ith his friend. It was bad
enough even then for the Vice-President of the Privy Council to see this
gloomy and sinister visitor come in.

Jacques Collin had changed his dress. He was in black with trousers, and
a plain frock-coat, and his gait, his look, and his manner were all that
could be wished. He bowed to the two statesmen, and asked if he might be
admitted to see the Countess.

"She awaits you with impatience," said Monsieur de Bauvan.

"With impatience! Then she is saved," said the dreadful magician.

And, in fact, after an interview of half an hour, Jacques Collin opened
the door and said:

"Come in, Monsieur le Comte; there is nothing further to fear."

The Countess had the letter clasped to her heart; she was calm, and
seemed to have forgiven herself. The Count gave expression to his joy at
the sight.

"And these are the men who settle our fate and the fate of nations,"
thought Jacques Collin, shrugging his shoulders behind the two men. "A
female has but to sigh in the wrong way to turn their brain as if it
were a glove! A wink, and they lose their head! A petticoat raised a
little higher, dropped a little lower, and they rush round Paris in
despair! The whims of a woman react on the whole country. Ah, how much
stronger is a man when, like me, he keeps far away from this childish
tyranny, from honor ruined by passion, from this frank malignity, and
wiles worthy of savages! Woman, with her genius for ruthlessness, her
talent for torture, is, and always will be, the marring of man. The
public prosecutor, the minister--here they are, all hoodwinked, all
moving the spheres for some letters written by a duchess and a chit, or
to save the reason of a woman who is more crazy in her right mind than
she was in her delirium."

And he smiled haughtily.

"Ay," said he to himself, "and they believe in me! They act on my
information, and will leave me in power. I shall still rule the world
which has obeyed me these five-and-twenty years."

Jacques Collin had brought into play the overpowering influence he had
exerted of yore over poor Esther; for he had, as has often been shown,
the mode of speech, the look, the action which quell madmen, and he had
depicted Lucien as having died with the Countess' image in his heart.

No woman can resist the idea of having been the one beloved.

"You now have no rival," had been this bitter jester's last words.

He remained a whole hour alone and forgotten in that little ro