ts which they occupied
in an old mansion in the rue Feydeau were deserted; not a soul was there
but the watchman, who was greatly surprised to see a young and pretty
woman hurrying through the rooms in evident distress. She asked him to
tell her where was Monsieur Nathan.

"At Mademoiselle Florine's, probably," replied the man, taking Marie for
a rival who intended to make a scene.

"Where does he work?"

"In his office, the key of which he carries in his pocket."

"I wish to go there."

The man took her to a dark little room looking out on a rear court-yard.
The office was at right angles. Opening the window of the room she was
in, the countess could look through into the window of the office, and
she saw Nathan sitting there in the editorial arm-chair.

"Break in the door, and be silent about all this; I'll pay you well,"
she said. "Don't you see that Monsieur Nathan is dying?"

The man got an iron bar from the press-room, with which he burst in the
door. Raoul had actually smothered himself, like any poor work-girl,
with a pan of charcoal. He had written a letter to Blondet, which lay on
the table, in which he asked him to ascribe his death to apoplexy. The
countess, however, had arrived in time; she had Raoul carried to her
coach, and then, not knowing where else to care for him, she took him to
a hotel, engaged a room, and sent for a doctor. In a few hours Raoul was
out of danger; but the countess did not leave him until she had obtained
a general confession of the causes of his act. When he had poured into
her heart the dreadful elegy of his woes, she said, in order to make him
willing to live:--

"I can arrange all that."

But, nevertheless, she returned home with a heart oppressed with the
same anxieties and ideas that had darkened Nathan's brow the night
before.

"Well, what was the matter with your sister?" said Felix, when his wife
returned. "You look distressed."

"It is a dreadful history about which I am bound to secrecy," she said,
summoning all her nerve to appear calm before him.

In order to be alone and to think at her ease, she went to the Opera
in the evening, after which she resolved to go (as we have seen) and
discharge her heart into that of her sister, Madame du Tillet; relating
to her the horrible scene of the morning, and begging her advice and
assistance. Neither the one nor the other could then know that du Tillet
himself had lighted the charcoal of the vulgar brazier, the sig