and regarded as blameless. You can trust the
soldier who is the bearer of this letter with a draft in my name
on a house in Algiers. He is a trustworthy fellow, a relation of
mine, incapable of trying to find out what he is the bearer of. I
have taken measures to guarantee the fellow's safe return. If you
can do nothing, I am ready and willing to die for the man to whom
we owe our Adeline's happiness!"

The anguish and raptures of passion and the catastrophe which had
checked his career of profligacy had prevented Baron Hulot's ever
thinking of poor Johann Fischer, though his first letter had given
warning of the danger now become so pressing. The Baron went out of the
dining-room in such agitation that he literally dropped on to a sofa in
the drawing-room. He was stunned, sunk in the dull numbness of a heavy
fall. He stared at a flower on the carpet, quite unconscious that he
still held in his hand Johann's fatal letter.

Adeline, in her room, heard her husband throw himself on the sofa, like
a lifeless mass; the noise was so peculiar that she fancied he had an
apoplectic attack. She looked through the door at the mirror, in such
dread as stops the breath and hinders motion, and she saw her Hector in
the attitude of a man crushed. The Baroness stole in on tiptoe; Hector
heard nothing; she went close up to him, saw the letter, took it, read
it, trembling in every limb. She went through one of those violent
nervous shocks that leave their traces for ever on the sufferer. Within
a few days she became subject to a constant trembling, for after the
first instant the need for action gave her such strength as can only be
drawn from the very wellspring of the vital powers.

"Hector, come into my room," said she, in a voice that was no more than
a breath. "Do not let your daughter see you in this state! Come, my
dear, come!"

"Two hundred thousand francs? Where can I find them? I can get Claude
Vignon sent out there as commissioner. He is a clever, intelligent
fellow.--That is a matter of a couple of days.--But two hundred thousand
francs! My son has not so much; his house is loaded with mortgages for
three hundred thousand. My brother has saved thirty thousand francs at
most. Nucingen would simply laugh at me!--Vauvinet?--he was not very
ready to lend me the ten thousand francs I wanted to make up the sum
for that villain Marneffe's boy. No, it is all up with me; I must throw
myself at the Prince's feet, confes