With the month of May, Vandenesse took his wife away to their country seat. Here her only comfort was in passionate letters from Raoul, to whom she wrote every day.

The absence of the Countess might possibly have saved Raoul from the abyss over which he hung had Florine been with him. But he was alone amongst friends, secretly turned to enemies ever since his determination to take the whip hand became plain. For the moment he was an object of hatred to his staff, who reserved however the right of holding out a consoling hand in case he failed, or of cringing to him should he succeed. This is the way in the literary world where people are friendly only to their inferiors, and the rising man has everybody against him. This universal jealousy increases tenfold the chance of mediocrities, who arouse neither envy nor suspicion. Like moles, they work their way underground, and, with all their incompetence, find more than one snug corner in the official lists, while really able men are struggling and blocking each other at the door of promotion. Florine, with the inborn gift of such women for putting their finger on the real thing among a thousand presentments of it, would at once have detected the underhand animosity of these false friends.

But this was not Raoul’s greatest danger. His two partners, the barrister Massol and the banker du Tillet, had conceived the idea of harnessing his energy to the car in which they should loll at ease, with the full intention of turning him adrift as soon as his resources failed to keep the paper going, or of wresting it from his hands the moment they saw their way to using this powerful instrument for their own purposes. To their minds, Nathan represented so much capital to run through, a literary force, equal to that of ten ordinary writers, to exploit.

Massol belonged to the type of barrister who takes a flux of words for eloquence and can weary any audience by his prolixity, who in every gathering of men acts as a blight, shriveling up their enthusiasm, yet who is determined at all costs to be a somebody. Massol’s ambition, however, no longer pointed to the ministry of justice. Within four years he had seen five or six men clothed with the robes of office, and this had cured him of the fancy. Meanwhile he was ready to accept, as something in hand, a professorship or a post under the Council, with of course the Cross of the Legion of Honor to season the dish. Du Tillet and the Baron de Nucingen had guaranteed him the Cross and the desired post if he fell in with their views; and as he judged them to be in a better position than Nathan for fulfilling their promises, he followed them blindly.

The better to hoodwink Raoul, these men allowed him to exercise uncontrolled power. Du Tillet only made use of the paper for his stock-jobbing interests, which were outside Raoul’s ken. He had, however, already given Rastignac to understand, through the Baron de Nucingen, that this organ was ready to give a silent adhesion to the Government, on the one condition that the Government should support du Tillet’s candidature as successor to M. de Nucingen, who would be a peer some day, and who at present sat for a rotten borough, where the paper was lavishly circulated, gratis. Thus was Raoul jockeyed by both the banker and the barrister, who took a huge delight in seeing him lord it at the office, pocketing all the gains, as well as the less substantial dues of vanity and the like. Nathan could not praise them enough; again, as when they furnished his stables, they were “the best fellows in the world,” and he actually believed that he was duping them.

Men of imagination, whose whole life is based on hope, never will admit that in business the moment of danger is that when everything goes to a wish. Such a moment of triumph had come for Nathan, and he made full use of it, letting himself be seen both in political and financial circles. Du Tillet introduced him to the Nucingens, and he was received in a most friendly way by Mme. de Nucingen, not so much for his own sake as for that of Mme. de Vandenesse. Yet, when she alluded to the Countess, Nathan thought himself a marvel of discretion for taking refuge behind Florine, and he enlarged with generous self-complacency on his relations with the actress, which nothing, he declared, could break. How could any man abandon an assured happiness for the coquetry of the Faubourg Saint-Germain?

Nathan, beguiled by Nucingen and Rastignac, du Tillet and Blondet, lent an ostentatious support to the doctrinaire party in the formation of one of their ephemeral cabinets. At the same time, wishing to start in public life with clean hands, he refused, with much parade, to accept any share in the profits of certain enterprises, which had been launched by the help of this paper. And this was the man who never hesitated to compromise a friend, or was hampered by a scruple in his relations with a certain class of business men at critical moments! Such startling contrasts, born of vanity and ambition, may often be found in careers like his. The mantle must make a brave show to the public, but scraps raised from a friend will serve to patch it.

