d'Esgrignon, had even taken out his pistols, had gone so far as to
think of suicide. He who would never have brooked the appearance of an

insult was abusing himself in language which no man is likely to hear
except from himself.

He left du Croisier's letter lying open on the bed. Josephin had
brought it in at nine o'clock. Victurnien's furniture had been

seized, but he slept none the less. After he came back from the
Opera, he and the Duchess had gone to a voluptuous retreat, where

they often spent a few hours together after the most brilliant
court balls and evening parties and gaieties. Appearances were

very cleverly saved. Their love-nest was a garret like any other
to all appearance; Mme. de Maufrigneuse was obliged to bow her

head with its court feathers or wreath of flowers to enter in at
the door; but within all the peris of the East had made the

chamber fair. And now that the Count was on the brink of ruin, he
had longed to bid farewell to the dainty nest, which he had built

to realize a day-dream worthy of his angel. Presently adversity
would break the enchanted eggs; there would be no brood of white

doves, no brillianttropical birds, no more of the thousand
bright-winged fancies which hover above our heads even to the

last days of our lives. Alas! alas! in three days he must be
gone; his bills had fallen into the hands of the money-lenders,

the law proceedings had reached the last stage.
An evil thought crossed his brain. He would fly with the Duchess; they

would live in some undiscovered nook in the wilds of North or South
America; but--he would fly with a fortune, and leave his creditors to

confront their bills. To carry out the plan, he had only to cut off
the lower portion of that letter with du Croisier's signature, and to

fill in the figures to turn it into a bill, and present it to the
Kellers. There was a dreadful struggle with temptation; tears shed,

but the honor of the family triumphed, subject to one condition.
Victurnien wanted to be sure of his beautiful Diane; he would do

nothing unless she should consent to their flight. So he went to the
Duchess in the Rue Faubourg Saint-Honore, and found her in coquettish

morning dress, which cost as much in thought as in money, a fit dress
in which to begin to play the part of Angel at eleven o'clock in the

morning.
Mme. de Maufrigneuse was somewhat pensive. Cares of a similar kind

were gnawing her mind; but she took them gallantly. Of all the various
feminine organizations classified by physiologists, there is one that

has something indescribably terrible about it. Such women combine
strength of soul and clear insight, with a faculty for prompt

decision, and a recklessness, or rather resolution in a crisis which
would shake a man's nerves. And these powers lie out of sight beneath

an appearance of the most gracefulhelplessness. Such women only among
womankind afford examples of a phenomenon which Buffon recognized in

men alone, to wit, the union, or rather the disunion, of two different
natures in one human being. Other women are wholly women; wholly

tender, whollydevoted, wholly mothers, completely null and completely
tiresome; nerves and brain and blood are all in harmony; but the

Duchess, and others like her, are capable of rising to the highest
heights of feelings, or of showing the most selfish insensibility. It

is one of the glories of Moliere that he has given us a wonderful
portrait of such a woman, from one point of view only, in that

greatest of his full-length figures--Celimene; Celimene is the typical
aristocratic woman, as Figaro, the second edition of Panurge,

represents the people.
So, the Duchess, being overwhelmed with debt, laid it upon herself to

give no more than a moment's thought to the avalanche of cares, and to
take her resolution once and for all; Napoleon could take up or lay

down the burden of his thoughts in precisely the same way. The Duchess
possessed the faculty of standing aloof from herself; she could look

on as a spectator at the crash when it came, instead of submitting to
be buried beneath. This was certainly great, but repulsive in a woman.

When she awoke in the morning she collected her thoughts; and by the
time she had begun to dress she had looked at the danger in its

fullest extent and faced the possibilities of terrificdownfall. She
pondered. Should she take refuge in a foreign country? Or should she

go to the King and declare her debts to him? Or again, should she
fascinate a du Tillet or a Nucingen, and gamble on the stock exchange

to pay her creditors? The city man would find the money; he would be
intelligent enough to bring her nothing but the profits, without so

much as mentioning the losses, a piece of delicacy which would gloss
all over. The catastrophe, and these various ways of averting it, had

all been reviewed quite coolly, calmly, and without trepidation.
As a naturalist takes up some king of butterflies and fastens him down

on cotton-wool with a pin, so Mme. de Maufrigneuse had plucked love
out of her heart while she pondered the necessity of the moment, and

was quite ready to replace the beautiful passion on its immaculate
setting so soon as her duchess' coronet was safe. SHE knew none of the

hesitation which Cardinal Richelieu hid from all the world but Pere
Joseph; none of the doubts that Napoleon kept at first entirely to

himself. "Either the one or the other," she told herself.
She was sitting by the fire, giving orders for her toilette for a

drive in the Bois if the weather should be fine, when Victurnien came
in.

The Comte d'Esgrignon, with all his stifled capacity, his so keen
intellect, was in exactly the state which might have been looked for

in the woman. His heart was beatingviolently, the perspiration broke
out over him as he stood in his dandy's trappings; he was afraid as

yet to lay a hand on the corner-stone which upheld the pyramid of his
life with Diane. So much it cost him to know the truth. The cleverest

men are fain to deceive themselves on one or two points if the truth
once known is likely to humiliate them in their own eyes, and damage

themselves with themselves. Victurnien forced his own irresolution
into the field by committing himself.

"What is the matter with you?" Diane de Maufrigneuse had said at once,
at the sight of her beloved Victurnien's face.

"Why, dear Diane, I am in such a perplexity; a man gone to the bottom
and at his last gasp is happy in comparison."

"Pshaw! it is nothing," said she; "you are a child. Let us see now;
tell me about it."

"I am hopelessly in debt. I have come to the end of my tether."
"Is that all?" said she, smiling at him. "Money matters can always be

arranged somehow or other; nothing is irretrievable except disasters
in love."

Victurnien's mind being set at rest by this swift comprehension of his
position, he unrolled the bright-colored web of his life for the last

two years and a half; but it was the seamy side of it which he
displayed with something of genius, and still more of wit, to his

Diane. He told his tale with the inspiration of the moment, which
fails no one in great crises; he had sufficient artistic skill to set

it off by a varnish of delicate scorn for men and things. It was an
aristocrat who spoke. And the Duchess listened as she could listen.

One knee was raised, for she sat with her foot on a stool. She rested
her elbow on her knee and leant her face on her hand so that her

fingers closed daintily over her shapely chin. Her eyes never left
his; but thoughts by myriads flitted under the blue surface, like

gleams of stormy light between two clouds. Her forehead was calm, her
mouth gravely intent--grave with love; her lips were knotted fast by

Victurnien's lips. To have her listening thus was to believe that a
divine love flowed from her heart. Wherefore, when the Count had

proposed flight to this soul, so closely knit to his own, he could not
help crying, "You are an angel!"

The fair Maufrigneuse made silent answer; but she had not spoken as
yet.

"Good, very good," she said at last. (She had not given herself up to
the love expressed in her face; her mind had been entirely absorbed by

deep-laid schemes which she kept to herself.) "But THAT is not the
question, dear." (The "angel" was only "that" by this time.) "Let us

think of your affairs. Yes, we will go, and the sooner the better.
Arrange it all; I will follow you. It is glorious to leave Paris and

the world behind. I will set about my preparations in such a way that
no one can suspect anything."