yourself to
your friends?"

"I, borrow money!" cried the captain, stopping D'Harmental's liberal
intentions with a sign; "no; when I do you a service you make me a
present; well and good. When I conclude a bargain you execute the
conditions. But I to ask without having a right to ask! It may do for a
church rat, but not for a soldier; although I am only a simple
gentleman, I am as proud as a duke or a peer; but, pardon me, if you
want me, you know where to find me. Au revoir, chevalier! au revoir!"

And, without waiting for D'Harmental's answer, Roquefinette left him,
not thinking it safe that they should be seen talking together.

As it was only eleven o'clock in the morning, however, and as in all
probability the parliament would not break up till four in the
afternoon, and as, no doubt, there was nothing determined on yet, the
chevalier thought that, instead of remaining on the Place du Carrousel,
he would do better to turn the four hours which he had before him to the
profit of his love. Moreover, the nearer he approached to the
catastrophe, the more need he felt of seeing Bathilde. Bathilde had
become one of the elements of his life; one of the organs necessary to
his existence; and, at the moment when he might perhaps be separated
from her forever, he did not understand how he could live a single day
away from her. Consequently, pressed by the eternal craving for the
presence of the loved object, the chevalier, instead of going to look
for his companions, went toward the Rue du Temps-Perdu.

D'Harmental found the poor child very uneasy. Buvat had not come home
since half-past nine the morning before. Nanette had been to inquire at
the library, and to her great astonishment, and the scandal of his
fellow-clerks, she had learned that he had not been there for five or
six days. Such a derangement in Buvat's habits indicated serious events.
On the other hand, the young girl had noticed in Raoul, the day before,
a sort of nervous agitation, which, although kept down by
determination, gave warning of an important crisis. Thus, joining her
old fears to her new agonies, Bathilde felt instinctively that a
misfortune, invisible but inevitable, hung above her, and that at any
moment it might fall on her devoted head.

But when Bathilde saw Raoul, all fear, past or future, was lost in the
happiness of the present. On his part, Raoul, whether it was
self-command, or a similar feeling to her own, thought of nothing but
Ba