But in the very midst of all his successes, Nathan was roused to some uneasiness by a bad quarter of an hour which he spent over his business accounts two months after the departure of the Countess. Du Tillet had advanced a hundred thousand francs. The money given by Florine, the third part of his original capital, had gone in government dues and in the expenses of starting the paper, which were enormous. The future had to be provided for. The banker assisted him by accepting bills for fifty thousand francs at four months, and thereby fastened a halter round the author’s neck. Thanks to this subvention, the paper was in funds again for six months. In the eyes of many literary men, six months is an eternity. Further, by dint of puffs and by sending round canvassers, who offered illusory advantages to subscribers, they managed to raise the circulation by two thousand. This semi-triumph was an incentive to cast his latest borrowings into the melting-pot. One more effort of his wits, and a political lawsuit or a sham persecution might give Raoul a place among those modern Condottieri, whose ink has today taken the place of gunpowder.

Unfortunately, these steps were already taken when Florine returned with about fifty thousand francs. Instead of setting this aside as a reserve, Raouly confident of a success which was his only safety, humiliated at the thought of having once before accepted money from the actress, feeling that his love had raised him to a higher plane, and dazzled by the specious plaudits of his flatterers, deceived Florine as to his situation, and obliged her to spend the money in setting up house again. Under present circumstances, a smart and dashing style was, he assured her, essential. The actress, who needed no spurring, got into debt for thirty thousand francs. Instead of a flat, Florine took a charming house in the Rue Pigalle, where her old friends came about her again. The house of a woman in Florine’s position supplied a neutral ground, most convenient for pushing politicians, who, following the example of Louis XIV with the Dutch, entertained at Raoul’s house in Raoul’s absence.

Nathan had reserved for the return of the actress a play, the chief part in which suited her admirably. This vaudeville-drama was intended as Raoul’s farewell to the theatre. The newspapers, by an attention to Raoul which cost them nothing, planned beforehand such an ovation to Florine that the Comédie-Française began to speak of engaging her. Critics pointed to her as the direct successor of Mlle. Mars. This triumph threw the actress so far off her balance as to prevent her examining carefully the state of Nathan’s affairs; her life was a whirl of banquets and revelry. Queen in a world of bustling suitors, each with something to push⁠—a book, a play, a ballet-girl, a theatre, a company, or an advertisement⁠—she reveled in the delights of this press influence, which she pictured as the dawn of ministerial patronage. In the mouths of those who frequented her house, Nathan was a politician of high standing. His scheme would succeed, he would be elected to the Chamber, and beyond doubt have a turn at office, like so many others. Actresses are rarely slow to believe what flatters their hopes. How could Florine, lauded in the notices, mistrust the paper or its contributors? She was too ignorant of the mechanism of the press to be uneasy about its resources, and women of her stamp look only to results.

As for Nathan, he no longer doubted that in the course of the next session he would come to the front, along with two former journalists, one of whom, already in office, was anxious to strengthen his position by turning out his colleagues. After six months of absence, Nathan was glad to see Florine again, and lazily fell back into his old habits. The coarse web of his life was covertly embroidered by him with the loveliest flowers of his ideal passion and with the pleasures scattered by Florine. His letters to Marie were masterpieces of love, elegance, and style. He made of her the guiding-star of his life; he undertook nothing without consulting his good genius. Miserable at being on the popular side, he was tempted at times to join the aristocrats; but, with all his skill in turning his back on himself, it seemed impossible to make the leap from left to right; it was easier to get office.

