Gradually, the thought of that debt swelled by successive bills of exchange, and almost forgotten during the recent days of feverish excitement, took possession of his mind, he remembered that it must be discharged on the first day of December, in five days, and the thought troubled him like an impending danger. The prospect had often, during the last few weeks, made him anxious. He saw the months pass, the days flit with extraordinary rapidity, and the maturity, the inevitable due date draw near with the mathematical regularity of a clock. So long as months were ahead he felt no anxiety. Like gamblers he counted on chance. Besides, he still had some farms in Dauphiny. In short, a word to his notary and he could speedily get out of danger. Then, too, the date of payment was far away. He calculated that by economy as to his personal income and his official salary he could meet the bill to Gochard, whose very name sometimes made him laugh. But Marianne's exactions, unforeseen outlays, the eternal _leakage_ of Parisian life had quite prevented saving, and had dissipated in a thousand little streams the money that he wished to pay out in a lump in December. He soon grew alarmed by degrees at the approach of the maturity of the debt. He had written to his notary at Grenoble, and this old friend had replied that the farms of Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, mortgaged and cut up one after another, now represented only a ridiculous value, but that after all, Vaudrey had nothing to be concerned about, seeing that Madame Vaudrey's fortune was intact. Adrienne's fortune! That then was all that remained to Vaudrey, and that might be his salvation. A fortune that was not very considerable, but still solid and creditable. But even if he were strangled by debt, dunned and driven into a corner, could he pay the debts he had contracted for his mistress by means of his wife's fortune? He was disgusted at the thought. It was impossible. Vaudrey felt his head turn under the humiliation of his double defeat, the loss of parliamentary confidence, and Marianne's insulting laugh, and urged by the anxiety he felt about the obligation to be met in eight days, in his bewilderment he thought of writing to Gochard of Rue des Marais, to ask for time. This Gochard must be a half-usurer. Certain of being paid, some day, he would perhaps be delighted to renew the bill of exchange in inordinately swelling the amount. The letter was written and Vaudrey mailed it himself the following morning. That very evening Adrienne was to leave. He endeavored to dissuade her from her plan. She did not even reply to him. She stood looking at a crystal vase on the chimney-piece in which were some winter roses, Christmas roses, fresh and milk-white, that had been sent as a souvenir from yonder Dauphiny. Her glance rested fixedly on that fair bouquet that seemed like a bursting cloud of whiteness. "Then," said Vaudrey, "it is settled--quite settled--you are going?" "I am." "In three hours?"