Val-Noble to come and help her cook.

As they sat down to table, Peyrade, who had given Madame du Val-Noble
five hundred francs that the thing might be well done, found under his
napkin a scrap of paper on which these words were written in pencil,
"The ten days are up at the moment when you sit down to supper."

Peyrade handed the paper to Contenson, who was standing behind him,
saying in English:

"Did you put my name here?"

Contenson read by the light of the wax-candles this "Mene, Tekel,
Upharsin," and slipped the scrap into his pocket; but he knew how
difficult it is to verify a handwriting in pencil, and, above all, a
sentence written in Roman capitals, that is to say, with mathematical
lines, since capital letters are wholly made up of straight lines and
curves, in which it is impossible to detect any trick of the hand, as in
what is called running-hand.

The supper was absolutely devoid of spirit. Peyrade was visibly
absent-minded. Of the men about town who give life to a supper, only
Rastignac and Lucien were present. Lucien was gloomy and absorbed in
thought; Rastignac, who had lost two thousand francs before supper,
ate and drank with the hope of recovering them later. The three women,
stricken by this chill, looked at each other. Dulness deprived the
dishes of all relish. Suppers, like plays and books, have their good and
bad luck.

At the end of the meal ices were served, of the kind called plombieres.
As everybody knows, this kind of dessert has delicate preserved fruits
laid on the top of the ice, which is served in a little glass, not
heaped above the rim. These ices had been ordered by Madame du Val-Noble
of Tortoni, whose shop is at the corner of the Rue Taitbout and the
Boulevard.

The cook called Contenson out of the room to pay the bill.

Contenson, who thought this demand on the part of the shop-boy rather
strange, went downstairs and startled him by saying:

"Then you have not come from Tortoni's?" and then went straight upstairs
again.

Paccard had meanwhile handed the ices to the company in his absence. The
mulatto had hardly reached the door when one of the police constables
who had kept watch in the Rue des Moineaux called up the stairs:

"Number twenty-seven."

"What's up?" replied Contenson, flying down again.

"Tell Papa that his daughter has come home; but, good God! in what a
state. Tell him to come at once; she is dying."

At the moment when Contenson re-entered the d