Marie’s precious letters were kept in a portfolio with secret springs, an invention either of Huret or Fichet, the two mechanists who carry on a war of emulation in the newspaper columns and on the walls of Paris as to the comparative efficacy and unobtrusiveness of their locks. The portfolio lay in Florine’s new boudoir, where Raoul worked. No one is more easily deceived than the woman who is used to frankness; she has no suspicions, because she believes herself to know and see all that goes on. Moreover, since her return the actress took her part in Nathan’s daily life, which appeared to go on just as usual. It never would have occurred to her that this writing-case, which she had barely noticed, and which Raoul made no mystery about locking, contained love tokens in the shape of a rival’s letters, addressed, at Raoul’s request, to the office. To all appearance, therefore, Nathan’s situation was of the brightest. He had plenty of nominal friends. Two plays, at which he had worked jointly with others, and which had just made a success, kept him in luxuries and removed all anxiety for the future. Indeed, his debt to his friend du Tillet never gave him a moment’s uneasiness.

“How can one suspect a friend?” he said, when now and again Blondet would give utterance to doubts, which were natural to his analytic turn of mind.

“But we have no need to fear our enemies,” said Florine.

Nathan stood up for du Tillet. Du Tillet was the best, most good-natured, and most honorable of men.

This life upon the tightrope, without even a steadying-pole, which might have appalled a mere onlooker who had grasped its meaning, was watched by du Tillet with the stoicism and hard-heartedness of a parvenu. At times a fierce irony broke through the genial cordiality of his manner with Nathan. One day he pressed his hand as he was leaving Florine’s, and watched him get into his cabriolet.

“There goes our dandy off to the Bois in tiptop style,” he said to Lousteau, the very incarnation of envy, “and in six months he may be laid by the heels in Clichy.”

“Not he!” exclaimed Lousteau; “think of Florine.”

“And how do you know, my good fellow, that he’ll keep Florine? I tell you, you’re worth a thousand of him, and I expect six months will see you in the editorial chair.”

In October the bills fell due, and du Tillet graciously renewed them, but this time for two months only, and the amount was increased by the discount and by a new loan. Confident of victory, Raoul drained his till. An overmastering desire to see him was bringing the Countess back to town a month earlier than usual⁠—within a few days in fact⁠—and it would not do to be crippled for lack of funds when the moment had come for entering the field again.

The pen is always bolder than the tongue, and the letters she received had raised the Comtesse de Vandenesse to the highest pitch of excitement. Thoughts clothed in the flowers of rhetoric can express so much without meeting a repulse. She saw in Raoul one of the finest intellects of the day, a delicately-strung and unappreciated heart, which in its unstained purity was worthy of adoration. She watched him put forth a bold hand upon the citadel of power. Ere long that voice, so tuneful in love, would thunder from the tribune. Marie was not entirely absorbed in that life of intersecting circles, which resemble the orbits of the planets, and revolve round the sun of society as their centre. Finding no flavor in the calm pleasures of home, she received the shock of every agitation in this whirling life, brought home to her by the pen of a literary artist and a lover. She showered kisses on letters which had been written in the thick of press combats, or purloined from hours of study. She realized now what they had cost and was well assured of being his only love, with no rivals but glory and ambition. Even in the depths of her solitude she found occupation for all her powers, and could dwell with satisfaction upon the choice of her heart. There was no one like Nathan.

Fortunately, her withdrawal into the country and the barriers thus placed between her and Raoul had silenced ill-natured gossip. During the last days of autumn, therefore, Marie and Raoul were able once more to begin their walks in the Bois de Boulogne, their only meeting-place until the season opened. Raoul had now a little more leisure to enjoy the exquisite delights of his ideal life, and also to practise concealment with Florine; his work at the office had ceased to be so hard since things were well in train there and each member of the staff understood his duty. Involuntarily he made comparisons which, though always favorable to Florine, did the Countess no injury. Exhausted once more by the various shifts to which his passion, alike of the head and of the heart, for a woman of fashion impelled him, Raoul put forth superhuman energy in the effort to appear simultaneously on three different stages⁠—society, the office, and the greenroom. While Florine, always grateful and taking almost a partner’s share in his work and difficulties, appeared and vanished as required, and showered on him a wealth of substantial and unpretentious happiness, which called forth no remorse, the unapproachable Countess, with her hungry eyes, had already forgotten his stupendous labors and the trouble it often cost him to get a passing glimpse of her. Florine, far from trying to impose her will, would let herself be taken up and put down with the good-natured indifference of a cat, which always falls on its feet and walks off, shaking its ears. This easy way of life is admirably fitted to the habits of brain-workers; and it is only in the artist’s nature to take full advantage of it, as Nathan did, whilst not abandoning the pursuit of that fine ideal love, that splendid passion, which delighted at once his poetic instincts, the germ of greatness in him, and his social ambitions. Fully aware how disastrous would be the effect of any indiscretion, he told himself it was impossible that either the Countess or Florine should find out anything. The chasm between them was too great.

