He was horrible to look at, horrible and ridiculous at the same time. As he wished to take Mme. de Thaller’s hands, she stepped back, and he followed her, dragging himself on his knees. “Where could you find,” he continued, “a man to worship you like me, with an ardent, absolute, blind, mad passion? With what can you reproach me? Have I not sacrificed to you without a murmur every thing that a man can sacrifice here below,--fortune, family, honor, --to supply your extravagance, to anticipate your slightest fancies, to give you gold to scatter by the handful? Did I not leave my own family struggling with poverty? I would have snatched bread from my children’s mouths in order to purchase roses to scatter under your footsteps. And for years did ever a word from me betray the secret of our love? What have I not endured? You deceived me. I knew it, and I said nothing. Upon a word from you I stepped aside before him whom your caprice made happy for a day. You told me, ‘Steal!’ and I stole. You told me, ‘Kill!’ and I tried to kill.” “Fly. A man who has twelve hundred thousand francs in gold, bank-notes, and good securities, can always get along.” “And my wife and children?” “Maxence is old enough to help his mother. Gilberte will find a husband: depend upon it. Besides, what’s to prevent you from sending them money?” “They would refuse it.” “You will always be a fool, my dear!” To Vincent Favoral’s first stupor and miserable weakness now succeeded a terrible passion. All the blood had left his face: his eyes was flashing. “Then,” he resumed, “all is really over?” “Of course.” “Then I have been duped like the rest,--like that poor Marquis de Tregars, whom you had made mad also. But he, at least saved his honor; whereas I--And I have no excuse; for I should have known. I knew that you were but the bait which the Baron de Thaller held out to his victims.” He waited for an answer; but she maintained a contemptuous silence. “Then you think,” he said with a threatening laugh, “that it will all end that way?” “What can you do?” “There is such a thing as justice, I imagine, and judges too. I can give myself up, and reveal every thing.” She shrugged her shoulders. “That would be throwing yourself into the wolf’s mouth for nothing,” she said. “You know better than any one else that my precautions are well enough taken to defy any thing you can do or say. I have nothing to fear.” “Are you quite sure of that?” “Trust to me,” she said with a smile of perfect security. The former cashier of the Mutual Credit made a terrible gesture; but, checking himself at once, he seized one of the baroness’s hands. She withdrew it quickly, however, and, in an accent of insurmountable disgust, “Enough, enough!” she said. In the adjoining closet Marius de Tregars could feel Mme. Zelie Cadelle shuddering by his side. “What a wretch that woman is!” she murmured; “and he--what a base coward!”