his last bag of louis; she took it, without paying
any attention to it, as she took her white capuchine and thread
mittens.

"Generous girl! What grace!" he said, as he put her into the carriage
with her maid, a woman who looked like a gray sister.

Du Croisier had thought out his revenge, as provincials think out
everything. For studying out a question in all its bearings, there are
no folk in this world like savages, peasants, and provincials; and
this is how, when they proceed from thought to action, you find every
contingency provided for from beginning to end. Diplomatists are
children compared with these classes of mammals; they have time before
them, an element which is lacking to those people who are obliged to
think about a great many things, to superintend the progress of all
kinds of schemes, to look forward for all sorts of contingencies in
the wider interests of human affairs. Had de Croisier sounded poor
Victurnien's nature so well, that he foresaw how easily the young
Count would lend himself to his schemes of revenge? Or was he merely
profiting by an opportunity for which he had been on the watch for
years? One circumstance there was, to be sure, in his manner of
preparing his stroke, which shows a certain skill. Who was it that
gave du Croisier warning of the moment? Was it the Kellers? Or could
it have been President du Ronceret's son, then finishing his law
studies in Paris?

Du Croisier wrote to Victurnien, telling him that the Kellers had been
instructed to advance no more money; and that letter was timed to
arrive just as the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was in the utmost
perplexity, and the Comte d'Esgrignon consumed by the sense of poverty
as dreadful as it was cunningly hidden. The wretched young man was
exerting all his ingenuity to seem as if he were wealthy!

Now in the letter which informed the victim that in future the Kellers
would make no further advances without security, there was a tolerably
wide space left between the forms of an exaggerated respect and the
signature. It was quite easy to tear off the best part of the letter
and convert it into a bill of exchange for any amount. The diabolical
missive had been enclosed in an envelope, so that the other side of
the sheet was blank. When it arrived, Victurnien was writhing in the
lowest depths of despair. After two years of the most prosperous,
sensual, thoughtless, and luxurious life, he found himself face to
face with the most inexor