With the beginning of winter Raoul once more made his appearance in society, and this time in the heyday of his glory: he was all but a personage. Rastignac, who had fallen with the Government which went to pieces on de Marsay’s death, leant upon Raoul, and in return gave him the support of his good word. Mme. de Vandenesse was curious to know whether her husband had changed his opinion of Raoul. After the lapse of a year she questioned him again, in the expectation of a signal revenge, such as the noblest and least earthly of women do not disdain; for we may be sure that the angels in heaven have not lost all thought of self as they range themselves round the throne.

“That he should become the tool of unscrupulous men was the one thing lacking to him,” replied the Count.

Félix, with the keen insight of a politician and a man of the world, had thoroughly gauged Raoul’s position. He calmly explained to his wife how the attempt of Fieschi had resulted in rallying many lukewarm people round the interests threatened in the person of Louis-Philippe. The comparatively neutral papers would go down in circulation as journalism, along with politics, fell into more definite lines. If Nathan had put his capital into his paper, he would soon be done for. This summary of the situation, so clear and accurate in spite of its brevity and the purely abstract point of view from which it was made, and coming from a man well used to calculate the chances of party, frightened Mme. de Vandenesse.

“Do you take much interest in him then?” asked Félix of his wife.

“Oh! I like his humor, and he talks well.”

The reply came so naturally that it did not rouse the Count’s suspicions.

At four o’clock next day at Mme. d’Espard’s, Marie and Raoul held a long whispered conversation. The Countess gave expression to fears which Raoul dissipated, only too glad of this opportunity to damage the husband’s authority under a battery of epigrams. He had his revenge to take. The Count, thus handled, appeared a man of narrow mind and behind the day, who judged the Revolution of July by the standard of the Restoration, and shut his eyes to the triumph of the middle-class, that new and substantial factor to be reckoned with, for a time at least if not permanently, in every society. The great feudal lords of the past were impossible now, the reign of true merit had begun. Instead of weighing well the indirect and impartial warning he had received from an experienced politician in the expression of his deliberate opinion, Raoul made it an occasion for display, mounted his stilts, and draped himself in the purple of success. Where is the woman who would not believe her lover rather than her husband?

Mme. de Vandenesse, reassured, plunged once more into that life of repressed irritation, of little stolen pleasures, and of covert hand-pressings which had carried her through the preceding winter; but which can have no other end than to drag a woman over the boundary line if the man she loves has any spirit and chafes against the curb. Happily for her, Raoul, kept in check by Florine, was not dangerous. He was engrossed, too, in business which did not allow him to turn his good fortune to account. Nevertheless, some sudden disaster, a renewal of difficulties, an outburst of impatience, might at any moment precipitate the Countess into the abyss.

