friend's
exclamation. "I did not listen to you; and now I have fallen into the
depths, and I must perish."

"No, no," the good man answered, looking triumphantly from Mlle.
Armande to the Count. "I have sold my connection. I have been working
for a very long time now, and am thinking of retiring. By noon
to-morrow I shall have a hundred thousand francs; many things can be
settled with that. Mademoiselle, you are tired," he added; "go back to
the carriage and go home and sleep. Business to-morrow."

"Is he safe?" returned she, looking at Victurnien.

"Yes."

She kissed her nephew; a few tears fell on his forehead. Then she
went.

"My good Chesnel," said the Count, when they began to talk of
business, "what are your hundred thousand francs in such a position as
mine? You do not know the full extent of my troubles, I think."

Victurnien explained the situation. Chesnel was thunderstruck. But for
the strength of his devotion, he would have succumbed to this blow.
Tears streamed from the eyes that might well have had no tears left to
shed. For a few moments he was a child again, for a few moments he was
bereft of his senses; he stood like a man who should find his own
house on fire, and through a window see the cradle ablaze and hear the
hiss of the flames on his children's curls. He rose to his full height
--il se dressa en pied, as Amyot would have said; he seemed to grow
taller; he raised his withered hands and wrung them despairingly and
wildly.

"If only your father may die and never know this, young man! To be a
forger is enough; a parricide you must not be. Fly, you say? No. They
would condemn you for contempt of court! Oh, wretched boy! Why did you
not forge /my/ signature? /I/ would have paid; I should not have taken
the bill to the public prosecutor.--Now I can do nothing. You have
brought me to a stand in the lowest pit in hell!--Du Croisier! What
will come of it? What is to be done?--If you had killed a man, there
might be some help for it. But forgery--/forgery/! And time--the time
is flying," he went on, shaking his fist towards the old clock. "You
will want a sham passport now. One crime leads to another. First," he
added, after a pause, "first of all we must save the house of
d'Esgrignon."

"But the money is still in Mme. de Maufrigneuse's keeping," exclaimed
Victurnien.

"Ah!" exclaimed Chesnel. "Well, there is some hope left--a faint hope.
Could we soften du Croisier, I wonder, or buy him over