o see if a spark were yet alive, Madame Felix de Vandenesse
was undergoing those violent palpitations which a woman feels at the
certainty of doing wrong, and stepping on forbidden ground,--emotions
that are not without charm, and which awaken various dormant faculties.
Women are fond of using Bluebeard's bloody key, that fine mythological
idea for which we are indebted to Perrault.

The dramatist--who knew his Shakespeare--displayed his wretchedness,
related his struggle with men and things, made his hearer aware of his
baseless grandeur, his unrecognized political genius, his life without
noble affections. Without saying a single definite word, he contrived
to suggest to this charming woman that she should play the noble part of
Rebecca in Ivanhoe, and love and protect him. It was all, of course,
in the ethereal regions of sentiment. Forget-me-nots are not more blue,
lilies not more white than the images, thoughts, and radiantly
illumined brow of this accomplished artist, who was likely to send his
conversation to a publisher. He played his part of reptile to this poor
Eve so cleverly, he made the fatal bloom of the apple so dazzling to her
eyes, that Marie left the ball-room filled with that species of remorse
which resembles hope, flattered in all her vanities, stirred to every
corner of her heart, caught by her own virtues, allured by her native
pity for misfortune.

Perhaps Madame de Manerville had taken Vandenesse into the salon where
his wife was talking with Nathan; perhaps he had come there himself to
fetch Marie, and take her home; perhaps his conversation with his former
flame had awakened slumbering griefs; certain it is that when his wife
took his arm to leave the ball-room, she saw that his face was sad and
his look serious. The countess wondered if he was displeased with her.
No sooner were they seated in the carriage than she turned to Felix and
said, with a mischievous smile,--

"Did not I see you talking half the evening with Madame de Manerville?"

Felix was not out of the tangled paths into which his wife had led him
by this charming little quarrel, when the carriage turned into their
court-yard. This was Marie's first artifice dictated by her new emotion;
and she even took pleasure in triumphing over a man who, until then, had
seemed to her so superior.

CHAPTER V. FLORINE

Between the rue Basse-du-Rempart and the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, Raoul
had, on the third floor of an ugly and n