Although old, ugly, ignoble, and sordid, Jacques Ferrand was as capable as any one of appreciating the style of beauty of Madame de Lucenay. The hatred and rage which the notary felt against M. de Saint-Remy was increased by the admiration which his proud and lovely mistress inspired in him. Devoured by all his repressed passions, he said to himself, in an agony of rage, that this gentleman forger, whom he had compelled almost to fall at his feet when he threatened him with the assizes, could inspire such love in such a woman that she actually risked the present step in his behalf, which might prove fatal to her reputation. As he thus thought, the notary felt his boldness, which had been for a moment paralysed, restored to him. Hatred, envy, a kind of savage and burning resentment, lighted up his eyes, his forehead, and his cheeks. Seeing Madame de Lucenay on the point of commencing so delicate a conversation, he expected from her caution and management. What was his astonishment! She spoke with as much assurance and haughtiness as if she were discoursing about the simplest thing in the world; and as if, before a man of his sort, she had no care for reserve or those concealments which she would assuredly have maintained with her equals. In fact, the coarse brutality of the notary wounded her to the quick, and had led Madame de Lucenay to quit the humble and supplicating part she was acting with much difficulty to herself. Returned to herself, she thought it beneath her to descend to the least concealment with a mere scribbler of acts and deeds. High-spirited, charitable, generous, overflowing with kindness, warm-heartedness, and energy, in spite of her faults,--but the daughter of a mother of no principle, and who had even disgraced the noble and respectable, though fallen position of an _emigree_,--Madame de Lucenay, in her inborn contempt for certain classes, would have said with the Roman empress who took her bath in the presence of a male slave, "He is not a man!" "Monsieur Notary," said the duchess, with a determined air, to Jacques Ferrand, "M. de Saint-Remy is one of my friends, and has confided to me the embarrassment under which he is at this moment suffering, from a twofold treachery of which he is the victim. All is arranged as to the money. How much is required to terminate these miserable annoyances?" Jacques Ferrand was actually aghast at this cavalier and deliberate manner of entering on this affair. "One hundred thousand francs are required," he repeated, after having in some degree surmounted his surprise. "You shall have your one hundred thousand francs; so send, at once, these annoying papers to M. de Saint-Remy." "Where are the one hundred thousand francs, Madame la Duchesse?" "Have I not said you should have them, sir?" "I must have them to-morrow, and before noon, madame; or else proceedings will be instantly commenced for the forgery." "Well, do you pay this sum, which I will repay to you."