ives or abandons herself, she murmured low,
very low:

"Rabelais lied, as all men lie. The truth is that the fox is utterly
wearied, that he is at the end of his breath and his courage, ready to
fall into the ditch, and that if the greyhound makes another effort----"

Mora started, became a shade paler, all the blood he had in his body
rushing back to his heart. Two sombre flames met with their eyes, two
rapid words were exchanged by lips that hardly moved; then the duke
bowed profoundly, and walked away with a step gay and light, as though
the gods were bearing him.

At that moment there was in the palace only one man as happy as he, and
that was the Nabob. Escorted by his friends, he occupied, quite filled
up, the principal bay with his own party alone, speaking loudly,
gesticulating, proud to such a degree that he looked almost handsome, as
though by dint of naive and long contemplation of his bust he had been
touched by something of the splendid idealization with which the
artist had haloed the vulgarity of his type. The head, raised to the
three-quarters position, standing freely out from the wide, loose
collar, drew contradictory remarks on the resemblance from the
passers-by; and the name of Jansoulet, so many times repeated by the
electoral ballot-boxes, was repeated over again now by the prettiest
mouths, by the most authoritative voices, in Paris. Any other than the
Nabob would have been embarrassed to hear uttered, as he passed,
these expressions of curiosity which were not always friendly. But the
platform, the springing-board, well suited that nature which became
bolder under the fire of glances, like those women who are beautiful or
witty only in society, and whom the least admiration transfigures and
completes.

When he felt this delirious joy growing calmer, when he thought to
have drunk the whole of its proud intoxication, he had only to say to
himself, "Deputy! I am a Deputy!" And the triumphal cup foamed once more
to the brim. It meant the embargo raised from all his possessions, the
awakening from a nightmare that had lasted two months, the puff of cool
wind sweeping away all his anxieties, all his inquietudes, even to the
affront of Saint-Romans, very heavy though that was in his memory.

Deputy!

He laughed to himself as he thought of the baron's face when he learned
the news, of the stupefaction of the Bey when he had been led up to his
bust; and suddenly, upon the reflection that he was no