re, Madame de l'Estorade found herself seated at
the upper end of a circle of women, while the men stood about them
conversing. Her chair was side by side with that of Madame de Rastignac.

In hoping to make her visit short, Madame de l'Estorade had not counted
on the allurements of conversation which, under the circumstances of
this so-called political victory, laid hold of her husband. A man of
more influence by his judgment than by his oratory in the Chamber of
Peers, Monsieur de l'Estorade, as he circulated through the salons, was
stopped at every turn by the various notabilities of politics, finance,
and diplomacy, and requested to give his opinion on the future of the
session now about to begin. To all such questions he replied with more
or less extended observations, and sometimes he had the pleasure of
finding himself the centre of a group respectfully receptive of his
opinions. This success rendered him very inattentive to the telegraphy
of his wife, who, watching his various evolutions, made him signs
whenever she could catch his eye that she wished to go away.

The years that had elapsed since Monsieur de l'Estorade had obtained the
hand of the beautiful Renee de Maucombe, while they had scarcely dimmed
the splendor of her beauty, had considerably aged her husband. The
twenty years' difference in their ages--he being now fifty-two, she
thirty-two--was growing all the more apparent because even at the time
of the marriage he was turning gray and his health was failing. An
affection of the liver, latent for several years, was now developing,
and at the same time the wilful disposition which is noticeable in
statesmen and men of ambition made his mouth less sensitive to the
conjugal bit. Monsieur de l'Estorade talked so long and so well that
after a time the salons thinned, leaving a group of the intimates of
the house around his wife and their hostess. At this moment the minister
himself slipped an arm through his, and, leading him up to the group
surrounding their two wives, Rastignac said to Madame de l'Estorade,--

"I bring you back your husband; I have just found him in criminal
conversation with a member of the Zollverin, who would probably have
clung to him all night if it had not been for me."

"I was myself on the point of asking Madame de Rastignac for a bed, that
I might release her from the burden of my company, which Monsieur de
l'Estorade's interminable conversations have put upon her."

Madame