nsolently disrespectful
toward her. He was almost inclined to laugh at it.

"It is well done! well done for you! Ah! the dolt! To trust a wanton! To
trust Warcolier! To trust everybody! To trust everybody except
Adrienne!--"

He, mechanically and without thought, resumed the way to Place Beauvau,
forgetting that the ministerial home was no longer his. The porter--who
knows? might not have opened the gate to him. The lackeys would have
driven him off as the girl had done whom he had paid, yes, paid, paid!
For she was a harlot, nothing more!

Gradually, the thought of that debt swelled by successive bills of
exchange, and almost forgotten during the recent days of feverish
excitement, took possession of his mind, he remembered that it must be
discharged on the first day of December, in five days, and the thought
troubled him like an impending danger. The prospect had often, during
the last few weeks, made him anxious. He saw the months pass, the days
flit with extraordinary rapidity, and the maturity, the inevitable due
date draw near with the mathematical regularity of a clock. So long as
months were ahead he felt no anxiety. Like gamblers he counted on
chance. Besides, he still had some farms in Dauphiny. In short, a word
to his notary and he could speedily get out of danger. Then, too, the
date of payment was far away. He calculated that by economy as to his
personal income and his official salary he could meet the bill to
Gochard, whose very name sometimes made him laugh. But Marianne's
exactions, unforeseen outlays, the eternal _leakage_ of Parisian life
had quite prevented saving, and had dissipated in a thousand little
streams the money that he wished to pay out in a lump in December. He
soon grew alarmed by degrees at the approach of the maturity of the
debt. He had written to his notary at Grenoble, and this old friend had
replied that the farms of Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, mortgaged and cut up
one after another, now represented only a ridiculous value, but that
after all, Vaudrey had nothing to be concerned about, seeing that
Madame Vaudrey's fortune was intact.

Adrienne's fortune! That then was all that remained to Vaudrey, and that
might be his salvation. A fortune that was not very considerable, but
still solid and creditable. But even if he were strangled by debt,
dunned and driven into a corner, could he pay the debts he had
contracted for his mistress by means of his wife's fortune? He was
disgusted at