Raoul was becoming conscious of this disposition in Marie when, towards the end of December, du Tillet asked for his money. The wealthy banker told Raoul he was hard up, and advised him to borrow the amount for a fortnight from a moneylender called Gigonnet⁠—a twenty-five percent Providence for all young men in difficulties. In a few days the paper would make a fresh financial start with the new year, there would be cash in the countinghouse, and then du Tillet would see what he could do. Besides, why should not Nathan write another play? Nathan was too proud not to resolve on paying at any cost. Du Tillet gave him a letter for the moneylender, in response to which Gigonnet handed him the amount required and took bills payable in twenty days. Raoul, instead of having his suspicions roused by this accommodating reception, was only vexed that he had not asked for more. This is the way with men of the greatest intellectual power; they see only matter for pleasantry in a grave predicament, and reserve their wits for writing books, as though afraid there might not be enough of them to go round if applied to daily life. Raoul told Florine and Blondet how he had spent his morning; he drew a faithful picture of Gigonnet and his surroundings, his cheap fleur-de-lys wallpaper, his staircase, his asthmatic bell, his stag-foot knocker, his worn little door mat, his hearth as devoid of fire as his eye; he made them laugh at his new “uncle,” and neither du Tillet’s professed need of money nor the facility of the usurer caused them the least uneasiness.⁠—One can’t account for every whim!

“He has only taken fifteen percent from you,” said Blondet; “he deserves your thanks. At twenty-five they cease to be gentlemen; at fifty, usury begins; at this figure they are only contemptible!”

“Contemptible!” cried Florine. “I should like to know which of your friends would lend you money at this rate without posing as a benefactor?”

“She is quite right; I am heartily glad to be quit of du Tillet’s debt,” said Raoul.

Most mysterious is this lack of penetration in regard to their private affairs on the part of men generally so keen-sighted! It may be that it is impossible for the mind to be fully equipped on every side; it may be that artists live too entirely in the present to trouble about the future; or it may be that, always on the lookout for the ridiculous, they are blind to traps, and cannot believe in anyone daring to fool them.

The end did not tarry. Twenty days later the bills were protested; but in the court Florine had a respite of twenty-five days applied for and granted. Raoul made an effort to see where he stood; he sent for the books; and from these it appeared that the receipts of the paper covered two-thirds of the cost, and that the circulation was going down. The great man became uneasy and gloomy, but only in the company of Florine, in whom he confided. Florine advised him to borrow on the security of plays not yet written, selling them in a lump, and parting at the same time with the royalties on his acted plays. By this means Nathan raised twenty thousand francs, and reduced his debt to forty thousand.

On the 10th of February the twenty-five days expired. Du Tillet, determined to oust Nathan, as a rival, from the constituency, where he intended to stand himself (leaving to Massol another which was in the pocket of the Government), got Gigonnet to refuse Raoul all quarter. A man laid by the heels for debt can hardly present himself as a candidate; and the embryo minister might disappear in the maw of a debtor’s prison. Florine herself was in constant communication with the bailiffs on account of her own debts, and in this crisis the only resource left to her was the “I!” of Medea, for her furniture was seized. The aspirant to fame heard on every side the crack of ruin in his freshly reared but baseless fabric. Unequal to the task of sustaining so vast an enterprise, how could he think of beginning again to lay the foundations? Nothing remained, therefore, but to perish beneath his crumbling visions. His love for the Countess still brought flashes of life, but only to the outer mask; within, all hope was dead. He did not suspect du Tillet; the usurer alone filled his view. Rastignac, Blondet, Lousteau, Vernou, Finot, Massol, carefully refrained from enlightening a man of such dangerous energy. Rastignac, who aimed at getting back to power, made common cause with Nucingen and du Tillet. The rest found measureless delight in watching the expiring agony of one of their comrades, convicted of the crime of aiming at mastery. Not one of them would breathe a word to Florine; to her, on the contrary, they were full of Raoul’s praises. “Nathan’s shoulders were broad enough to bear the world; he would come out all right, no fear!”

“The circulation went up two yesterday,” said Blondet solemnly. “Raoul will be elected yet. As soon as the budget is through the dissolution will be announced.”

Nathan, dogged by the law, could no longer look to moneylenders; Florine, her furniture distrained, had no hope left save in the chance of inspiring a passion in some good-natured fool, who never turns up at the right moment. Nathan’s friends were all men without money or credit. His political chances would be ruined by his arrest. To crown all, he saw himself pledged to huge tasks, paid for in advance; it was a bottomless pit of horrors into which he gazed.

