o strike the
blow, but the wretch shall have it straight in the heart."

"He must have vowed a Roland for your Oliver," said the aunt, "for he
has taken charge of Peyrade's daughter, the girl who was sold to Madame
Nourrisson, you know."

"Our first point must be to find him a servant."

"That will be difficult; he must be tolerably wide-awake," observed
Jacqueline.

"Well, hatred keeps one alive! We must work hard."

Jacques Collin took a cab and drove at once to the Quai Malaquais, to
the little room he lodged in, quite separate from Lucien's apartment.
The porter, greatly astonished at seeing him, wanted to tell him all
that had happened.

"I know everything," said the Abbe. "I have been involved in it, in
spite of my saintly reputation; but, thanks to the intervention of the
Spanish Ambassador, I have been released."

He hurried up to his room, where, from under the cover of a breviary, he
took out a letter that Lucien had written to Madame de Serizy after that
lady had discarded him on seeing him at the opera with Esther.

Lucien, in his despair, had decided on not sending this letter,
believing himself cast off for ever; but Jacques Collin had read the
little masterpiece; and as all that Lucien wrote was to him sacred, he
had treasured the letter in his prayer-book for its poetical expression
of a passion that was chiefly vanity. When Monsieur de Granville told
him of Madame de Serizy's condition, the keen-witted man had very wisely
concluded that this fine lady's despair and frenzy must be the result
of the quarrel she had allowed to subsist between herself and Lucien.
He knew women as magistrates know criminals; he guessed the most secret
impulses of their hearts; and he at once understood that the Countess
probably ascribed Lucien's death partly to her own severity, and
reproached herself bitterly. Obviously a man on whom she had shed her
love would never have thrown away his life!--To know that he had loved
her still, in spite of her cruelty, might restore her reason.

If Jacques Collin was a grand general of convicts, he was, it must be
owned, a not less skilful physician of souls.

This man's arrival at the mansion of the Serizys was at once a disgrace
and a promise. Several persons, the Count, and the doctors were
assembled in the little drawing-room adjoining the Countess' bedroom;
but to spare him this stain on his soul's honor, the Comte de Bauvan
dismissed everybody, and remained alone w