he erect head. She
answered him with her pretty Parisian's greeting, expressed in an
imperceptible inclination of the body and a smile; and seeing this
exchange of politeness in the midst of the spring gaiety, one would
never think that the same sinister idea was guiding the two, meeting by
chance on the road they were traversing in opposite directions, but to
the same end.

The prediction of Mora's valet had come true for the marquis: "We
may die or lose power; then there will be a reckoning, and it will be
terrible." It was terrible. The former receiver-general had obtained
with difficulty a delay of a fortnight to make up his deficiencies,
taking the last chance that Jansoulet, with his election confirmed, and
with full control over his millions again, would come to the rescue once
more. The decision of the Assembly had just taken from him this last
hope. As soon as he knew it, he returned to the club calmly, and went
up to his room, where Francis was waiting impatiently for him with
an important paper just arrived. It was a notification to the Sieur
Louis-Marie-Agenor de Monpavon to appear the next day in the office
of the Juge d'Instruction. Was it addressed to the censor of the
Territorial Bank or to the former receiver-general? In any case, the
bold formula of a judicial assignation in the first instance, instead of
a private invitation, spoke sufficiently of the gravity of the situation
and the firm resolution of Justice.

In view of such an extremity, foreseen and expected for long, he
had made his plans. A Monpavon in the criminal courts!--a Monpavon,
librarian in a convict prison! Never! He put all his affairs in order,
tore up his papers, emptied his pockets carefully, and took something
from his toilet-table, so calmly and naturally, that when he said
to Francis, as he was going out, "Am going to the baths--That dirty
Chamber--Filthy dust"--the servant took him at his word. And the marquis
was not lying. His exciting post up there in the dust of the tribune had
tired him as much as two nights in the train; and his decision to die
associated itself with his desire to take a bath, the old Sybarite
thought of going to sleep in the bath, like what's his name, and other
famous personages of antiquity. And in justice, it must be said that not
one of these Stoics went to his death more quietly than he.

With a white camellia in his buttonhole, above his rosette of the Legion
of Honour, he was going up the Boule