ount called again to his wife.

"Poor Maxime!" she said, addressing the young man. "Come, we must resign
ourselves. This evening----"

"I hope, Nasie," he said in her ear, "that you will give orders not to
admit that youngster, whose eyes light up like live coals when he looks
at you. He will make you a declaration, and compromise you, and then you
will compel me to kill him."

"Are you mad, Maxime?" she said. "A young lad of a student is, on the
contrary, a capital lightning-conductor; is not that so? Of course, I
mean to make Restaud furiously jealous of him."

Maxime burst out laughing, and went out, followed by the Countess, who
stood at the window to watch him into his carriage; he shook his whip,
and made his horse prance. She only returned when the great gate had
been closed after him.

"What do you think, dear?" cried the Count, her husband, "this
gentleman's family estate is not far from Verteuil, on the Charente; his
great-uncle and my grandfather were acquainted."

"Delighted to find that we have acquaintances in common," said the
Countess, with a preoccupied manner.

"More than you think," said Eugene, in a low voice.

"What do you mean?" she asked quickly.

"Why, only just now," said the student, "I saw a gentleman go out at
the gate, Father Goriot, my next door neighbor in the house where I am
lodging."

At the sound of this name, and the prefix that embellished it, the
Count, who was stirring the fire, let the tongs fall as though they had
burned his fingers, and rose to his feet.

"Sir," he cried, "you might have called him 'Monsieur Goriot'!"

The Countess turned pale at first at the sight of her husband's
vexation, then she reddened; clearly she was embarrassed, her answer
was made in a tone that she tried to make natural, and with an air of
assumed carelessness:

"You could not know any one who is dearer to us both..."

She broke off, glanced at the piano as if some fancy had crossed her
mind, and asked, "Are you fond of music, M. de Rastignac?"

"Exceedingly," answered Eugene, flushing, and disconcerted by a dim
suspicion that he had somehow been guilty of a clumsy piece of folly.

"Do you sing?" she cried, going to the piano, and, sitting down before
it, she swept her fingers over the keyboard from end to end. R-r-r-rah!

"No, madame."

The Comte de Restaud walked to and fro.

"That is a pity; you are without one great means of success.--_Ca-ro,
ca-a-ro, ca-a-a-ro, non du-bi-