yself by the street door, and when
Gustave came out I seized his arm, and asked him to say Yes or No if he
was the author of this infamous article,--this, which I now hold in my
hand. He owned the authorship with pride; talked wildly of the great
man he was--of the great things he was to do; said that, in hitherto
concealing his true name, he had done all he could to defer to the
bigoted prejudices of his parents and his fiancee; and that if genius,
like fire, would find its way out, he could not help it; that a time was
rapidly coming when his opinions would be uppermost; that since October
the Communists were gaining ascendancy, and only waited the end of the
siege to put down the present Government, and with it all hypocrisies
and shams, religious or social. My wife, he was rude to me, insulting!
but he had been drinking--that made him incautious: and he continued to
walk by my side towards his own lodging, on reaching which he ironically
invited me to enter, saying, 'I should meet there men who would soon
argue me out of my obsolete notions.' You may go to him, wife, now, if
you please. I will not, nor will I take from him a crust of bread. I
came hither, determined to tell the young lady all this, if I found her
at home. I should be a dishonoured man if I suffered her to be cheated
into misery.

"There, Madame Venosta, there! Take that journal, show it to
Mademoiselle; and report to her all I have said."

M. Rameau, habitually the mildest of men, had, in talking, worked
himself up into positive fury.

His wife, calmer but more deeply affected, made a piteous sign to the
Venosta not to say more; and without other salutation or adieu took her
husband's arm, and led him from the house.

CHAPTER VI.

Obtaining from her husband Gustave's address, Madame Rameau hastened
to her son's apartment alone through the darkling streets. The house in
which he lodged was in a different quarter from that in which Isaura had
visited him. Then, the street selected was still in the centre of the
beau monde--now, it was within the precincts of that section of the
many-faced capital in which the beau monde was held in detestation or
scorn; still the house had certain pretensions, boasting a courtyard and
a porter's lodge. Madame Rameau, instructed to mount au second, found
the door ajar, and, entering, perceived on the table of the little salon
the remains of a feast which, however untempting it might have been
in happier tim