nd herself in a
condition which it was necessary to conceal from everyone. To Angelique
herself, it is true, the position was not new, and she felt neither grief
nor shame, regarding the coming event as a means of making her future
more secure by forging a new link in the chain which bound the duke to
her. But he, sure that but for himself Angelique would never have
strayed from virtue's path, could not endure the thought of her losing
her reputation and becoming an object for scandal to point her finger at;
so that Angelique, who could not well seem less careful of her good name
than he, was obliged to turn his song of woe into a duet, and consent to
certain measures being taken.

One evening, therefore, shortly before Maitre Quennebert's marriage, the
fair lady set out, ostensibly on a journey which was to last a fortnight
or three weeks. In reality she only made a circle in a post-chaise round
Paris, which she re-entered at one of the barriers, where the duke
awaited her with a sedan-chair. In this she was carried to the very
house to which de Jars had brought his pretended nephew after the duel.
Angelique, who had to pay dearly for her errors, remained there only
twenty-four hours, and then left in her coffin, which was hidden in a
cellar under the palace of the Prince de Conde, the body being covered
with quicklime. Two days after this dreadful death, Commander de Jars
presented himself at the fatal house, and engaged a room in which he
installed the chevalier.

This house, which we are about to ask the reader to enter with us, stood
at the corner of the rue de la Tixeranderie and the rue Deux-Portes.
There was nothing in the exterior of it to distinguish it from any other,
unless perhaps two brass plates, one of which bore the words MARIE
LEROUX-CONSTANTIN, WIDOW, CERTIFIED MIDWIFE, and the other CLAUDE
PERREGAUD, SURGEON. These plates were affixed to the blank wall in the
rue de la Tixeranderie, the windows of the rooms on that side looking
into the courtyard. The house door, which opened directly on the first
steps of a narrow winding stair, was on the other side, just beyond the
low arcade under whose vaulted roof access was gained to that end of the
rue des Deux-Portes. This house, though dirty, mean, and out of repair,
received many wealthy visitors, whose brilliant equipages waited for them
in the neighbouring streets. Often in the night great ladies crossed its
threshold under assumed names and r