xury recalls my former
follies when I made him believe that I was spending an inheritance from
my grandmother."

She had, indeed, already lied to him, for the money she had formerly
squandered had been provided by De Lissac, but even then it was
necessary--for the duke was in expectancy--to conceal its source from
Rosas, hence the story of the inheritance that never existed. But she at
once thoroughly realized that the surroundings which were favorable to
the progress of the duke's love were not the bedroom and the
dressing-room of Mademoiselle Vanda. What difference would Rosas have
found between her and the fashionable courtesans whom he had loved, or
rather, enriched, in passing? He would not believe this new lie this
time.

All that luxury might seduce Sulpice Vaudrey; it would have disgusted
Jose. What satisfied the appetite of the little, successful bourgeois
would nauseate the gentleman.

As soon as Rosas returned to her, happy and stupefied at the same time,
extravagantly happy in his joy, her plan of campaign was at once
arranged. She did not wish to receive him in the vulgar hotel, where the
clubmen had wiped their feet upon the carpets. She entreated him, since
he wished to see her again, to see her at her "own house," yes, really,
at her own house, in that little, unknown room, in Rue Cuvier, far from
the noise of Paris and near the Botanical Garden, a kind of hidden cell
into which no one entered.

"No one but me," she said.

The order had been given to Uncle Kayser in advance: in case Rosas
should reappear, Simon was to at once inform his niece and prevent the
duke from discovering Marianne's new address. And this had been done.

The duke was then going to see Mademoiselle Kayser only at Rue Cuvier,
after having rediscovered her at Uncle Simon's.

He felt in advance a kind of gratitude to this woman who thus abandoned
the secret of her soul to him; giving him to understand that it was
there that she passed her days, buried in her recollections, dreaming of
her departed years, of that which had been, of that which might be, a
living death.

Marianne had shrewdly divined the case. For this great soul, mystery
added a new sentiment to the feelings that Rosas experienced. The first
time that he found himself in that little abode where Simon Kayser's
niece awaited him, he was deeply moved, as if he had penetrated into the
pure chamber of a young girl. There, yonder, in that distant quarter, he
found