s you profit by it--"

Danglars shrugged his shoulders. "Foolish creature," he exclaimed.
"Women fancy they have talent because they have managed two or three
intrigues without being the talk of Paris! But know that if you had
even hidden your irregularities from your husband, who has but the
commencement of the art--for generally husbands will not see--you would
then have been but a faint imitation of most of your friends among the
women of the world. But it has not been so with me,--I see, and always
have seen, during the last sixteen years. You may, perhaps, have hidden
a thought; but not a step, not an action, not a fault, has escaped me,
while you flattered yourself upon your address, and firmly believed you
had deceived me. What has been the result?--that, thanks to my pretended
ignorance, there is none of your friends, from M. de Villefort to M.
Debray, who has not trembled before me. There is not one who has not
treated me as the master of the house,--the only title I desire with
respect to you; there is not one, in fact, who would have dared to speak
of me as I have spoken of them this day. I will allow you to make me
hateful, but I will prevent your rendering me ridiculous, and, above
all, I forbid you to ruin me."

The baroness had been tolerably composed until the name of Villefort had
been pronounced; but then she became pale, and, rising, as if touched by
a spring, she stretched out her hands as though conjuring an apparition;
she then took two or three steps towards her husband, as though to tear
the secret from him, of which he was ignorant, or which he withheld from
some odious calculation,--odious, as all his calculations were. "M. de
Villefort!--What do you mean?"

"I mean that M. de Nargonne, your first husband, being neither a
philosopher nor a banker, or perhaps being both, and seeing there was
nothing to be got out of a king's attorney, died of grief or anger at
finding, after an absence of nine months, that you had been enceinte
six. I am brutal,--I not only allow it, but boast of it; it is one
of the reasons of my success in commercial business. Why did he kill
himself instead of you? Because he had no cash to save. My life belongs
to my cash. M. Debray has made me lose 700,000 francs; let him bear his
share of the loss, and we will go on as before; if not, let him become
bankrupt for the 250,000 livres, and do as all bankrupts do--disappear.
He is a charming fellow, I allow, when his news is