hand
and patting it, "your voice is very sweet and persuasive. Reason is
attractive from your lips. I should like to obey you, but--"

"You will forgive him, you will not betray him?"

"Hush! never speak of that man again. Compared with him Corentin is a
noble being. Do you hear me?"

She rose, hiding beneath a face that was horribly calm the madness of
her soul and a thirst for vengeance. The slow and measured step with
which she left the room conveyed the sense of an irrevocable resolution.
Lost in thought, hugging her insults, too proud to show the slightest
suffering, she went to the guard-room at the Porte Saint-Leonard and
asked where the commandant lived. She had hardly left her house when
Corentin entered it.

"Oh, Monsieur Corentin," cried Francine, "if you are interested in this
young man, save him; Mademoiselle has gone to give him up because of
this wretched letter."

Corentin took the letter carelessly and asked,--

"Which way did she go?"

"I don't know."

"Yes," he said, "I will save her from her own despair."

He disappeared, taking the letter with him. When he reached the street
he said to Galope-Chopine's boy, whom he had stationed to watch the
door, "Which way did a lady go who left the house just now?"

The boy went with him a little way and showed him the steep street which
led to the Porte Saint-Leonard. "That way," he said.

At this moment four men entered Mademoiselle de Verneuil's house, unseen
by either the boy or Corentin.

"Return to your watch," said the latter. "Play with the handles of the
blinds and see what you can inside; look about you everywhere, even on
the roof."

Corentin darted rapidly in the direction given him, and thought he
recognized Mademoiselle de Verneuil through the fog; he did, in fact,
overtake her just as she reached the guard-house.

"Where are you going?" he said; "you are pale--what has happened? Is it
right for you to be out alone? Take my arm."

"Where is the commandant?" she asked.

Hardly had the words left her lips when she heard the movement of troops
beyond the Porte Saint-Leonard and distinguished Hulot's gruff voice in
the tumult.

"God's thunder!" he cried, "I never saw such fog as this for a
reconnaissance! The Gars must have ordered the weather."

"What are you complaining of?" said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, grasping
his arm. "The fog will cover vengeance as well as perfidy. Commandant,"
she added, in a low voice, "you must take