privately where he could go to write a letter without monsieur seeing
him. I took him to my room; but I did not dare question him about
this journey, for I never saw any one with such forbidding and
uncommunicative manners. By the time the letter was written monsieur
was ready, and without giving me any explanation they both got into
the Englishman's carriage, and I heard one of them say to the coachman,
'Paris.'"

"What became of the letter?" asked Sallenauve.

"It is there in my room, where the Englishman gave it me secretly. It is
addressed to monsieur."

"Fetch it at once, my dear man," cried Sallenauve.

After reading the letter, his face seemed to Philippe convulsed.

"Tell them not to unharness," he said; and he read the letter through a
second time.

When the old servant returned after executing the order, Sallenauve
asked him at what hour they had started.

"About nine," answered Philippe.

"Three hours in advance!" muttered the deputy, looking at his watch, and
returning to the carriage which had brought him. As he was getting into
it, the old majordomo forced himself to say,--

"Monsieur found no bad news in that letter, did he?"

"No; but your master may be absent for some time; keep the house in good
order." Then he said to the coachman, "Paris!"

The next day, quite early in the morning, Monsieur de l'Estorade was in
his study, employed in a rather singular manner. It will be remembered
that on the day when Sallenauve, then Dorlange the sculptor, had sent
him the bust of Madame de l'Estorade, he had not found a place where, as
he thought, the little masterpiece had a proper light. From the moment
that Rastignac hinted to him that his intercourse with the sculptor,
now deputy, might injure him at court, he had agreed with his son Armand
that the artist had given to Madame de l'Estorade the air of a grisette;
but now that Sallenauve, by his resistance to ministerial blandishments,
had taken an openly hostile attitude to the government, that bust seemed
to the peer of France no longer worthy of exhibition, and the worthy man
was now engaged in finding some dark corner where, without recourse to
the absurdity of actually hiding it, it would be out of range to the
eyes of visitors, whose questions as to its maker he should no longer
be forced to answer. He was therefore perched on the highest step of
his library ladder, holding in his hands the gift of the sculptor, and
preparing to relegate it to