Before an outlook so threatening his self-confidence deserted him. Would the Comtesse de Vandenesse unite her fate to his and fly with him? Only a fully developed passion can bring a woman to this fatal step, and theirs had never bound them to each other in the mysterious ties of rapture. Even supposing the Countess would follow him abroad, she would come penniless, bare, and stripped, and would prove an added burden. A proud man, of second-rate quality, like Nathan, could not fail to see in suicide, as Nathan did, the sword with which to cut this Gordian knot. The idea of overthrow, in full view of that society into which he had worked his way, and which he had aspired to dominate, of leaving the Countess enthroned there, while he fell back to join the mud-spattered rank and file, was unbearable. Madness danced and rang her bells before the door of that airy palace in which the poet had made his home. In this extremity, Nathan waited upon chance, and put off killing himself till the last moment.

During the last days, occupied with the notice of judgment, the writs, and publication of order of arrest, Raoul could not succeed in throwing off that coldly sinister look, observed by noticing people to haunt those marked out for suicide, or whose minds are dwelling on it. The dismal ideas which they fondle cast a gray, gloomy shade over the forehead; their smile is vaguely ominous, and they move with solemnity. The unhappy wretches seem resolved to suck dry the golden fruit of life; they cast appealing glances on every side, the toll of the passing bell is in their ears, and their minds wander. These alarming symptoms were perceived by Marie one night at Lady Dudley’s. Raoul had remained alone on a sofa in the boudoir, while the rest of the company were conversing in the drawing-room; when the Countess came to the door, he did not raise his head; he heard neither Marie’s breath nor the rustle of her silk dress; his eyes, stupid with pain, were fixed on a flower in the carpet. “Sooner die than abdicate,” was his thought. It is not every man who has a Saint-Helena to retire upon. Suicide, moreover, was at that time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a sceptical society? Raoul then had just resolved to put an end to himself. Despair must be proportioned to hope, and that of Raoul could find no issue but the grave.

“What is the matter?” said Marie, flying to him.

“Nothing,” he replied.

Lovers have a way of using this word “nothing” which implies exactly the opposite. Marie gave a little shrug.

“What a child you are!” she said. “Something has gone wrong with you?”

“Not with me,” he said. “Besides,” he added affectionately, “you will know it all too soon, Marie.”

“What were you thinking of when I came in?” she said, with an air that would not be denied.

“Are you determined to know the truth?”

She bowed her head.

“I was thinking of you; I said to myself that many men in my place would have wished to be loved without reserve: I am loved, am I not?”

“Yes,” she said.

Braving the risk of interruption, Raoul put his arm round her, and drew her near enough to kiss her on the forehead, as he continued:

“And I am leaving you pure and free from remorse. I might drag you into the abyss, but you stand upon the brink in all your stainless glory. One thought, though, haunts me⁠ ⁠…”

“What thought?”

“You will despise me.”

She smiled a proud smile.

“Yes, you will never believe in the holiness of my love for you; and then they will slander me, I know. No woman can conceive how, from out of the filth in which we wallow, we raise our eyes to heaven in single-hearted worship of some radiant star⁠—some Marie. They mix up this adoration with painful questions; they cannot understand that men of high intellect and poetic vision are able to wean their souls from pleasure and keep them to lay entire upon some cherished altar. And yet, Marie, our devotion to the ideal is more ardent than yours; we embody it in a woman, while she does not even seek for it in us.”

“Why this effusion?” she said, with the irony of a woman who has no misgivings.

“I am leaving France; you will learn how and why tomorrow from a letter which my servant will bring you. Farewell, Marie.”

Raoul went out, after pressing the Countess to his heart in an agonized embrace, and left her dazed with misery.

“What is wrong, dear?” said the Marquise d’Espard, coming to look for her. “What has M. Nathan been saying? He left us with quite a melodramatic air. You must have been terribly foolish⁠—or terribly prudent.”

