“The aristocrat!” she hissed, rather than spoke. “He has done this with money from that woman—the meeting in the Park was not their first. His soul is poisoned with her gold. I will look upon this new palace myself, but not till I have walked off my rage. He must not look upon me while this fire burns so hotly.” The woman pressed both hands upon her heart as she turned from the door, and was herself terrified by the fierce struggle going on there; the very breath, as it rose panting to her lips, seemed to strangle her. What better proof of Mirabeau’s utter subjection to the court did she want than this removal to an aristocratic quarter and luxurious dwelling? No one knew so well as herself that Mirabeau had no income from property, nothing but his talent and influence to sell. He still retained so much of the habits of his lordly birth, that the squalid penury affected by Robespierre and Marat revolted him. He had never yet been able to throw off the tastes of a gentleman in his mode of living, and in this lost all the independence which was so necessary to statesmanship. A new thought came into Louison’s head. Mirabeau had taken money from the court. Might not this be his sole motive for asking or accepting that interview with Marie Antoinette. Had he ever hesitated to cajole or deceive a woman in the pursuit of any object? And what reverence would his audacious nature feel for the queen, merely because she was seated on a throne which already shook to its foundations? This idea came with force upon the angry woman, the thought that money, instead of love, had taken her idol to St. Cloud, swept away half the jealousy that tortured her. She began to feel a bitter triumph in the supreme duplicity of which she suspected the count guilty. CHAPTER LXXX. TAKING AN OBSERVATION. With no hesitation or fear, Louison turned toward the Chaussée d’Anton. The thoroughfares were full of people, men and women, conversing together in knots, and fraternizing with the municipal guards, in coarse and equal companionship. More than once she was hailed by some person in the crowd, who received a sharp or witty reply in return, which often sent shouts of laughter after her. Now and than she stopped to speak with some patriot, whose notoriety gave him a claim to her attention, but moved on again, laughing and flinging back jokes and jeers as she went. As Louison turned a corner, with a feverish laugh still upon her lips, a man came suddenly around the angle, whom she recognized at once. This man she knew to be the secret and most bitter enemy of Mirabeau, and at another time would have avoided him; for his small, lean figure, fantastically arrayed in a well-worn coat, and buff small-clothes, brushed thread-bare, was well calculated to inspire contempt and ridicule from a creature so reckless in her liking as Louison. But she paused in her swift progress, and spoke to the man now.