ou
will never forgive me, and then--how shall I live?"

"Father," cried Bathilde, "for Heaven's sake try and find out what has
happened."

"Well, my child, well, I will discover; will not you forgive me if I
bring you good news? If the news is bad, you will hate me even more;
that will but be just, but you will not die, Bathilde?"

"Go, go," said Bathilde, throwing her arms round his neck, and giving
him a kiss in which fifteen years of gratitude struggled with one day of
pain; "go, my existence is in the hands of God, He only can decide
whether I shall live or die."

Buvat understood nothing of all this but the kiss, and--having inquired
of Madame Denis how the chevalier had been dressed--he set out on his
quest.

It was no easy matter for a detective so simple as Buvat to trace
Raoul's progress; he had learned from a neighbor that he had been seen
to spring upon a gray horse which had remained some half hour fastened
to the shutter, and that he had turned round the Rue Gros Chenet. A
grocer, who lived at the corner of the Rue des Jeuneurs, remembered
having seen a cavalier, whose person and horse agreed perfectly with the
description given by Buvat, pass by at full gallop; and, lastly, a fruit
woman, who kept a little shop at the corner of the Boulevards, swore
positively that she had seen the man, and that he had disappeared by the
Porte Saint Denis; but from this point all the information was vague,
unsatisfactory, and uncertain, so that, after two hours of useless
inquiry, Buvat returned to Madame Denis's house without any more
definite information to give Bathilde than that, wherever D'Harmental
might be gone, he had passed along the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. Buvat
found his ward much agitated; during his absence she had grown rapidly
worse, and the crisis foreseen by the doctor was fast approaching.
Bathilde's eyes flashed; her skin seemed to glow; her words were short
and firm. Madame Denis had just sent for the doctor.

The poor woman was not without her own anxieties; for some time she had
suspected that the Abbe Brigaud was mixed up in some plot, and what she
had just learned, that D'Harmental was not a poor student but a rich
colonel, confirmed her conjectures, since it had been Brigaud who had
introduced him to her. This similarity of position had not a little
contributed to soften her heart--always kind--toward Bathilde. She
listened, then, with eagerness to the little information which Buvat had
b