it is me vat frighten you, I
shall stay here on dis sofa----" cried the Baron, fired by the purest
devotion, as he saw that Esther was still weeping.

"Well, then," said Esther, taking the "lynx's" hand, and kissing it with
an impulse of gratitude which brought something very like a tear to his
eye, "I shall be grateful to you----"

And she fled into her room and locked the door.

"Dere is someting fery strange in all dat," thought Nucingen, excited by
his pillules. "Vat shall dey say at home?"

He got up and looked out of the window. "My carriage still is dere. It
shall soon be daylight." He walked up and down the room.

"Vat Montame de Nucingen should laugh at me ven she should know how I
hafe spent dis night!"

He applied his ear to the bedroom door, thinking himself rather too much
of a simpleton.

"Esther!"

No reply.

"Mein Gott! and she is still veeping!" said he to himself, as he
stretched himself on the sofa.

About ten minutes after sunrise, the Baron de Nucingen, who was sleeping
the uneasy slumbers that are snatched by compulsion in an awkward
position on a couch, was aroused with a start by Europe from one of
those dreams that visit us in such moments, and of which the swift
complications are a phenomenon inexplicable by medical physiology.

"Oh, God help us, madame!" she shrieked. "Madame!--the
soldiers--gendarmes--bailiffs! They have come to take us."

At the moment when Esther opened her door and appeared, hurriedly,
wrapped in her dressing-gown, her bare feet in slippers, her hair in
disorder, lovely enough to bring the angel Raphael to perdition, the
drawing-room door vomited into the room a gutter of human mire that came
on, on ten feet, towards the beautiful girl, who stood like an angel
in some Flemish church picture. One man came foremost. Contenson, the
horrible Contenson, laid his hand on Esther's dewy shoulder.

"You are Mademoiselle van----" he began. Europe, by a back-handed slap
on Contenson's cheek, sent him sprawling to measure his length on the
carpet, and with all the more effect because at the same time she caught
his leg with the sharp kick known to those who practise the art as a
coup de savate.

"Hands off!" cried she. "No one shall touch my mistress."

"She has broken my leg!" yelled Contenson, picking himself up; "I will
have damages!"

From the group of bumbailiffs, looking like what they were, all
standing with their horrible hats on their yet more horrible h