mong his friends."

"Just what I said; he has precisely the same effect upon every one. I
love him as though he were my own child; and, whatever happens, he
will inherit almost the whole of my fortune: yes, I intend leaving him
everything. My will is made, and is in the hands of M. Baron, my notary.
There is a small legacy, too, for Madame Gerdy; but I am going to have
the paragraph that relates to that taken out at once."

"Madame Gerdy, M. Tabaret, will soon be beyond all need of worldly
goods."

"How, what do you mean? Has the count--"

"She is dying, and is not likely to live through the day; M. Gerdy told
me so himself."

"Ah! heavens!" cried the old fellow, "what is that you say? Dying? Noel
will be distracted; but no: since she is not his mother, how can it
affect him? Dying! I thought so much of her before this discovery. Poor
humanity! It seems as though all the accomplices are passing away at
the same time; for I forgot to tell you, that, just as I was leaving
the Commarin mansion, I heard a servant tell another that the count had
fallen down in a fit on learning the news of his son's arrest."

"That will be a great misfortune for M. Gerdy."

"For Noel?"

"I had counted upon M. de Commarin's testimony to recover for him all
that he so well deserves. The count dead, Widow Lerouge dead, Madame
Gerdy dying, or in any event insane, who then can tell us whether the
substitution alluded to in the letters was ever carried into execution?"

"True," murmured old Tabaret; "it is true! And I did not think of it.
What fatality! For I am not deceived; I am certain that--"

He did not finish. The door of M. Daburon's office opened, and the Count
de Commarin himself appeared on the threshold, as rigid as one of those
old portraits which look as though they were frozen in their gilded
frames. The nobleman motioned with his hand, and the two servants who
had helped him up as far as the door, retired.

CHAPTER XI.

It was indeed the Count de Commarin, though more like his shadow. His
head, usually carried so high, leant upon his chest; his figure was
bent; his eyes had no longer their accustomed fire; his hands trembled.
The extreme disorder of his dress rendered more striking still the
change which had come over him. In one night, he had grown twenty years
older. This man, yesterday so proud of never having bent to a storm,
was now completely shattered. The pride of his name had constituted his
entire streng