"This regret will haunt me all my life, not on her account, 'there are so many mistresses!... but there is only one honour!' says old don Diégo. And here am I clearly and palpably shrinking from the first danger that presents itself; for the duel with M. de Beauvoisis was simply a joke. This is quite different. A servant may fire at me point blank, but that is the least danger; I may be disgraced. "This is getting serious, my boy," he added with a Gascon gaiety and accent. "Honour is at stake. A poor devil flung by chance into as low a grade as I am will never find such an opportunity again. I shall have my conquests, but they will be inferior ones...." He reflected for a long time, he walked up and down hurriedly, and then from time to time would suddenly stop. A magnificent marble bust of cardinal de Richelieu had been placed in his room. It attracted his gaze in spite of himself. This bust seemed to look at him severely as though reproaching him with the lack of that audacity which ought to be so natural to the French character. "Would I have hesitated in your age great man?" "At the worst," said Julien to himself, "suppose all this is a trap, it is pretty black and pretty compromising for a young girl. They know that I am not the man to hold my tongue. They will therefore have to kill me. That was right enough in 1574 in the days of Boniface de la Mole, but nobody today would ever have the pluck. They are not the same men. Mademoiselle de la Mole is the object of so much jealousy. Four hundred salons would ring with her disgrace to-morrow, and how pleased they would all be. "The servants gossip among themselves about marked the favours of which I am the recipient. I know it, I have heard them.... "On the other hand they're her letters. They may think that I have them on me. They may surprise me in her room and take them from me. I shall have to deal with two, three, or four men. How can I tell? But where are they going to find these men? Where are they to find discreet subordinates in Paris? Justice frightens them.... By God! It may be the Caylus's, the Croisenois', the de Luz's themselves. The idea of the ludicrous figure I should cut in the middle of them at the particular minute may have attracted them. Look out for the fate of Abélard, M. the secretary. "Well, by heaven, I'll mark you. I'll strike at your faces like Cæsar's soldiers at Pharsalia. As for the letters, I can put them in a safe place." Julien copied out the two last, hid them in a fine volume of Voltaire in the library and himself took the originals to the post. "What folly am I going to rush into," he said to himself with surprise and terror when he returned. He had been a quarter of an hour without contemplating what he was to do on this coming night.