,
"sheathe your sword, my fine fellow; there is no occasion to make such a
fuss, since I give myself up;" and he held out his hands to be manacled.
The girls looked with horror upon this shameful metamorphosis, the man
of the world shaking off his covering and appearing as a galley-slave.
Andrea turned towards them, and with an impertinent smile asked,--"Have
you any message for your father, Mademoiselle Danglars, for in all
probability I shall return to Paris?"

Eugenie covered her face with her hands. "Oh, ho!" said Andrea, "you
need not be ashamed, even though you did post after me. Was I not nearly
your husband?"

And with this raillery Andrea went out, leaving the two girls a prey to
their own feelings of shame, and to the comments of the crowd. An hour
after they stepped into their calash, both dressed in feminine attire.
The gate of the hotel had been closed to screen them from sight, but
they were forced, when the door was open, to pass through a throng of
curious glances and whispering voices. Eugenie closed her eyes; but
though she could not see, she could hear, and the sneers of the crowd
reached her in the carriage. "Oh, why is not the world a wilderness?"
she exclaimed, throwing herself into the arms of Mademoiselle d'Armilly,
her eyes sparkling with the same kind of rage which made Nero wish that
the Roman world had but one neck, that he might sever it at a single
blow. The next day they stopped at the Hotel de Flandre, at Brussels.
The same evening Andrea was incarcerated in the Conciergerie.

Chapter 99. The Law.

We have seen how quietly Mademoiselle Danglars and Mademoiselle
d'Armilly accomplished their transformation and flight; the fact being
that every one was too much occupied in his or her own affairs to think
of theirs. We will leave the banker contemplating the enormous magnitude
of his debt before the phantom of bankruptcy, and follow the baroness,
who after being momentarily crushed under the weight of the blow which
had struck her, had gone to seek her usual adviser, Lucien Debray. The
baroness had looked forward to this marriage as a means of ridding her
of a guardianship which, over a girl of Eugenie's character, could not
fail to be rather a troublesome undertaking; for in the tacit relations
which maintain the bond of family union, the mother, to maintain her
ascendancy over her daughter, must never fail to be a model of wisdom
and a type of perfection.

Now, Madame Danglars fea