Blondet was right. Passions are as mean as they are cruel. The next day after long hesitation between “I’ll go--I’ll not go,” Raoul left his new partners in the midst of an important discussion and rushed to Madame d’Espard’s house in the faubourg Saint-Honore. Beholding Rastignac’s elegant cabriolet enter the court-yard while he was paying his cab at the gate, Nathan’s vanity was stung; he resolved to have a cabriolet himself, and its accompanying tiger, too. The carriage of the countess was in the court-yard, and the sight of it swelled Raoul’s heart with joy. Marie was advancing under the pressure of her desires with the regularity of the hands of a clock obeying the mainspring. He found her sitting at the corner of the fireplace in the little salon. Instead of looking at Nathan when he was announced, she looked at his reflection in a mirror. “Monsieur le ministre,” said Madame d’Espard, addressing Nathan, and presenting him to de Marsay by a glance, “was maintaining, when you came in, that the royalists and the republicans have a secret understanding. You ought to know something about it; is it so?” “If it were so,” said Raoul, “where’s the harm? We hate the same thing; we agree as to our hatreds, we differ only in our love. That’s the whole of it.” “The alliance is odd enough,” said de Marsay, giving a comprehensively meaning glance at the Comtesse Felix and Nathan. “It won’t last,” said Rastignac, thinking, perhaps, wholly of politics. “What do you think, my dear?” asked Madame d’Espard, addressing Marie. “I know nothing of public affairs,” replied the countess. “But you soon will, madame,” said de Marsay, “and then you will be doubly our enemy.” So saying he left the room with Rastignac, and Madame d’Espard accompanied them to the door of the first salon. The lovers had the room to themselves for a few moments. Marie held out her ungloved hand to Raoul, who took and kissed it as though he were eighteen years old. The eyes of the countess expressed so noble a tenderness that the tears which men of nervous temperament can always find at their service came into Raoul’s eyes. “Where can I see you? where can I speak with you?” he said. “It is death to be forced to disguise my voice, my look, my heart, my love--” Moved by that tear Marie promised to drive daily in the Bois, unless the weather were extremely bad. This promise gave Raoul more pleasure than he had found in Florine for the last five years. “I have so many things to say to you! I suffer from the silence to which we are condemned--” The countess looked at him eagerly without replying, and at that moment Madame d’Espard returned to the room. “Why didn’t you answer de Marsay?” she said as she entered. “We ought to respect the dead,” replied Raoul. “Don’t you see that he is dying? Rastignac is his nurse,--hoping to be put in the will.” The countess pretended to have other visits to pay, and left the house.