allest espionage--met the woman on his way to the Bourse, in
secret, in a wretched entresol in the Rue Nueve-Saint-Marc. How often,
and with what rapture, have amorous millionaires trodden these squalid
paths! the pavements of Paris know. Madame de Saint-Esteve, by tossing
the Baron from hope to despair by turns, brought him to the point when
he insisted on being informed of all that related to the unknown beauty
at ANY COST. Meanwhile, the law was put in force, and with such
effect that the bailiffs, finding no resistance from Esther, put in an
execution on her effects without losing a day.

Lucien, guided by his adviser, paid the recluse at Saint-Germain five or
six visits. The merciless author of all these machinations thought this
necessary to save Esther from pining to death, for her beauty was now
their capital. When the time came for them to quit the park-keeper's
lodge, he took Lucien and the poor girl to a place on the road whence
they could see Paris, where no one could overhear them. They all three
sat down in the rising sun, on the trunk of a felled poplar, looking
over one of the finest prospects in the world, embracing the course of
the Seine, with Montmartre, Paris, and Saint-Denis.

"My children," said Carlos, "your dream is over.--You, little one, will
never see Lucien again; or if you should, you must have known him only
for a few days, five years ago."

"Death has come upon me then," said she, without shedding a tear.

"Well, you have been ill these five years," said Herrera. "Imagine
yourself to be consumptive, and die without boring us with your
lamentations. But you will see, you can still live, and very comfortably
too.--Leave us, Lucien--go and gather sonnets!" said he, pointing to a
field a little way off.

Lucien cast a look of humble entreaty at Esther, one of the looks
peculiar to such men--weak and greedy, with tender hearts and cowardly
spirits. Esther answered with a bow of her head, which said: "I will
hear the executioner, that I may know how to lay my head under the axe,
and I shall have courage enough to die decently."

The gesture was so gracious, but so full of dreadful meaning, that the
poet wept; Esther flew to him, clasped him in her arms, drank away the
tears, and said, "Be quite easy!" one of those speeches that are spoken
with the manner, the look, the tones of delirium.

Carlos then explained to her quite clearly, without attenuation, often
with horrible plainness of sp