The Countess took Mme. d’Espard’s arm to return to the drawing-room, where, however, she only stayed a few instants.

“Perhaps she is going to her first appointment,” said Lady Dudley to the Marchioness.

“I shall make sure as to that,” replied Mme. d’Espard, who left at once to follow the Countess’ carriage.

But the coupé of Mme. de Vandenesse took the road to the Faubourg St. Honoré. When Mme. d’Espard entered her house, she saw the Countess driving along the Faubourg in the direction of the Rue du Rocher. Marie went to bed, but not to sleep, and spent the night in reading a voyage to the North Pole, of which she did not take in a word.

At half-past eight next morning, she got a letter from Raoul and opened it in feverish haste. The letter began with the classic phrase:

“My loved one, when this paper is in your hands, I shall be no more.”

She read no further, but crushing the paper with a nervous motion, rang for her maid, hastily put on a loose gown, and the first pair of shoes that came to hand, wrapped a shawl round her, took a bonnet, and then went out, instructing her maid to tell the Count that she had gone to her sister, Mme. du Tillet.

“Where did you leave your master?” she asked of Raoul’s servant.

“At the newspaper office.”

“Take me there,” she said.

To the amazement of the household, she left the house on foot before nine o’clock, visibly distraught. Fortunately for her, the maid went to tell the Count that her mistress had just received a letter from Mme. du Tillet which had upset her very much, and that she had started in a great hurry for her sister’s house, accompanied by the servant who had brought the letter. Vandenesse waited for further explanations till his wife’s return. The Countess got a cab and was borne rapidly to the office. At that time of day the spacious rooms occupied by the paper, in an old house in the Rue Feydeau, were deserted. The only occupant was an attendant, whose astonishment was great when a pretty and distracted young woman rushed up and demanded M. Nathan.

“I expect he is with Mlle. Florine,” he replied, taking the Countess for some jealous rival, bent on making a scene.

“Where does he work?” she asked.

“In a small room, the key of which is in his pocket.”

“I must go there.”

The man led her to a dark room, looking out on a backyard, which had formerly been the dressing-closet attached to a large bedroom. This closet made an angle with the bedroom, in which the recess for the bed still remained. By opening the bedroom window, the Countess was able to see through that of the closet what was happening within.

Nathan lay in the editorial chair, the death-rattle in his throat.

“Break open that door, and tell no one! I will pay you to keep silence,” she cried. “Can’t you see that M. Nathan is dying?”

The man went to the compositors’ room to fetch an iron chase with which to force the door. Raoul was killing himself, like some poor work-girl, with the fumes from a pan of charcoal. He had just finished a letter to Blondet, in which he begged him to attribute his death to a fit of apoplexy. The Countess was just in time; she had Raoul carried into the cab; and not knowing where to get him looked after, she went to a hotel, took a room there, and sent the attendant to fetch a doctor. Raoul in a few hours was out of danger; but the Countess did not leave his bedside till she had obtained a full confession. When the prostrate wrestler with fate had poured into her heart the terrible elegy of his sufferings, she returned home a prey to all the torturing fancies which the evening before had brooded over Nathan’s brow.

“Leave it all to me,” she had said, hoping to win him back to life.

“Well, what is wrong with your sister?” asked Félix, on seeing his wife return. “You look like a ghost.”

“It is a frightful story, but I must keep it an absolute secret,” she replied, summoning all her strength to put on an appearance of composure.

In order to be alone and able to think in peace, she went to the opera in the evening, and thence had gone on to unbosom her woes to Mme. du Tillet. After describing the ghastly scene of the morning, she implored her sister’s advice and aid. Neither of them had an idea then that it was du Tillet whose hand had put the match to that vulgar pan of charcoal, the sight of which had so dismayed Mme. de Vandenesse.

“He has no one but me in the world,” Marie had said to her sister, “and I shall not fail him.”

In these words may be read the key to women’s hearts. They become heroic in the assurance of being all in all to a great and honorable man.