own rich at my expense, she will take some other
lover. She will forget me, she will live happily, while I--And I was
about to go away without her!"

The voice of prudence cried out to him: "Unhappy man! to drag a woman
along with you, and a pretty woman too, is but to stupidly attract
attention upon you, to render flight impossible, to give yourself up
like a fool."

"What of that?" replied passion. "We will be saved or we will perish
together. If she does not love me, I love her; I must have her! She will
come, otherwise--"

But how to see Juliette, to speak with her, to persuade her. To go to
her house, was a great risk for him to run. The police were perhaps
there already.

"No," thought Noel; "no one knows that she is my mistress. It will
not be found out for two or three days and, besides, it would be more
dangerous still to write."

He took a cab not far from the Carrefour de l'Observatoire, and in a
low tone told the driver the number of the house in the Rue de Provence,
which had proved so fatal to him. Stretched on the cushions of the cab,
lulled by its monotonous jolts, Noel gave no thought to the future, he
did not even think over what he should say to Juliette. No. He passed
involuntarily in review the events which had brought on and hastened the
catastrophe, like a man on the point of death, reviews the tragedy or
the comedy of his life.

Just one month before, ruined, at the end of his expedients and
absolutely without resources, he had determined, cost what it might,
to procure money, so as to be able to continue to keep Madame Juliette,
when chance placed in his hands Count de Commarin's correspondence.
Not only the letters read to old Tabaret, and shown to Albert, but also
those, which, written by the count when he believed the substitution an
accomplished fact, plainly established it.

The reading of these gave him an hour of mad delight.

He believed himself the legitimate son; but his mother soon undeceived
him, told him the truth, proved to him by several letters she had
received from Widow Lerouge, called on Claudine to bear witness to it,
and demonstrated it to him by the scar he bore.

But a falling man never selects the branch he tries to save himself by.
Noel resolved to make use of the letters all the same.

He attempted to induce his mother to leave the count in his ignorance,
so that he might thus blackmail him. But Madame Gerdy spurned the
proposition with horror.

Then the