of my men at the back of the chaise; but at Blois, my man
having to get down, could not catch the chaise up again."

Five days after Derville's return, Lucien one morning had a call from
Rastignac.

"I am in despair, my dear boy," said his visitor, "at finding myself
compelled to deliver a message which is intrusted to me because we are
known to be intimate. Your marriage is broken off beyond all hope of
reconciliation. Never set foot again in the Hotel de Grandlieu. To marry
Clotilde you must wait till her father dies, and he is too selfish to
die yet awhile. Old whist-players sit at table--the card-table--very
late.

"Clotilde is setting out for Italy with Madeleine de
Lenoncourt-Chaulieu. The poor girl is so madly in love with you, my dear
fellow, that they have to keep an eye on her; she was bent on coming to
see you, and had plotted an escape. That may comfort you in misfortune!"

Lucien made no reply; he sat gazing at Rastignac.

"And is it a misfortune, after all?" his friend went on. "You will
easily find a girl as well born and better looking than Clotilde! Madame
de Serizy will find you a wife out of spite; she cannot endure the
Grandlieus, who never would have anything to say to her. She has a
niece, little Clemence du Rouvre----"

"My dear boy," said Lucien at length, "since that supper I am not on
terms with Madame de Serizy--she saw me in Esther's box and made a
scene--and I left her to herself."

"A woman of forty does not long keep up a quarrel with so handsome a
man as you are," said Rastignac. "I know something of these sunsets.--It
lasts ten minutes in the sky, and ten years in a woman's heart."

"I have waited a week to hear from her."

"Go and call."

"Yes, I must now."

"Are you coming at any rate to the Val-Noble's? Her nabob is returning
the supper given by Nucingen."

"I am asked, and I shall go," said Lucien gravely.

The day after this confirmation of his disaster, which Carlos heard of
at once from Asie, Lucien went to the Rue Taitbout with Rastignac and
Nucingen.

At midnight nearly all the personages of this drama were assembled in
the dining-room that had formerly been Esther's--a drama of which the
interest lay hidden under the very bed of these tumultuous lives, and
was known only to Esther, to Lucien, to Peyrade, to Contenson, the
mulatto, and to Paccard, who attended his mistress. Asie, without
its being known to Contenson and Peyrade, had been asked by Madame du