lf,
he bowed with an air which seemed to say, "As you please, madame."

Madame Danglars had until then, perhaps, hoped for something; but when
she saw the careless bow of Debray, and the glance by which it was
accompanied, together with his significant silence, she raised her head,
and without passion or violence or even hesitation, ran down-stairs,
disdaining to address a last farewell to one who could thus part from
her. "Bah," said Debray, when she had left, "these are fine projects!
She will remain at home, read novels, and speculate at cards, since she
can no longer do so on the Bourse." Then taking up his account book, he
cancelled with the greatest care all the entries of the amounts he had
just paid away. "I have 1,060,000 francs remaining," he said. "What a
pity Mademoiselle de Villefort is dead! She suited me in every respect,
and I would have married her." And he calmly waited until the twenty
minutes had elapsed after Madame Danglars' departure before he left the
house. During this time he occupied himself in making figures, with his
watch by his side.

Asmodeus--that diabolical personage, who would have been created by
every fertile imagination if Le Sage had not acquired the priority in
his great masterpiece--would have enjoyed a singular spectacle, if
he had lifted up the roof of the little house in the Rue
Saint-Germain-des-Pres, while Debray was casting up his figures. Above
the room in which Debray had been dividing two millions and a half with
Madame Danglars was another, inhabited by persons who have played too
prominent a part in the incidents we have related for their appearance
not to create some interest. Mercedes and Albert were in that room.
Mercedes was much changed within the last few days; not that even in her
days of fortune she had ever dressed with the magnificent display which
makes us no longer able to recognize a woman when she appears in a
plain and simple attire; nor indeed, had she fallen into that state of
depression where it is impossible to conceal the garb of misery; no,
the change in Mercedes was that her eye no longer sparkled, her lips
no longer smiled, and there was now a hesitation in uttering the words
which formerly sprang so fluently from her ready wit.

It was not poverty which had broken her spirit; it was not a want
of courage which rendered her poverty burdensome. Mercedes, although
deposed from the exalted position she had occupied, lost in the sphere
she had now