ddress to his tiger's ear, and the horses went off as if their master's
passion had lived in their legs.

The next day a man, who by his dress might have been mistaken by the
passers-by for a gendarme in disguise, was passing the Rue Taitbout,
opposite a house, as if he were waiting for some one to come out; he
walked with an agitated air. You will often see in Paris such vehement
promenaders, real gendarmes watching a recalcitrant National Guardsman,
bailiffs taking steps to effect an arrest, creditors planning a trick
on the debtor who has shut himself in, lovers, or jealous and suspicious
husbands, or friends doing sentry for a friend; but rarely do you meet a
face portending such coarse and fierce thoughts as animated that of the
gloomy and powerful man who paced to and fro under Mademoiselle Esther's
windows with the brooding haste of a bear in its cage.

At noon a window was opened, and a maid-servant's hand was put out
to push back the padded shutters. A few minutes later, Esther, in her
dressing-gown, came to breathe the air, leaning on Lucien; any one who
saw them might have taken them for the originals of some pretty English
vignette. Esther was the first to recognize the basilisk eyes of the
Spanish priest; and the poor creature, stricken as if she had been shot,
gave a cry of horror.

"There is that terrible priest," said she, pointing him out to Lucien.

"He!" said Lucien, smiling, "he is no more a priest than you are."

"What then?" she said in alarm.

"Why, an old villain who believes in nothing but the devil," said
Lucien.

This light thrown on the sham priest's secrets, if revealed to any one
less devoted than Esther, might have ruined Lucien for ever.

As they went along the corridor from their bedroom to the dining-room,
where their breakfast was served, the lovers met Carlos Herrera.

"What have you come here for?" said Lucien roughly.

"To bless you," replied the audacious scoundrel, stopping the pair and
detaining them in the little drawing-room of the apartment. "Listen
to me, my pretty dears. Amuse yourselves, be happy--well and good!
Happiness at any price is my motto.--But you," he went on to Esther,
"you whom I dragged from the mud, and have soaped down body and soul,
you surely do not dream that you can stand in Lucien's way?--As for you,
my boy," he went on after a pause, looking at Lucien, "you are no longer
poet enough to allow yourself another Coralie. This is sober prose. W