lucenay the infamy of the man she had so blindly
loved, both had remained motionless, scarcely breathing, beneath this
fearful disclosure. It would be impossible to depict the mute eloquence
of the agonising scene which took place between this young lady and the
comte when he had no longer any possible doubt as to Florestan's crime.
Extending his arms to the room in which his son was, the old man smiled
with bitterest sarcasm, casting an overwhelming look on Madame de
Lucenay, which seemed to say, "And this is the man for whom you have
braved all shame,--made every sacrifice! This is he whom you have
reproached me for abandoning?"

The duchess understood the reproach, and, bowing her head, she felt all
the weight of her shame. The lesson was terrible. By degrees, however, a
haughty indignation succeeded to the cruel anxiety which had contracted
the features of Madame de Lucenay. The inexcusable faults of this lady
were at least palliated by the sincerity and disinterestedness of her
love, by the boldness of her devotion and the boundlessness of her
generosity, by the frankness of her character, and by her inexorable
aversion from all that was contemptible and base.

Still too young, too handsome, too _recherche_, to feel the humiliation
of having been merely made a tool of, when once the feeling of love was
suddenly crushed within her, this haughty and decided woman felt no
longer hatred or anger, but instantaneo