rance with fearful rapidity. Fifteen years
have wreaked their will on a great empire, a monarchy, and a revolution.
No one can now dare to count upon the future. You know my attachment to
the cause of legitimacy. Suppose some catastrophe; would you not be glad
to have a friend in the conquering party?"

"Undoubtedly," she said, smiling.

"Very good; then, will you have in me, secretly, an obliged friend who
could be of use to Monsieur de Nucingen in such a case, by supporting
his claim to the peerage he is seeking?"

"What do you want of me?" she asked.

"Very little," he replied. "All that you know about Nathan's affairs."

The baroness repeated to him her conversation with Rastignac, and said,
as she gave him the four notes, which the cashier had meantime brought
to her:

"Don't forget your promise."

So little did Vandenesse forget this illusive promise that he used it
again on Baron Eugene de Rastignac to obtain from him certain other
information. Leaving Rastignac's apartments, he dictated to a street
amanuensis the following note to Florine.

"If Mademoiselle Florine wishes to know of a part she may play she
is requested to come to the masked opera at the Opera next Sunday
night, accompanied by Monsieur Nathan."

To this ball he determined to take his wife and let her own eyes
enlighten her as to the relations between Nathan and Florine. He knew
the jealous pride of the countess; he wanted to make her renounce her
love of her own will, without causing her to blush before him, and then
to return to her her own letters, sold by Florine, from whom he expected
to be able to buy them. This judicious plan, rapidly conceived and
partly executed, might fail through some trick of chance which meddles
with all things here below.

After dinner that evening, Felix brought the conversation round to the
masked balls of the Opera, remarking that Marie had never been to one,
and proposing that she should accompany him the following evening.

"I'll find you some one to 'intriguer,'" he said.

"Ah! I wish you would," she replied.

"To do the thing well, a woman ought to fasten upon some good prey, a
celebrity, a man of enough wit to give and take. There's Nathan; will
you have him? I know, through a friend of Florine, certain secrets of
his which would drive him crazy."

"Florine?" said the countess. "Do you mean the actress?"

Marie had already heard that name from the lips of the watchman Quillet;
it now